Reading the enumeration before the clue

In British and Australian puzzles, and in most cryptics anywhere, a number in brackets follows every clue. Solvers read it last, as a sort of receipt for the answer they have already decided on. Read it first instead. The enumeration is the only part of a clue that cannot mislead you, and on a hard puzzle it rules out more wrong answers than any definition does.

What the brackets actually tell you

An enumeration states two facts: how many words the answer has, and how long each word is. That is far more information than it looks. Compare (9) with (4,2,3). Both describe a nine-letter entry, but the second one has already told you that the answer is a phrase, that its middle word is two letters long, and that its last word is three letters long.

Two-letter words in English are a short list, and the ones that turn up inside crossword phrases are shorter still: AT, IN, IT, ON, OF, OR, TO, UP, BY, DO, GO, NO, SO, US, ME, MY, HE, AN, AS. A three-letter closing word is usually THE, ONE, ALL, OUT, OFF, END, WAY, MAN, BAG or HAT. So before you have understood a single word of the clue, (4,2,3) has shrunk the universe of possible answers to a size you can hold in your head.

Take an original clue: Abandon the attempt (4,2). The definition could be several things, but the shape allows almost nothing except GIVE UP. Now the same idea at Abandon the attempt (5), which is a different answer entirely, and the enumeration told you that before you thought about meaning.

Hyphens are not commas

A comma separates words. A hyphen separates parts of a single hyphenated word. They look similar in brackets and they mean different things, so the distinction is worth fixing early.

Famous (4-5) is WELL-KNOWN, one hyphenated adjective. Famous (4,5) would be a two-word phrase, and (9) would be a single unbroken word. In a printed grid all three fill nine squares identically, because grids do not mark hyphens or spaces. The enumeration is the only place the information exists.

Some setters also use a full stop for an abbreviation, so (1.1.1) signals three initials rather than a three-letter word. Apostrophes are not marked at all, which is why Reach a decision (4,2,4,4) can be MAKE UP ONES MIND with the apostrophe silently absorbed into the four letters of ONE'S. If a phrase seems a letter short, suspect a possessive or a contraction.

Grammar and the count together

The enumeration is most powerful when you read it alongside the grammar of the clue, which is the subject of reading the clue. A plural clue needs a plural answer, and a plural answer usually ends in S, so a clue reading Sudden downpours (7) is very likely to be _ _ _ _ _ _ S before you have guessed anything. A clue in the past tense usually wants an answer ending in D or ED. A clue beginning with a participle usually wants an answer ending ING, which costs three of the available letters.

Put the two together and a seven-letter past-tense clue is really a four-letter problem with a fixed tail. That is the practical value of the habit: it converts long slots into short ones.

American puzzles hide it, so the grid has to say it

American crosswords print no enumeration. A two-word entry looks exactly like a one-word entry, and part of the craft of an American clue is that you are not told where the break falls. The count is still available, because you can see the squares, but the word breaks are not.

This changes the technique rather than removing it. In an American grid you use the length plus the crossings, and you let the grid answer the question the brackets would have answered. A long themed entry whose crossings read _ _ T _ _ E _ _ _ E is unlikely to be one word, and once you accept that it is a phrase you can start hearing it as speech rather than reading it as vocabulary. The habit of working the checked squares first is covered in solve the crossings first, and the short entries that fill the gaps between long ones are listed in common four-letter answer patterns.

The difference in convention is a genuine transatlantic split rather than an accident. The enumeration is standard in Guardian puzzles and in the Times puzzle pages, and absent from New York Times crosswords. Solvers who move between the two traditions usually report that the American grids feel harder at first for this reason alone, and then stop feeling harder once the crossings habit takes over. If you want a syndicated daily to practise on, a smaller weekday grid such as the one tracked at Thomas Joseph daily solutions is a reasonable place to test the method, because the entries are short enough that a single crossing decides them.

When the count contradicts you

The most useful moment in this habit is the disagreement. You have an answer you like, it fits the definition, and it is one letter short. Solvers routinely decide the enumeration is a misprint. It almost never is.

When your answer and the count disagree, the answer is wrong, or it is right in a different form: a plural rather than a singular, a gerund rather than an infinitive, a phrase rather than a word. Setters are held to this. Under the fairness conventions described in the glossary, an enumeration that did not match the entry would be an error rather than a trick, and editors treat it as one.