First | Prev || Next | Last
¿Question #224607?
RealGuest: What is a cryptic crossword?

Phil%20Fleischmann: Check out my Cryptic Games contest GeekLists.
rayzg: Cryptic crossword puzzles are crosswords that the Brits devised because they thought American-style crosswords (with straighforward clues) were too infantile for their newspapers. The Brits still wanted their crosswords as they helped newspapers make money, so they ended up with cryptics. In reality, they are puzzles where I have to cheat about 50% of the time (it was 75%-90% before!)
Woelf: It's the crossword you find etched on ancient tombs buried deep unground. If you solve them correctly, untold power can be yours. If you fail, it releases whatever evil demon or spirit was trapped inside.
TomTi89: It's a type of crossword where I look at it, get the easiest two or three clues, and then fail to get the rest. Adding to Matt's answer, a typical clue might be "H I J K L M N O". This can be read as "h to o", which sounds like "h2o", so the answer is "water". Another one would be "cold display unit for seafood". This is a more typical one, and a lot of questions give both a standard crossword clue and some form of wordplay. Here, "cold" is the typical clue, and "display unit for seafood" is the wordplay, giving "stand of fish". "Standoffish" is one way of saying someone is cold, and so it is the answer to both parts of the question. I took both of those examples from a book I have on cryptic crosswords. I am serious about only getting a few answers each time. It's about pattern recognition, seeing which part is the definition and which is the wordplay. With enough practice you start to see it more easily, though of course you also need the required knowledge, just as with a "regular" crossword.
pricero1: It's a device for finding candidates for GCHQ.
mattomaw: I am not qualified to answer in a concise, coherent way, but basically it is type of crossword where the clue is in the form of a kind of abstract word puzzle. There will be hidden guides and clues within the clue that points toward an answer through things like hidden anagrams, synonyms and various other wordy things. If you don't understand the general form and concepts of cryptic crosswords, then the clue can seem like meaningless nonsense, but with even a rudimentary idea of how they work, they are highly enjoyable for wordsmiths and language lovers. I do not really understand them. I am too much of a pleb.