How a cryptic clue is built: definition plus wordplay

A cryptic clue looks like a sentence and behaves like a machine. It rewards careful reading rather than lateral thinking. Once you accept that every cryptic clue is two clues printed on top of each other, the form becomes learnable.

Every cryptic clue is two clues

A standard cryptic clue contains a definition and a piece of wordplay, side by side, with nothing to separate them. Both point to the same answer. The definition is a plain synonym of the sort any quick crossword would use. The wordplay is an instruction for building the answer letter by letter.

Take an original clue: Pay attention to silent rearrangement (6). The definition is pay attention. The wordplay, silent rearrangement, says to shuffle the letters of SILENT. The answer is LISTEN. The bracketed number is the enumeration, printed by British puzzles and omitted by American ones.

Finding the definition

The definition sits at one end of the clue, never in the middle. That rule removes most of the difficulty. Read the first two or three words as a candidate definition, then the last two or three, and ask which end could be a dictionary synonym of the answer.

In Vehicle and animal provide floor covering (6) the ends are vehicle and floor covering. Only one is served by the middle: CAR plus PET gives CARPET. Testing both ends every time is worked through in the guide to spotting the definition.

Indicators: the words that give the instruction

The wordplay half almost always contains an indicator, a word whose only job is to name the operation. Indicators are the vocabulary of the form, and the list is short.

Device	Typical indicators	What it asks you to do
Anagram	broken, wild, cooked, arranged, out, drunk	Reorder the fodder
Hidden word	some of, partly, held by, within	Read letters straight out of the clue
Container	in, holding, keeps, around	Put one string inside another
Reversal	back, returned, sent up, rejected	Write a string backwards

An anagram indicator must be attached to fodder: a word or phrase whose letters match the enumeration exactly. Counting is not optional. Seven letters of fodder in a six letter slot means you have the wrong fodder. Deletions work the same way, signalled by headless, endless or losing heart.

Four worked examples

All four clues below were written for this lesson.

• Musical marks found in piano test (5). Definition: musical marks. Found in signals a hidden word, so read across the clue: piaNO TESt gives NOTES.
• Gold kept in pen makes a tale (5). Definition: a tale. Kept in is a container. Gold is OR, the heraldic term, and a pen is a STY. OR inside STY gives STORY.
• Reward sent back to the sliding compartment (6). Definition: sliding compartment. Sent back is a reversal, and REWARD backwards is DRAWER.
• Spell losing its head does damage (4). Definition: does damage. A spell is a CHARM, and losing its head removes the C, giving HARM. The magic is the disguise.

Those four, with charade, double definition, homophone and the & lit., make up the standard toolkit, set out one by one in the guide to the nine cryptic devices.

Fairness, and the Ximenean rules

Cryptic clues follow conventions the solver may rely on. The strictest account comes from Ximenes, the pseudonym of Derrick Somerset Macnutt, whose 1966 book set out what a clue may and may not do. His successor at the Observer, Azed, still comments on individual clues in the Azed slip archive. The guarantees are simple: a fair definition, wordplay that produces the answer exactly with no letters left over, and grammatical English in both readings.

Afrit, an earlier setter, put the contract in a line: a setter need not mean what he says, but must say what he means. Newspaper setters are often looser with grammar in exchange for wittier surfaces, a tradition called libertarian. The history of the form covers the split, and the Guardian beginners series solves clues in both styles.

The surface reading is the disguise

The sentence a clue appears to be is its surface reading, and a good one is entirely misleading. Spell losing its head evokes a witch. Setters spend most of their craft on surfaces, which is why cryptic clues are pleasant to read and slow to solve.

So distrust the sentence. Ignore the punctuation, ignore what the clue seems to be about, and look for an indicator, then for the ends. One clue at a time is enough at the start: a daily cryptic clue with its solution explained, of the sort collected at Minute Cryptic answers, teaches more than a grid you abandon. Fodder, surface and enumeration are in the glossary.