Complete Guide on Construction of Cryptic Crosswords Part I & II

You might not realize it but crossword puzzles are still one of the most popular parts of newspapers.

Many buy a copy for that reason alone. So there is a healthy demand for people to write and sell crossword puzzles.

Not only this, digital devices whether it is laptop or smartphones are making it much easier for crossword lovers to solve their favorite puzzles on their go.

If you are someone who loves solving crosswords but also wishes to solve them successfully, this post is for you.

Initially starting with the basics, later we will discuss in detail how cryptic crosswords are made.

Here are the basic seven tips on how to construct crosswords:

1. Decide a theme

Begin by thinking about the theme for your puzzle. It can be related to politics, history, geography, food, travel, film, and TV, etc.

There is a need to reveal what your theme is to your readers, let them think. This theme will make it very easy to come up with words and clues.

2. Note down a long list of words

Now it is down to scribble down a long list of words that will be related to the theme that you have decided.

Minimum 25–30 words should be there. These words will be your word bank that will help in puzzle making but you don’t necessarily need to use all of them.

3. Include short and long words

You can include long and short words but don’t have many words under four letters.

Try picking only those words that include a lot of ‘often used’ letters.

They can be vowels A, E, I, O, U, and also S, T, L, M, N. All this is easier to fit together. Avoid using too many words that use Z, Q, and X for the same reason!

4. Make sure you combine longer words in the center

Go get a graph paper and a pencil. Pick the best five or six-letter word from the list that you have created and tried linking them together in the center. Make sure you begin horizontally.

Then try adjusting the smaller words around them. From then onwards build up your grid.

Next, finish off by filling in the spaces with a blank. You should then complete everything by filling the spaces in the blank.

5. Number every square that contains the letter of a word

It is very important that you number every square that has the first letter of a word. Further, you should divide these into two lists, one ‘Across’ and another ‘Down’.

6. Start creating the clues!

The fun begins here!

The next step is to make a clue for every word. Most crosswords either have very simple clues or cryptic clues or they don’t mix both types in the same crossword.

7. Need word help? Get a thesaurus.

Do you know what a thesaurus is?

Well, a thesaurus is a really handy way of finding clue ideas for crosswords. You can either get one or look for a free thesaurus online.

Look for a clue and get a list of words that will mean something which is quite similar and can be the basis of your clue.

If you are someone who loves solving online puzzles, you might know that you can take the help of online crossword making software to help you create crossword puzzles and solve puzzles.

You can choose them if you like although the good ones tend to be quite expensive.

However, there are some newspapers and online crossword makers that take crosswords that are not created by software so it is very important to check what they want.

Selling crossword puzzles

Many companies publish puzzles on a weekly or daily basis so; they will be interested in buying your puzzles.

The best way is to write to them and ask. Start with smaller publications rather than directly going for The Times and so on!

Popular newspapers and magazines tend to have regular, in-house crossword compilers.

But there are many that still buy puzzles from freelancers sometimes. And this could be the best opportunity for you.

Tip: Most of the magazines, newspapers, and online gaming games have a fixed grid size that they’re very reluctant to change.

Rules for Constructing a Cryptic Crossword Puzzle: Detailed Description

The starting point is, the cryptic clue must give the solver a fair chance of solving and understanding the clue.

Initially, the clue can mislead but it must do so in a fairway.

If it is not meaning directly what you say, it should take you in the right direction in an indirect manner.

After making clues that lead to the right answer, the waters start getting muddier.

The purist approach is that the cue is able to be broken down into a grammatically correct series of instructions to the solver that leads them to the solution.

The purist approach is termed “Ximenean” after Ximenes, the pseudonym for Derrick Somerset Macnutt was one of the first individuals who laid down crossword rules and standards.

He said there should be:

• Indicators for the clue types
• No direct anagrams
• No misleading connectors or punctuations
• An unambiguous and unique answer to every clue.

Initial letter indicators:

Initial letter indicators: If you want to indicate that the solver has to take the first letter of the word, you can indicate this by the “head of maths”.

Anagram indicators: Is the organization a valid anagram indicator?

Well, the organization is a noun that is incapable of indicating the anagram that requires some sense of action.

Separate clues: What will happen if there is a clue that contains the word indeed as an indicator. Then you have to put another word inside the word “deed”.

Anatomy of a clue

After looking briefly at the rules of cryptic clues, you can look in the little more detail at the anatomy of a clue. Many clues fall into three different categories that you need to consider.

Example: What to do when you get the bit between your teeth (5) — FLOSS

Double definitions: A double definition clue contains two definitions of the same word. Both of them should have different meanings for this type of clue to work effectively.

Split stick (6) –Cleave

Wordplay

The technical term is the “subsidiary indication” as you are playing with letters as the complete words. However, “wordplay” is often used so often that you get a well-known expression.

Wordplay is a place where you will find your anagrams, charades, container and content clues, reversals, homophones, and others.

Is synonym the solution?

As a thumb rule, you should be able to use the definition in a sentence.

Usually, a thesaurus will give you loose synonyms for a word. But only if a word is listed beside the word doesn’t mean it will be the best synonym.

Link words

A linking word is a word that links the two halves of a clue together. Often, they can signpost which word or phrase in the clue is the definition and which part is wordplay.

Broadly, this link should fulfill any one of the following functions:

Wordplay leads to the result in the definition

The definition comes from or is found in the wordplay

Clue Length

There are no formal rules regarding the clue length. Every crossword constructor has his own style.

The beam is a daily telegraph Toughie that will rarely have a clue which is more than 8 words long.

Punctuation

The convention is that you should never include a full stop at the end of a clue.

It is important that the puzzle makers should ignore punctuations but there are honorable exceptions where certain punctuations have remarkable meanings.

Wordplay

Introduction

A wordplay and definition clue should give an indicator of how the clue is constructed. The key types of wordplay that you will find in cryptic crossword are:

Abbreviations: a word is replaced by its abbreviation for example small become S.

Anagrams: a series of letters are rearranged to give the answer.

Charades or word sums- two words are added together to give the solution, for example, PART+RIDGE

Container and content: one word is put inside another, for example, A(GIN)G where age is put inside the abbreviation for silver. They can be clued either as insert word A inside word B or put word A around word B.

Deletions: A letter is deleted from a word to give the answer or part of the answer. Deletions may tell you to remove the first letter, middle or last letter.

Homophones: One word sounds like another. For example, maize sounds like a maze.

Palindromes: The word that reads the same whichever way it is read for example Rotor.

Crossword Construction Part II

Every crossword lover knows that cryptic crosswords are a bit tricky. When solving them is challenging, how can constructing one be easy.

We have already described crossword construction of the cryptic puzzle part I and this is the detailed study part II.

Read carefully to understand what rules are there and how you will be following them.

Most of them are basic that you already know but do take note.

Let’s begin!

Tense and Voice

This is obvious, right? You should have the appropriate knowledge of tenses before you begin the construction.

Well, it is not a rule but it is always a good practice to try using the present tense when you construct wordplay elements within the clue.

When constructing clues, it is always a good practice to use active voice rather than using passive voice if it is possible.

However, when you are making a clue, less emphasis is placed on this rule. “A describes B” to tell that word A goes around word B is fine as is “B is described by A”.

However, you have to take a lot of care in this type of clue construction or the resulting clue look, “Yoda like”.

Direction

Whether the clue is an across clue or a down clue, a few wordplay indicators will have various meanings.

Crossword setters ensure that the wordplay indicator is appropriate to the positioning of the clue within the puzzle grid.

There are certain cases that have to be taken with charade indicators and reversal indicators.

“On” as a charade indicator. “A on B” in an across clue is usually not used to indicated B followed by A.

On the contrary, in a down clue the solvers “A on B” should mean “A on top of B

“Supports”- “A supports B” in a down clue depicts that the word A is underneath word B. This construction can’t be used in an across clue.

In a reversal clue, any indicator that the word moves upward or northwards has to be used in a down clue.

Similarly when there is an indication where the word reads from the right to left should be used only in an across clue.

On the subject of direction, one major type of construction which can be a source of confusion is the use of “A pursues B”.

Pursues means to follow and this is an instruction to the solver that the word A pursuing B, running behind to catch them.

Complexity

What differentiates a difficult wordplay in a clue from the easier clue?

Here they are:

In a straightforward puzzle, you can depict one or two wordplay elements. Like putting words X inside Y in order to crack the right answers.

Whereas in a tougher crossword, there can be three to four-word elements like putting an anagram of A inside a reversal of B and add this to C.

Thoughtfully differentiate the wordplay indicators

Disguising breaks between the definition word and wordplay. The best way is to take a well-known phrase that the solver has to read and is mentally split to give the answer.

Using obscure definitions of words in the wordplay or in the answer. This is going to get you brickbats from the solver.

If you use an obscure word as the answer, you can use less complex wordplay to compensate.

Designing of the Grid

Introduction

The overall design of the crossword puzzle has a direct impact on the ease. Some grids are comparatively easier to solve than others.

The design as well as the layout is therefore very important to consider especially when setting the crossword puzzle.

The basic crossword grid

The standard UK cryptic crossword is specifically designed with the help of 15X15 blocked grid. In this, blocked means that the squares black.

The ratio of blocked squares to white squares has to be 1:3 as per the thumb rule. The white squares in the grid are usually referred to as light.

While designing the grid, avoid large blobs of black squares as they may look out of place.

Another size of the grid is 13X13 but is reserved for quick crosswords. Well, The New York Times has a beginner's cryptic crossword of this grid.

Jumbo crosswords tend to use larger grids. The only constant in this is that the dimensions are usually an odd number.

The advanced cryptic crossword used a barred grid. It is defined as the one where all of the squares are white with word boundaries indicated by the thicker black lines at the edge of the square.

Symmetry

It is important that the grids have to be symmetrical. The two main symmetries are 180-degree symmetry where the grid looks the same if you keep rotating it to 180 degrees and 90 degrees.

There may be rare instances where there is deformation in symmetry with one or two squares. If you construct a completely asymmetrical grid, it will look messy.

Cross-checking

In every answer, a minimum of 50% of the letters should ideally be cross-checked, that is if they are intersecting with another clue.

However, with five-letter answers, you will receive unchecked, checked, unchecked, checked.

Try avoiding these types of clues but one of two can be added in the themed crossword.

Double and triple unches

A white square that doesn’t intersect with another answer is UNCH (unchecked).

There is a possibility that you get double unches in the grid. This means there are two successive squares that are unchecked.

Even the New York Times crossword permits double unches but not in the place where there are two unchecked letters at the beginning of a word.

Double unches make it more challenging to solve the complete puzzle. So, make sure that 50% of the letters are cross-checked, double unches are a part of the solver’s life.

Triple unches is a completely different story. Well, no newspaper or crossword giant uses them. Although one of the stocks of the Daily Telegraph grid has triple unch.

Interconnectivity

It is important that all the parts of the grid should be interconnected.

There shouldn’t be a place where one section of the grid is separated from the remainder of the crossword puzzle.

Interconnectivity makes the solving process easier. There are certain grids that have the ability to produce four separate crosswords linked only in the middle. This is even more difficult to solve. The more the interconnectivity, the better it is.

Odd checking or even checking

Crossword puzzles are designed in a way that it is the odd-numbered letters in a word that are cross-checked.

In the form of a grid in the top left is used, it is easier for the crossword constructor to fill the grid or include hidden themes around the perimeter. Well, the resulting grid is comparatively difficult to solve.

There are two major reasons for this. Firstly, it is quite easy to find the right word where you have the initial letter.

Secondly, the cross-checked letters are in positions 2, 4, 6, etc. and many more words having unhelpful vowels as the cross-checking letters. The form of checking as depicted in the image is comparatively easier to solve.

Alternate letters

There are some clues that help in taking the alternate letters of a word. They are indicated by words like regularly, oddly overlooked, second helpings from, etc.

Conventionally, this is a construction used for either the odd or even letters but there is no reason why “regulars” can’t mean the third letter.

Then there are letters representing prime number letters or to use progressively increasing intervals of the letters. This makes it easy for you to make the end, 4th, 8th letter, etc.

One point every cryptic crossword constructor should remember is that it is always better to use a construction like X regularly rather than regular X as grammatically as this makes a better sense of a clue.

Container and content clues

They are clues that require the solver to put one word inside another.

Unlike the charade clues where there is no wordplay indicator to depict that the words are joined together.

It is important that the container and content clue has an indicator to show that Word A goes inside Word B.

For example, “Flags up money pocketed in bribe (7) needs the solver to put TIN (money) inside (pocketed in) BUNG (bribe0 in order to give flags that can be easily put up.

Combination Clues

Container and content clues are usually combined with other wordplay elements so that you have an abbreviation inside another word or one word reversed around another. Once again, there are plenty of variants on this theme.

Wrapping Up

The aforementioned notes will be very helpful if you genuinely want to construct a cryptic crossword puzzle.

They are not only exhaustive but also give new setters and solvers a few of the basic knowledge and rules.

However, there is no substitute for practice in constructing a cryptic crossword and then solving it. You can also refer to “Chamber’s Crossword Manual”.

Stay tuned!