Cryptic Crosswords

[Evangelicalhumanist]

I have finally decided to share some puzzles that I myself have created. They are of the genre called "Cryptic Crosswords."

First, a couple of warnings -- people from Britain, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Australia and Canada generally know how these work. They are very rare in the US. And unless you are a native English speaker, they are really, really, really hard. (They're really hard if you ARE a native English speaker, but that's only one really, rather than 3.)

So here they are: Puzzles from BigAl

The rules of cryptic crosswords is that every clue consists of 2 parts -- a definition, and some word play -- and you do not know which part is which. Word play can be things like puns, homophones (signalled by words like "sounds like" or "hear" or "to the auditor" or "audience"), or anagrams (signalled by words like "poor" or "confused" or "muddled"). The beauty of them is how hard the make you work -- but also that when you finally see it, you KNOW you are right and don't need any darned answer book to tell you so.

Here's a simple example: "Write quickly seeing son move like a baby (6)." The number in brackets tells you how long the answer is (6 letters, in this case). The answer here is "SCRAWL."

So, the definition part of the clue is "write quickly." Scrawl makes sense in that definition, doesn't it? And the word play is a shortform for son (S), followed by a word that means "move like a baby" (CRAWL).

Here's another one: "Caught Weasley maybe pinching old Scottish pot (7)." The answer is "CAULDRON." See, a cauldron is a pot, "old" to the Scots is "auld." Weasley perhaps suggests a member of the Weasley family in Harry Potter -- in this case Ron. And "caught" is generally shortformed as the letter C. So the answer is worked out from C and RON pinching (or enclosing) "old Scottish." Simple, eh?

These puzzles are all my own, by the way.

And if you have trouble understanding the clues -- PM me and I promise I will answer.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

Warning! Cryptics, once you get past the fact that they are very daunting challenges (at first), are extremely addictive. Those who do them never go back to those boring old ordinary crosswords -- not even The Times!

 

[ChristineM]

Very clever.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

Another warning! Ignore all punctuation -- it doesn't mean anything. And in fact, try repunctuating whatever you see as many ways as you like, to see if you can figure out which bit is definition and which is word play.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

Here's an example of "ignore punctuation."

Clue is "Greek letter within horny ungulate (5)"

The answer is RHINO. A rhinocerous is certainly an ungulate with a horn. The Greek letter is RHO, and it contains "IN" (from within). You see, a space is also punctuation, and I told you to ignore it, so really that could read "Greek letter with 'IN'"

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

Another example that I like: "A sulking, strange monarch before David (4,4)"

That means two words, each 4 letters long. Well, the monarch before David was King Saul which is an anagram ("strange") of "a sulking."