Anagram indicators: the words that signal a shuffle
A categorised list of more than a hundred anagram indicators, plus how a clue signals which letters you are meant to rearrange.
Roughly one clue in four in a daily cryptic is an anagram, which makes it the most common device in the puzzle and the most profitable one to learn first. An anagram clue has three parts: a definition, a string of letters given openly in the clue, and a word telling you to rearrange them. That third word is the indicator, and it is the part that gives the clue away. Learn to recognise indicators on sight and a quarter of the grid stops being cryptic at all.
What an anagram clue contains
Take Garden redesigned brings a hazard (6). The definition is "a hazard". The fodder, the letters to be shuffled, is GARDEN. The indicator is "redesigned", and "brings" is a link word joining the two halves. GARDEN rearranges to DANGER, which is a hazard, and the letter count matches exactly.
That exactness is the rule that makes anagrams checkable. The fodder must contain precisely as many letters as the enumeration demands, no more and no fewer. If the count is wrong, your reading is wrong, and no amount of staring will fix it. That is why finding the definition first, as described in spotting the definition, pairs so well with counting the fodder second.
How the fodder is signalled
The indicator always sits next to the fodder, either immediately before it or immediately after it. It never sits on the far side of the definition. So once you have found a suspect indicator, the letters you need are the words touching it, and the enumeration tells you how many of those words to take.
Fodder is usually given as plain English, but three other forms are common. It can be a phrase rather than a word, as in "one hot meal, cooked". It can include an abbreviation that the clue spells out in words, so "river" contributes R and "learner" contributes L: our table of crossword abbreviations collects the usual suspects. And it can be a number word, with "one" standing for I or A and "fifty" for L. When the letter count refuses to come out, an abbreviation is the first thing to suspect.
An anagram is the only device in the puzzle that can be proved wrong in five seconds. Count the fodder before you believe it.
Indicators of damage, movement and cooking
Indicators fall into families, and the families are easier to hold in the head than the individual words. Anything that breaks a thing, moves a thing, intoxicates a thing or heats a thing can be pressed into service. The lists below are not exhaustive, but between them they cover the great majority of what you will meet in a daily puzzle.
| Sense | Indicators |
|---|---|
| Broken or damaged | broken, smashed, shattered, cracked, damaged, ruined, wrecked, destroyed, crushed, battered, shredded, torn, bent, fractured, demolished |
| Drunk or unsteady | drunk, tipsy, tight, staggering, reeling, unsteady, wobbly, legless, sozzled, lurching, rocky, swaying |
| Mad or wild | mad, wild, crazy, insane, frantic, hysterical, berserk, unhinged, delirious, manic, raving, rabid |
| Moving or travelling | moving, running, wandering, roaming, drifting, rambling, astray, adrift, flowing, sailing, circulating, touring, rolling |
| Cooked or prepared | cooked, baked, stewed, roasted, fried, boiled, mashed, ground, minced, brewed, whipped, poached |
| Mixed or stirred | mixed, stirred, shuffled, jumbled, scrambled, churned, blended, tossed, whisked, muddled, tangled, shaken |
Indicators of order, change and mood
The second family is quieter and catches more solvers out. These words do not describe violence or motion. They describe a thing being put together differently, or being wrong, or being in a poor state, and every one of them can carry an anagram.
| Sense | Indicators |
|---|---|
| Arranged or built | arranged, organised, ordered, assembled, built, made, fashioned, designed, composed, constructed, edited, laid out |
| Changed or repaired | changed, altered, adapted, converted, transformed, reformed, revised, rewritten, translated, adjusted, modified, doctored, treated, repaired |
| Strange or unusual | strange, odd, unusual, curious, peculiar, weird, funny, bizarre, novel, exotic, extraordinary, remarkable |
| Bad or wrong | bad, badly, wrongly, poorly, awful, terrible, dreadful, faulty, amiss, corrupt, dodgy, off colour |
| Loose or free | loose, free, released, at large, untied, unleashed, escaping, rogue, scattered, strewn |
| Upset or unwell | upset, distressed, troubled, agitated, disturbed, uneasy, restless, nervous, sick, ill, queasy, groggy |
Two worked examples from the second family. Silent, strangely, when you should take note (6): the indicator is "strangely", the fodder is SILENT, and the definition is "take note", giving LISTEN. Notices rearranged, in part (7): the indicator is "rearranged", the fodder is NOTICES, and the definition is the two words "in part", giving SECTION.
Words that only look like indicators
Every word in the tables above can also appear in a clue doing honest work. "Cooked" in a clue about breakfast may simply mean cooked. The test is arithmetic, not intuition: if the words next to the suspected indicator do not contain exactly the right number of letters, it is not an anagram, whatever it looks like.
The reverse trap is worse. Some clues contain two words that could each be an indicator, and only one placement works. Related, unusually, and changed (7) could be read either way at first glance. But "unusually" does not define anything seven letters long, whereas "changed" does. So "changed" is the definition, "unusually" is the indicator, RELATED is the fodder, and the answer is ALTERED.
- Count the fodder. It must equal the enumeration exactly.
- Confirm the indicator touches the fodder, not the definition.
- Cross off each letter of the fodder against your answer, one at a time.
- Check the answer matches the definition in number and tense, not just in meaning.
Learning them in the wild
Indicator lists are worth reading once and then abandoning in favour of real puzzles. Mark every anagram you solve for a week and the families above will fix themselves without effort. A good dictionary helps when an indicator seems to stretch: Chambers is the reference most British setters work from, and Collins is a reasonable second opinion for words a clue treats as standard.
For daily practice, the Guardian crossword page carries several difficulty levels in one place. Once anagrams feel automatic, the other eight devices are set out in the nine cryptic devices, and the vocabulary used throughout is defined in the glossary.
One clue technique, every Sunday
A short email with one device, three worked examples, and a puzzle to try.