![]() One more, and then I am going to leave the rest of the fun to you. I got COSTUMER, but was puzzled (sorry) about what to do with the extra “I.” It turns out that COSTUMIER is a word, albeit not a well-known one. “Tom Cruise arranged for theater job (9)” is asking for a “theater job” (the definition) that is really the letters of Tom Cruise’s name anagrammed. I faltered a bit at 5D, where the word “arranged” in the clue signaled another anagram, because I had not seen the word spelled that way before. “Quakes” anagrams to SQUEAK, the high-pitched sound. Īnd here is a clue that calls for an anagram using the word “Tumultuous”: “Tumultuous quakes making a high-pitched sound (6).” “Tumultuous signals that the letters in the next word, “quakes,” need to be shaken up, with “high-pitched sound” being the definition. MA + MET = MAMET.Īnother one I liked (read that as “I could figure it out myself”) was 15D’s “Scare off man who is refined and cleaner (9).” For that one, we parse the clue as + and the definition is. I guessed correctly that the clue meant that we should connect the word MA to a word for “introduced,” and the answer turned out to be MAMET, for the playwright David MAMET. It was very exciting to get one right off the bat at 1A: “Playwright mom was introduced to (5),” calling for a five-letter word. And there are many ways for the constructor to obscure the answer, but fortunately, there are online resources where you can learn all about them. Then, all you need to do is figure out what the heck the constructor is talking about in the wordplay. The definition will always be at either the beginning or the end of the clue, never in the middle. If you are just starting, the most basic rule to remember is that there are really only two parts to a cryptic clue: the definition of the answer and the wordplay. ![]() I had a lot of those in Daniel Raymon’s terrific puzzle. I still struggle over many of the clues, but that is part of the fun for me: the struggle where you can feel your brain holding back the needed information like a dam, then the satisfying burst as the information comes rushing forward so you can have your “Aha!” moment. That doesn’t stop me from trying, though, mainly because once I understood how to decipher the clues, I discovered how much fun they were. ![]() It’s also understandable that I am better at cryptic crosswords that are written by American constructors than the ones by British “setters,” because I am less likely to be familiar with elements of British pop culture. CRYPTIC CROSSWORD - It’s an odd feeling to love something so much and to be only passingly good at it, but that’s my situation when it comes to cryptic crosswords.
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