Here's a Moderately Easy Themed Puzzle
Putting it all together with a proper themed puzzle that includes every major clue type.
N.B. This is part of my ongoing series explaining the different types of cryptic clue. For the first in the series, go here.
Today I have made you another puzzle which, to paraphrase Stefon, has everything: Anagrams, Spoonerisms, Hidden Clues, Cryptic Definitions, Homophones, and a hidden theme that will make you say, “Oh. I guess that’s the theme.” I’ve tried my best to design this one to be moderately easy, although I’ll come clean and confess right now that it contains two answers, which (while perfectly cromulent words), may involve a bit of a vocabulary workout.
Spotting the theme will certainly make this puzzle easier to complete, but it’s by no means a prerequisite — the main thing is to remember all the different clue types, which I hope will begin to jump out at you a little bit. As a refresher before you dive in, here’s what you can expect to find (along with links to my explainers on each type).
Anagrams. Anagram clues are asking you to rearrange the letters of some of the words in the clue to arrive at the solution. To spot these clues, first look for the “anagram indicator” (words or phrases like “drunk,” “disordered,” “awkward,” “surprising,” “in a mess,” “shaken up,” or anything that implies some kind of a shambles). Next, count the letters of the preceding or subsequent words to see if they add up to the word count of the solution. Then try to usefully rearrange them!
Hidden Clues. Hidden clues are words that are literally spelled out inside other words or phrases in the clue. They’re indicated by words like “inside,” “within,” “some,” “containing,” and so forth. Sometimes they’re also spelled backwards: An additional indicating word like “reversed” will clue you in.
Homophones. These clues are asking you to find a word that sounds the same as something indicated in the clue. The tipoff will be a phrase such as “sounds like,” “we hear,” or “on the radio.”
Cryptic Definitions. These clues are riddles or dad jokes (the only real difference between those two things is one of gravitas) that require a bit of lateral thinking to reverse-engineer the joke. They’re often indicated with a question mark, but not always.
Double Definitions. In some ways, these are just a variant of Cryptic Definitions. Their usual form is a string of two — or occasionally three or more — words or phrases that all mean the same thing. Find the common definition and you’ll have your answer.
Spoonerisms. The Reverend Spooner was (somewhat apocryphally) famous for saying things like “The Lord is a shoving leopard” when he meant to say “The Lord is a loving shepherd.” Spoonerism clues, which almost always invoke his name, are asking you to find a similar transposition that fits both the clue and the solution.
Bits and Pieces. These types of clue are the meat of any cryptic crossword puzzle. They involve using individual letters from words (often at the beginning or the end, as indicated by words like “top” or “tail,”); lopping off the start and finish of a word (as indicated by a word like “limitless”); taking the middle part out of a word (as suggested by something like “emptied”); putting words inside other words; deploying a common abbreviation; extracting the odd or even letters from a phrase; reversing words; putting words together to make new ones; and — most often — doing a few different things from this list all at once.
This puzzle has at least one of each of these types of clue. The puzzle image is below if you want to print it out like our forebears used to, but you can also fill it in with a click! (The solution is explained and annotated here.)
The next installment of this series explaining cryptic puzzles provides a number of useful resources for anyone who wants to dip their toe in the world of cryptics.
