Guide to cryptic crosswords

August 27, 2025

To the uninitiated, the cryptic crossword is downright indecipherable. To the initiated, well, it’s often just as confusing. But therein lies the fun of the cryptic: every clue is its own little mini-puzzle.

Here’s an example, plucked from today’s Minute Cryptic (click in to see the answer):

Golf lesson's beginning in month six for Tiger Woods? (6) JUNGLE

Confused? Good.

On the surface, a cryptic clue is a humorous phrase with little to no relation to its answer. Hiding within is a meta-textual puzzle composed of each word of the clue, a recipe that points the solver to the solution. This recipe often consists of the following ingredients:

  • Definition, the straightforward meaning of the solution

  • Fodder, the letters you will play around with to reach the solution

  • Wordplay indicator(s), hinting at what to do with the Fodder to reach the Definition

  • Length indicator, a parenthetical showing how many letters and words are in the solution

Not every cryptic clue will contain every one of these elements, but the majority of clues incorporate at least a few. Let’s look at another example:

Tide turns to change (4) EDIT

A surface reading of the clue suggests a shoreline changing tides. It should come as no surprise that water has nothing to do with the actual 4-lettered solution.

Breaking the clue into its components provides:

  • Definition: change

  • Fodder: tide

  • Wordplay indicator: turns

  • Length: a single, 4-letter word

Recognizing a clue’s recipe takes time and practice. In fact, the vast majority of time spent solving a cryptic is trying to figure out the correct recipe! Often a tough clue will hint at several possible devices, of which only one is the proper answer.

The definition part of a clue often appears at the beginning or the end, as is the case with the above. This means “tide” or “change” are the most likely suspects.

From there, we look through the remaining elements for some sign of wordplay. “To” isn’t a good guess, it’s literal and meta meanings are identical: “A makes B”. “Turn”, on the other hand, can be taken a few different ways. It can mean “change”, as is consistent with the surface-reading of the clue (indicating changing tides). Or, taken literally, “turn” can mean “change direction”. In a one-dimensional sense, “change direction” is the same thing as “reverse”.

With the wordplay indicator discovered, we know we’re going to reverse either “tide” or “change” to end up at the definition of “tide” or “change”. Which one do we reverse, and which one is our definition? Well, “reverse” doesn’t suggest addition or substraction of letters, and our answer is exactly 4. Therefore, we reverse “tide” to find “edit”, a word that means “change”.

Turns is just one of hundreds of wordplay indicators that you’ll find out in the wild. It belongs to a category of “reversals”, indicators that require reversing the Fodder to reach the solution. A few other indicators belonging to the same category are “reversed”, “goes back”, or “in retrospect”.

Categories of wordplay

The different kinds of wordplay that you might see in a cryptic crossword can often be grouped into broader categories. You’ve already seen Reversals, wordplay that reverses the letters of a word. Here are some other examples of cryptic wordplay techniques. Click into the toggle to see the answer and explanatory solution (AKA the parse).

Letter manipulation

These techniques manipulate the letters of a particular word.

Anagrams: rearrange letters to form a new word. Indicators: destroyed, messed up, rearranged.

Wine with no tip? Crazy (5) PINOT. 'no tip' made crazy (anagram).

Deletions: remove one or more letters from a word. Indicators: removed, defaced, dropped off.

Trim tabs for six pack (3) ABS. Remove the first letter of (trim) 'tabs'.

Hidden words: find a word hidden within one or several other words. Indicators: hides, contains.

World's tallest mountain home hidden in fine palace (5) NEPAL. 'Hidden in fiNE PALace.'

Soundalikes: swap one word for another that sounds similar (e.g. homophone). Indicators: broadcasted, said, announced.

Disregard mumbled greeting (5) WAIVE. A kind of greeting might be a 'wave', which when uttered aloud (mumbled, perhaps) sounds identical to 'waive'.

Word manipulation

These techniques compose words together to form new meanings.

Charades: substitute one word for another (no indicator required).

Pass standard edition, no longer active (5) LAPSE. Pass = 'lap', standard edition = 'se', in that order.

Containments: place one word inside of another. Indicators: accepts, infiltrates, sandwiches (example from Minute Cryptic).

Golf lesson's beginning in month six for Tiger Woods? (6) JUNGLE. Take the beginning of 'Golf lesson's', GL, and place them 'in' the sixth month, JUNE.

Double definitions: two definitions for the same word (no indicator required).

Medicine sheds fluff (5) PILLS. A sweater sheds fluff when it pills, a patient might take pills as form of medicine.

Combinations of both

As you’ve seen in a couple of the examples, nothing limits a cryptic crossword clue to a single wordplay device. Most clues will combine several wordplay techniques in consistent ways to make more interesting words and combinations.

Seasons every other shallot with top spice (5) SALTS. 'Every other shallot' meaning take every other letter of ShAlLoT (SALT) 'with top spice' meaning combine with the first letter of 'Spice' (S).

And another:

Prepare ambush: half partners, half betrayal, full reversal (3,1,4) LAY A TRAP. Half of partners ('part') half of betrayal ('ayal'), reversed.

Learning to learn

It can be difficult to recognize wordplay techniques when you’re first getting started with cryptics. Here are a few tips and resources to help ease the path:

  • Don’t be afraid to reveal and answer and reverse-engineer the wordplay. That’s a great way to learn your way around the different wordplay devices!

  • Sites like fifteensquared.net collect the answers (parses) for popular British cryptic crosswords. It’s a great resource to learn how professional setters use wordplay techniques to build clues.

  • The Guardian offers a puzzle called the Quick Cryptic (not to be confused with the “Quiptic”, which is harder) which is a great introductory puzzle. Just know that the Guardian puzzles, even the beginner-friendly ones, pack in quite a few British idioms and common pieces of knowledge that make solving a little tricky for the average American.

  • Definitely bookmark Minute Cryptic.

Wrapping up

Remember these guidelines when approaching a cryptic clue:

  1. Try to locate the definition. It’s normally at the start or end of the clue, and shouldn’t be acted upon by any wordplay indicators.
  2. Locate the wordplay indicators. Look for suspicious juxtapositions of key words, or any kind of word that may carry a double-meaning.
  3. Apply the wordplay indicators to fodder, words that are neither the definition nor wordplay indicators themselves.
  4. Repeat 1-3 until the solution is reached.

The puzzles here at them’s crossing words are meant to be more approachable than the average cryptic crossword. I intentionally avoid any British idioms/phrases, awkward substitutions and abbreviations, and other esoteric cryptic traditions that I think make for unsatisfying puzzles.