Your first cryptic: a clue-by-clue walkthrough

Reading about cryptic clues and solving one are different skills, and the gap between them closes only by solving. What follows is a six-clue mini cryptic written for this article, with a grid small enough to hold in your head and clues that between them use six different devices. Nothing here is quoted from a published puzzle. Work through it with a pencil if you can, and read the reasoning afterwards. If you would rather try it cold, the clues are in the box below and the solutions do not begin until the section after that.

The rule you need before you start

A cryptic clue is a definition plus a set of instructions for building the same answer letter by letter. The definition sits at one end of the clue, never in the middle. The instructions occupy the rest. The two halves are written to read as one sentence, and that sentence is usually a lie. Ignore what the clue appears to be about and look instead for the seam between its halves. If that idea is new, read how a cryptic clue is built first, and keep the glossary open for terms such as fodder and indicator.

The grid, described

The grid is five squares wide and five squares deep. Every square in rows one, three and five is white, so each of those rows holds one five-letter across answer. In rows two and four only the first, third and fifth squares are white; the second and fourth squares in those rows are blocked. That leaves three five-letter down answers running the full depth of columns one, three and five.

Numbering follows the usual rule: a square is numbered when an answer begins there. The top-left square starts both an across and a down answer, so it is 1. The third and fifth squares of the top row each start a down answer, so they are 2 and 3. The first square of row three is 4, and the first square of row five is 5. The across answers are therefore 1, 4 and 5, and the down answers are 1, 2 and 3.

Every answer shares its first, third and fifth letters with a crossing answer. The second and fourth letters of every entry are unchecked, meaning no other answer confirms them. That is the standard trade in a small grid, and it is why the wordplay has to be solved rather than guessed: two letters in five come from the clue alone.

The six clues

The first two answers

1 Down: Tapes shredded to make glue (5). Start here, because it carries the loudest signal in the puzzle. "Shredded" is an anagram indicator, one of the damage family listed in our guide to anagram indicators. The word it touches is "tapes", which has five letters, exactly matching the enumeration. So the fodder is TAPES and the definition must be at the other end: "glue". Rearranged, T, A, P, E and S give PASTE. Paste is glue. Write it in.

That single answer supplies the first letter of all three across answers: P at the top, S in the middle row, E at the bottom.

1 Across: Ring holding river makes a gem (5). You already know it starts with P. "Makes" is a link word, so the seam falls there and the definition is "a gem". The rest is the recipe. "Holding" is a container indicator: something goes inside something else. Ring gives PEAL. River gives R, one of the single-letter abbreviations setters use constantly. Put R inside PEAL and the only arrangement that spells anything is PEARL, which is a gem, and which starts with the P you already had. Confirmed twice over.

The two remaining downs

PEARL now gives you the first letter of 2 Down, which is A, and the first letter of 3 Down, which is L.

2 Down: On the lookout for a warning (5). Test both ends. "On the lookout" defines a five-letter word. "A warning" also defines a five-letter word. When both ends survive, you are looking at a double definition, the one device with no wordplay in it at all. The word that means both is ALERT: alert as an adjective, an alert as a noun. It starts with A, as required. The word "for" is doing nothing but joining the halves.

3 Down: Dead king, in due course (5). There is no indicator of any kind here, which points to a charade: pieces placed one after another. "In due course" is the definition. Dead gives LATE, as in the late king. King gives R, the abbreviation from the Latin rex. LATE followed by R gives LATER, which means in due course and begins with the L you already had. The surface reading about a dead monarch is scenery.

Finishing the grid

The three downs now hand you enough letters to finish without much work, which is how a small grid is supposed to behave.

4 Across takes its first letter from PASTE, its third from ALERT and its fifth from LATER, giving the pattern S _ E _ T. The clue is Dispatched, we hear, a perfume (5). "We hear" is a homophone marker, so the answer sounds like another word. The definition is "a perfume". Dispatched gives SENT, and the perfume that sounds like it is SCENT. It fits the pattern exactly.

5 Across takes its first letter from PASTE, its third from ALERT and its fifth from LATER, giving E _ T _ R. The clue is Come in, partly thanks to a patent error (5). "Partly" is a hidden word indicator. Write the last words as one string of letters: A-P-A-T-E-N-T-E-R-R-O-R. Running across the join between "patent" and "error" is ENTER, which means come in, and which matches the pattern. The surface sentence about a flawed patent exists only to supply that join.

Row	1	2	3	4	5
1	P	E	A	R	L
2	A	block	L	block	A
3	S	C	E	N	T
4	T	block	R	block	E
5	E	N	T	E	R

What the puzzle taught you

Six clues, six devices: anagram, container, double definition, charade, homophone and hidden word. Those are six of the nine described in the nine cryptic devices, and they are the six you will meet most often. Notice the order the puzzle was solved in. The anagram went first because its indicator was unmistakable. The container went second because a crossing letter had already confirmed one end of it. The two clues with no indicator at all were left until letters were available, and the last two answers were half filled before they were read properly.

That order is the method, not an accident of this grid. Solve the loud clues first, take the letters they give you, and use those letters to make the quiet clues loud. If a full-size cryptic still leaves you with a blank grid after ten minutes, the checklist in what to do when nothing comes at all is the next thing to try.

For a gentler full-size puzzle, the Guardian Quiptic is published weekly and pitched at exactly this stage, and the beginners series from the same paper explains each device with published examples. If a whole grid is too much on a weekday, working one clue and checking it against the daily Minute Cryptic solution keeps the habit alive. Background on where the form came from is set out in the Wikipedia article on cryptic crosswords.