This Puzzle Is Full of Hidden Clues
The dark secrets of "hidden" clues and homophones
N.B. This is the second in my series explaining the different types of cryptic clue. For the first, go here.
Today, I have made you a puzzle comprising two different types of cryptic clue: The “homophone clue” and the “hidden word” clue. The nice thing about homophone and hidden word clues is that — as with anagrams — once you’ve spotted them, they’re relatively easy to decipher, so the real trick is becoming familiar with their tells.
Let me take these one at a time: Homophone clues are clues that are asking you to find a word that sounds like, but is spelled differently from, a word that is indicated in the clue. It will usually announce itself with some word or phrase that means something like “spoken aloud (as opposed to written).” The most common versions of this are “on the radio,” “broadcast,” “aired,” “for an audience,” “so to speak,” or “by the sound of it,” as well as more straightforward ones like “out loud,” “reportedly,” or “we hear.” Occasionally, you’ll get an additional pronunciation direction, such as “to a cockney,” meaning that you should drop an “h” or pronounce an “o” like an “i,” as a cockney might. It’s nearly 5 p.m. here, so here are a few Happy Hour-friendly examples:
Disapproves of alcohol, we hear (4)
Genie brings hard liquor for an audience (5)
Complain about Bordeaux on the radio (5)
Each of these clues has a clear indicator that a homophone is wanted for the answer — respectively, “we hear,” “for an audience,” and “on the radio.” Clue #1 is asking you to find a word for “disapproves of” that means “alcohol” when we hear it, leading you to the only possible 4-letter answer, boos (a homophone for “booze”). Repunctuated slightly, this is:
Disapproves of: “Alcohol,” we hear [Booze]
Clue #2 works in much the same way, asking you to find a hard liquor that would sound like “Genie” to an audience. The answer is “Djinn” (a homophone for “gin”).
Genie brings: “hard liquor” for an audience [Djinn]
And the Bordeaux in clue #3 that sounds like “complain” when it’s on the radio is “whine” masquerading as “wine.” So:
Complain about: “Bordeaux” on the radio [Whine]
So much for homophones! They tend to be quite easy to spot, as there are only so many ways you can tell a solver that a word is supposed to be heard rather than seen. Hidden clues, on the other hand, can be very cleverly concealed, though once you’ve spotted one, the answer will be hiding in plain sight (unlike homophones, which require you to hit on the appropriate soundalike word before you can solve the clue). With hidden clues, the letters of the answer are sneakily concealed right inside the words in the clue itself. The tip-offs are words like “concealed,” “hidden,” “inside,” “embedded,” and so forth. But they can also be very easy to miss, as with the innocuous “in,” or the quite common indicators “some” (asking you to take “some” of the letters of the foregoing words), “from,” or “out of” (implying that the answer will come “from” or “out of” whatever follows). Even more deviously, some hidden answers are hidden backwards in the clue, with a word like “returned,” “back,” or “around” indicating that you need to look for your answer from right to left. Some examples:
British ale in orbit, terrifyingly (6)
Stop in tight enclosure for beer (4)
Drink round inside? Scared I can’t! (5)
Each of these clues contains the letters of their answer and an indicator for where you should look for them. In the case of Clue #1, “British ale” (“bitter”) is in “orbit, terrifyingly.” Repunctuated slightly, this is:
British ale in: “orbit-terrifyingly” [bitter]
Similarly, our “beer” in Clue #2 is “pint,” which you can find in the “enclosure” of “Stop in tight.” Repunctuated:
“Stop-in-tight” — enclosure for: beer [pint]
And Clue #3 is trying to be a little bit clever by putting its answer backwards (“round”) “inside” its container (“Scared I can’t”). The word “round” here is — somewhat awkwardly, I’ll admit — pretending to be the type of round that means “a round of drinks,” but it’s actually serving as the type of round that means a reversal (as in “the other way round”), so the correct reading of the clue is that you’ll find your “drink” (“cider”) “round,” or reversed, inside “Scared I can’t.” Repunctuated, that’s:
Drink, round, inside: “Scared-I-can’t” [cider]
What japes! Anyway, as I mentioned, it’s almost Happy Hour, so I’m going to leave you with this puzzle I’ve made. Every single clue in here is either a Homophone-type clue or a Hidden-Word-type clue. Look out for the keywords that will tip you off as to which type of clue it is, as well as any little extra whistles and bells that might be telling you the answer is reversed or pronounced differently from usual — and remember that punctuation, in cryptics, is a damn lie!
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! Once you’ve finished the puzzle, you can find a solution and explanation to each of the clues here!
For part three of this series explaining cryptic clues, go here.
