Spotting the definition in a cryptic clue

Every cryptic clue is two clues joined end to end. One part defines the answer in the ordinary way, exactly as a quick crossword would. The other part builds the same answer out of letters. The join between them is invisible on purpose, because the setter writes both halves so they read as a single sentence. Finding that join is the first move in every cryptic solve, and you can make it before you understand a single letter of the wordplay.

The definition sits at one end

In a fairly written clue the definition is an unbroken run of words at the very beginning or the very end of the clue. It is never buried in the middle. It is never split into two pieces. Setters hold to this because the alternative would be unsolvable: if the definition could begin anywhere, there would be nothing to test and nothing to confirm. The convention is usually traced to the standards set out by Ximenes, and it still governs almost every daily cryptic published in Britain and America.

So the clue has a seam. On one side of the seam is a synonym for the answer. On the other side is a recipe for spelling it. Your first reading is not an attempt to solve anything. It is an attempt to find where the seam falls.

Testing both ends

Read the clue twice. The first time, treat the opening word or two as the definition and ask whether everything left over could be a recipe. The second time, treat the closing word or two as the definition and ask the same question. In most clues one of those readings collapses at once, because what is left over is pure instruction, and instruction does not define anything.

Do this with the enumeration already in mind. A clue ending (7) that seems to want a plural noun narrows the field before you have read a word. Reading the enumeration before you read the clue is a habit worth building on its own.

What cannot be the definition

Whole classes of word can be struck out on sight, because they exist only to give instructions. Anagram words such as broken, wild, cooked and shuffled belong to the recipe, and there are enough of them to be worth learning as a set: see our list of anagram indicators. So do container words (in, holding, around, swallowing), reversal words (back, returning, and in a down clue, up), homophone markers (we hear, reportedly, said to be) and deletion words (headless, endless, losing its lead).

Link words belong to neither half. They are the small connectives that stitch the definition to the wordplay: is, gives, makes, for, producing, becomes, in, from. A link word does not contribute letters and it does not define. What it does is mark the seam, which makes it the single most useful word in the clue. If you can see the link word, you have already found the definition.

Four worked examples

Responds when crates are smashed (6). Test the end first: "crates are smashed" is instruction, not definition, so the seam is early. That leaves "Responds" as the definition and "crates" as the letters to rearrange. Smashed is the indicator. CRATES gives REACTS, which responds. Definition at the front.

Damaged parts form a band (5). Here the front is instruction: damaged is an indicator and parts is the fodder. The seam falls at "form", a link word, and the definition is "a band". PARTS rearranges to STRAP. Definition at the back.

Pub profit is a good deal (7). No indicator anywhere, so this is a charade: pieces placed one after another. Pub gives BAR, profit gives GAIN, and "is" marks the seam. The definition is "a good deal", and the answer is BARGAIN.

Freshwater fish will complain (4). Both ends survive the test, which is the signature of a double definition. A CARP is a freshwater fish, and to carp is to complain. Neither half is wordplay in the usual sense; each half is simply a definition, and the answer has to satisfy both.

When the whole clue defines

A small number of clues refuse the seam altogether. In an & lit. clue, every word does double duty: read one way the clue is a recipe, read again it is a definition of the answer. Take In step (6). The wordplay is a plain charade, IN followed by STEP, and the whole phrase also describes the INSTEP, the arched part of the foot you step on. Nothing is left over on either reading.

These clues are rare, and they are usually flagged by a clue that seems to have no spare words at all. If a clue looks too short to contain two halves, try reading it as one.

Building the habit

The end test takes a few seconds and it works on clues you cannot solve, which is the point. Applied to a full puzzle it gives you fifteen or twenty candidate definitions before you have solved anything, and candidate definitions are what crossing letters confirm. If you want the underlying two-part structure explained from the beginning, start with how a cryptic clue is built, then work through the devices one at a time in the nine cryptic devices.

Practice is easier in small doses. A single cryptic clue a day is enough to build the reflex, and the Guardian beginners series works through the same ideas at greater length. When you feel ready to try a whole grid, our clue-by-clue walkthrough solves a six-clue mini from a blank start.