Hidden words and how setters bury them

The hidden word is the only cryptic device that hands you the answer in full, spelled correctly, in the order you need it. The setter buries the answer inside the clue itself, usually across the boundary between two ordinary words, and then points at it with a mild phrase such as "some of" or "in part". Nothing has to be rearranged and nothing has to be deduced. The whole difficulty is that the answer is invisible until you stop reading the clue as English and start reading it as a run of letters.

What a hidden clue looks like

Take Volcano erupts, hiding a small boat (5). Written as letters, the first two words give v-o-l-c-a-n-o-e-r-u-p-t-s, and sitting in the middle of that run is CANOE, which is a small boat. The definition is "a small boat", the indicator is "hiding", and the fodder is not rearranged at all, merely extracted.

Three things are always true of a fair hidden clue. The answer runs continuously, with no letters skipped. It reads left to right in the order given, unless a reversal is signalled. And it almost always straddles at least one word boundary, because a hidden word entirely inside a single word would be too easy to see.

The indicators are mild

Anagram indicators shout. Hidden word indicators murmur, which is why they slide past so often. The usual set is short and worth memorising as a block: some of, a bit of, part of, partly, in part, partially, a little, a sample of, held by, contained in, inside, within, buried in, concealed by, hiding, harbouring, covering, kept by, among, and the simple preposition "in".

Two of these deserve a warning. "In" and "within" are also container indicators, where one string of letters is wrapped around another, so the same word can point at two different devices. And "held by" or "covering" can equally signal a container. When the enumeration is short and the clue is long, suspect a hidden word first, because a container clue needs two separate components and a hidden clue needs only one continuous run.

Worked examples

Some of the Roman ticket office is affectionate (8). The indicator is "some of". Run the letters together: R-O-M-A-N-T-I-C-K-E-T. The first eight are ROMANTIC, which is affectionate. The boundary between "Roman" and "ticket" is where the answer hides, and the surface sentence about a ticket office exists only to make that boundary look innocent.

Denim ages, in part, giving a picture (5). Indicator "in part", definition "a picture". D-E-N-I-M-A-G-E-S contains IMAGE across the join. Note that the clue is barely longer than the answer, which is itself a signal: hidden clues run short.

Beginning to be found in a London setting (5). Indicator "found in", definition "Beginning". L-O-N-D-O-N-S-E-T-T-I-N-G contains ONSET. Here the hidden word starts four letters into a single word and finishes two letters into the next, which is the hardest pattern to see by eye.

Part of the actor charms us with a light (5). Indicator "Part of", definition "a light". A-C-T-O-R-C-H-A-R-M-S yields TORCH. A useful check: the letters immediately either side of your candidate should be junk, which they are here.

Hidden words in reverse

A setter can bury the answer backwards, in which case the clue must say so. The reversal indicators are the ordinary ones: back, backing, brought back, returning, retreating, going west in an across clue, and going up in a down clue. The word "up" in an across clue is unfair and a good setter will not use it.

Drinking tube brought back in a new arts show (5). The run A-N-E-W-A-R-T-S-S-H-O-W contains WARTS, and "brought back" tells you to reverse it, giving STRAW, a drinking tube. Current returning as we ditch the rest (4) works the same way: W-E-D-I-T-C-H contains EDIT, reversed to TIDE, a current.

Reversed hidden words are rarer than plain ones and much harder to see, because scanning left to right will never find them. If a clue carries both a reversal word and a containment word, read it backwards once before doing anything else.

How to spot them fast

Hidden clues reward a mechanical routine rather than inspiration. Because the answer is already present, they are the single best foothold in a grid you cannot otherwise start, which is why they feature in the checklist in what to do when nothing comes at all.

Do this on every clue whose enumeration is four to eight letters and whose surface reading mentions a proper noun or an odd piece of scenery. Setters need unusual words to bury unusual letter runs, so an incongruous place name in an otherwise plain sentence is often the tell.

Hidden words are the gentlest entry point into the other eight devices, which are set out with worked examples in the nine cryptic devices. If the two-part structure still feels unfamiliar, read spotting the definition first, and check any unfamiliar term in the glossary. Background on the form and its conventions is set out in the cryptic crossword entry at Wikipedia.

For practice, the Guardian Quiptic uses hidden words generously and is pitched at newer solvers, while the daily cryptic at The Times hides them more deeply. A single clue a day, checked against a published solution, is enough to make the sweep automatic.