Page 9 - Issue 67 Online
P. 9
MANEA MATTERS
MANEA MATTERS
They were fun to solve as part of
a crowd and before I knew it, I had
started writing grids of my own.
There is a beauty in writing cryptic
crossword clues – they’re like
mathematic equations, except you’re
using words.
HAS + LET = HASLET…
GOA + HEAD = GO AHEAD…
It is interesting seeing how people
can break words apart and stitch
them back together.
For those less familiar, a cryptic
crossword clue consists of two parts: the clue must make sense when read aloud.
the definition, which is normally a synonym (a This can be extremely useful for trying to get
word that means the same thing) of the final the solver thinking about something completely
answer, and the wordplay, which explains how unrelated to the actual solution – so bear that in
to craft it. mind when you are solving!
For example, ‘Requires constructing in slate’ If you would like to solve some of my grids, they
tells you that you need to anagram in slate to can be found at mpcryptics.blogspot.com. I
get a word meaning Requires, which would be have also included some example clues on these
Entails. pages. I hope they inspire you to have a go at
“It is interesting seeing some cryptic crosswords – I find the Quiptic and
Everyman puzzles in the Guardian (released on
how people can break a Monday and Sunday respectively) to be very
words apart and stitch approachable for new solvers. They are also
them back together.” available online for free!
There are plenty of types of clue – the fun for me Christopher Evans
is deciding how to clue words, especially
those that have odd spellings or tricky
synonyms. I will often start by seeing if
I can break a word into components. ANSWERS
MAMMOTH, for example, can be 1. Aspic 2. Turnout 3. Carriages
written as MAM and MOTH. Then
I can clue those pieces together to
get something like “Mother insect
and beast”.
I highly value the surface reading
of a cryptic clue, meaning that
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