by David Astle
Fruit gear on bananas (6)
That’s the game as setter or solver – to hide or find the signpost. If we stay in the pantry, the options are ample. If bananas doesn’t work, what about nuts or fruitcake? (You look for terms that serve two masters – the clue’s surface sense and the wordplay recipe.)
Cocktail is another option. Or crackers. Now we’re cooking. Or maybe even cook can save the day – a verb meaning to prepare, or corrupt, as in cooking the books. To the same list you can add stew or stir or fry or most chef actions. (Think dice, beat, whip.) Solvers must be alert to that kind of camouflage. Take this gem, crafted by Simon Martin, alias Enigma of the Independent:
Response to Warne’s spin (6)
A breeze once you know how the elements click, but what a fiendish means of hiding the answer, ANSWER. Much like a leg spinner, compilers rely on subtle variations and artful deception, and this clue displays both: a low-key signpost beside low-key fodder, the whole combining to create a perfect delivery.
For RUMBA, I’d dabbled with other signposts. If BURMA, we agree, is the craftiest anagram (better than UM, BRA, or the dubious MR AUB), then how best to couch the clue? What’s the least visible signpost? Perhaps a word like rock could fit – a music genre as well as a word meaning sway. Opening the way for:
Burma rock dance (5)
Another idea is club, a word that can sidle up to dance in its noun guise, as well as carrying its own nasty impact when treated as a verb. Giving rise to:
Burma Club dance (5)
Notice the capital C, a thicker smokescreen for the solver to see through, and not unfair in the grander etiquette of crosswords. Of course a neater RUMBA clue would read:
Burma dance club (5)
But that’s a no-no. Can you see why? Because dance, your definition, is perched between the signpost and what needs clubbing. Signpost and fodder must always be side by side.
By contrast, Dance in Burma Club can pass muster as an anagram clue, but why use four words when three do just as well? The answer hinges on surface sense, or how smoothly the clue reads on the page, the same brand of elegance Shane Warne’s clue achieves. At the drawing board I tested other maybes:
Improper Burma dance
Dance in Burma resort
Steps around Burma
Different house styles (we’re talking papers now, not music) have a bias towards different signposts. One editor may be happy with ‘slip’ as an indicator to mix, while another might deem slip too sloppy. So what about ‘wrong’? Is that all right? Or ‘tight’ – as in drunk? Too old-fashioned? Surely ‘fashioned’ is legit, and so on. That’s how the arguments ricochet. As for ricochet – that’s usable in my book. But now, let’s move on from Burma and meet our three amigos occupying 5-Down.
RUSS, NED, HECTOR – Trojan horses and binary thinking
PETER and PAUL lie in PERPETUAL. Just as a tailored MACKINTOSH holds NICK and THOMAS. Or PAEDIATRICIAN nurses twin girls, ENID and PATRICIA. This name-game leads us back to RUSS and NED.
Wait, what happened to Hector? Let me tell you a quick story.
Troy is famous for many reasons, from Achilles’ heel to Brad Pitt’s six-pack. But the story’s clearest image is the wooden horse, the perfect metaphor for a cryptic clue. Just because the creature stands like a horse, and looks like a horse, and casts a horse-like shadow, this doesn’t mean it neighs.
Inside the belly, of course, was where the strife began. For the Trojans at least. The gift was a ruse, as Achilles and his mates hopped out of the belly and marauded the city. Yet Hector bravely resisted the Greeks, endowing his name to the English language as a word meaning to bluster, bully or badger. Some legacy, you may think, but a signpost ready-made for cryptic clues.
Some names – of both boys and girls – can deputise well as signposts. Harry is a regular starter, the name meaning to pester or ravage. Pat is possible, while Dotty is a tad dated. Jimmy is a candidate, thinking crowbars. Dicky? Eddy?
Let’s look at the clue one more time: Expose Russ, Ned, Hector (7)
If you haven’t solved the clue already, you should be giving roles to each word and name. Hector is a classic signpost in both senses, that capital H akin to the big-C Club back in Burma, a curveball to catch you off guard. Giving weight to the signpost theory is the nearby fodder of RUSSNED. That’s right, no longer two boys but a clump of seven letters, the tally matching the answer you’re after.
Here’s a tip: ignore the clue’s imagery. No matter how smooth the surface sense, look for the deeper strategy. The key to cracking cryptic crosswords is to think on two levels, to look past what the words evoke and decide what roles they play.
So get hectoring. Bully RUSS and NED and see if you can make a seven-letter word. A word meaning what? Where’s the definition? Simple – what word is left?
Expose is a word with several meanings. One relates to risk, where the wooden horse exposed the vulnerability of Troy. Then there’s photography, to ‘render to the light’. Or a scandal – to wheel a dirty secret into view. Each is a variation of the word’s prime meaning, that is to lie bare, to peel away, just as you expose this clue.
Suddenly the wordplay is naked. As the chapter creeps to a close, can you hector RUSSNED into a word for strip? Try synonyms first – DISROBE? UNCOVER? If no joy there, try swirling the cluster. Juggle the boys in the margin. Put them in alphabetical order: DENRSSU. Throw them backwards: DENSSUR. Suddenly NED and RUSS become UNDRESS and the maiden answer is plain for all to see.
RECIPE PRECIS: ANAGRAMS
Anagram wordplay relies on two key elements, the signpost and the fodder. The signpost is any word suggesting renewal, change or error, while the fodder is the adjacent swag of letters in need of swirling. On seeing a possible signpost, check for possible fodder, which must lie adjacent. Words like strange, new, off or out are often used, but the signpost candidates below will help you to see the range of possibilities.
adapt, bizarre, cook, dance, errant, fashion, ground, hack, in a mess, jar, kinky, lousy, modified, novel, odd, perhaps, queasy, resort, sort, terrible, upset, violent, wind, zany
QUIZLING 1.1
Can you double a letter in ASTOUNDING and mix the new eleven to make a word meaning astounding?
QUIZLING 1.2
What three countries, all five letters long, can be separately rearranged into three words that rhyme with each other?
QUIZLING 1.3
If two words for trick – CON and DUPE – lie in POUNCED, can you pounce on the kindred pairs lurking in DUSTMAN, MARTINET and TREATISES? Every letter is used once only.
CHAPTER 2
Ignorance spoilt nice scene (9)
One night, with nothing on TV, my brother and I staged a seance. The deal was simple. We pinched a wine glass from the special cupboard and laid out the Scrabble tiles, A to Z, around the edges of the rumpus-room table. As the elder, aged ten, I played high priest. Looking to the ceiling I asked any spirits in the room to hop inside the glass. We waited a while, allowing the spirits to get comfy, and then gingerly turned the glass over, put our fingertips on the base, and started asking questions about our future. What would we be? Who will we marry? Nothing happened. The glass sat inert. We sat inert, and then we gave up. Maybe tried Cluedo instead. But somehow the stunt opened my eyes to the idea that maybe, just maybe, letters held the answers to the great unknown. Besides, why would Rupert, my dead uncle, have any inkling of tomorrow? How would my late Aunt Agnes single out my bride from the masses? Stuff ghosts. Maybe anagrams held the key.
As kooky as the notion sounded, it wasn’t original. ONE WORD has always promised a NEW DOOR in the minds of men. History reveals a great procession of loons prepared to invest heavily in jumbled letters and what they murmur.
Alexander the Great, no less, was a sucker for this type of prophecy. One night, back in 332 BC, while squeezing the lifeblood out of Tyre, the general dreamt of a satyr, one of those half-goat characters who rate poorly as portents go. Troubled, the Great One summ
oned his soothsayers, asking them to interpret this strange vision. The men responded by writing the word ‘satyr’ in the sand. They mixed things around until they found a version to lull their boss. In Greek, apparently, when SATYR is allowed to stray, you end up with ‘Tyre is thine’. So Alexander pounced, and the rest of course is ancient history.
In similar fashion, the entourage of Louis XIII was said to have included a Royal Anagrammist named Thomas Billon, a courtier vested with finding omens in shuffled letters. Across the Channel, the Brits were likewise hooked. When Mary Queen of Scots had her head removed in 1587, a nameless pundit turned the monarch’s full Latin title – Maria Steuarda Scotorum Regina – into her destiny: Trusa vi regnis morte amara cado. (‘Thrust by force from my kingdom I fall by a foul death.’)
The king to replace Mary was James I, her son, whose name was treated more gently by the Mix Masters of the day. JAMES STUART, as the pundits were quick to report, was truly A JUST MASTER.
Such letter-fixation was spoofed by Jonathan Swift. The Irish writer could spot human folly from a hundred paces. In Gulliver’s Travels, Swift had his hero call on Tribnia, a kingdom of nincompoops besotted by letter-fiddling. Look twice at TRIBNIA and you’ll soon realise the actual kingdom Swift was ridiculing.
With a madness to match, so-called scholars sift the works of Nostradamus. The mystic wrote during the plague years of the 1550s, churning out more than 1000 quatrains. Centuries on, devotees examine the words for deeper meaning, resorting to all kinds of manipulation. PAU, NAY and OLORON, for instance, are three towns mentioned in Quatrain VIII-1, which fans have wangled to spell NAPAULON ROY, alias Napoleon the King. An even longer bow is drawn in the case of Quatrain IX-44. This verse describes a menace named RAYPOZ who ‘will exterminate all opposition’. Surely this is Hitler, claim the scholars. The felling of Europe, the seizure of Poland, the death camps … With only one problem: how to change RAYPOZ into HITLER? Easy. You switch the P with an N, then mix the new six and you get NAZROY, King of the Nazis.
This kind of hokum inspired Francis Heaney, one of America’s finest anagrammists, to lampoon such verse-tweaking. Early in 2009, the crossword-maker was asked by the History Channel to see if his mixing skills could unmask the mystery figure of Mabus, an agent of wide destruction who’s found in Quatrain II-62. Here’s the verse in its English translation:
Mabus then will soon die, there will come
Of people and beasts a horrible rout:
Then suddenly one vengeance,
Hundred, hand, thirst, hunger when the comet will run.
Nostradamus junkies had already claimed this mysterious MABUS to be SADDAM, once you restyle the B into two Ds, and swap a vowel for good measure, but Heaney went one better, using the entire quatrain to create his version of the truth:
When Obama one-ups old McCain in two-thousand-eight run,
We’ll see well-heeled Enron-lovers defend thee,
Antichrist, repellent netherworld deity –
Bush? No … Rush Limbaugh!
Whatever our future holds, the weight of the unknown is clearly too great for twenty-six letters to carry. DIVINATION, we should remember, is a blend of DO IT IN VAIN, just as the opaque prophet MICHEL DE NOSTREDAME (the real name of Nostradamus) can be rearranged into RANDOM ITEMS LEECHED. Our cue to focus on the next anagram clue, 16-Across in the Master Puzzle.
SCRAMBLED SCIENCE – mixing methods and false anagrams
The actor ROBERT REDFORD hides RED BORDER FORT in his name. Given the same treatment, UNIVERSAL PICTURES converts into A TURNIP CURSES ELVIS. Both anagrams feature in the credits of the movie Sneakers, a 1992 tech-thriller with a strong emphasis on decrypting. As for why the studio opted for such lame anagrams, I’m at a loss to explain. Mind you, ROBERT REDFORD is a tough nut to crack, with those four Rs to handle. Then again, UNIVERSAL PICTURES holds RECLUSIVE PURITANS, which capably describes the geeky gang of code-busters that includes Mr Redford.
The more you indulge in letter-switching, the more you come to appreciate the difference between sleek and clunky. Francis Heaney’s mock prophecy, for example, is pure grace, while finding SADDAM in MABUS is not just oafish, but wrong.
Imagine letters as Lego blocks, and therefore a word as being shapes created by those blocks. Sleek anagrams will change the original shapes into new and elegant forms. The best suggest their source by owning a related shape or style, all the more gracious once you consider that the two objects share the same pieces. Consider THE EYES – THEY SEE, or, ENDEARMENT being TENDER NAME. But when you force the formula, bending a word into ludicrous shapes, the anagram art is diminished. MR AUB, say, is a good example of a poor anagram.
The secret to mixing is being awake to the potential of the letters at your fingertips. And just like playing Lego, you’re always wise to scatter the blocks in order to see what new shapes lurk in the rubble.
Martin Bishop, the character played by Redford in Sneakers, relies on a Scrabble box to crack anagrams. In the film he picks out the relevant tiles and sprawls them on the table.
John Graham, known to most British solvers as Araucaria, relies on the same method, strewing the key letters at his elbow to see what new structure he can make.
Others swear by the benefits of a circle. This tribe will arrange the letters into a wheel and start looking for telltale clusters such as IVE or NCE, hoping the rest will jump out.
Just as many puzzle fans depend on the dash method, mapping the mystery word in a series of blanks and confirmed letters. Once that sequence is sketched, the solver will place her remaining letters into a clump above the dashes, and ponder.
‘Whatever works’ is the motto. Notably every technique (the pieces, the wheel, the clump, the dashes) involves a strewing of the source-phrase, just as kids rake Lego blocks to see what they have in free-form.
But to get back to crosswords, note that the challenge lies at two levels. First you need to spot the fodder (the letters to mix) and, second, have a rough idea of what the outcome will mean. Not so simple with the current clue we’re facing:
Ignorance spoilt nice scene (9)
After dealing with signposts, you should be wary of the role that spoilt is playing here. The word looks like a possible signal to jumble, but jumble what? That’s the question, since the letter clusters on either side tally up to nine, the same count as your answer.
Sometimes this dilemma – wondering which end is your fodder – suggests a false anagram. You’re not sure which clump is yours to stir and which part’s the definition.
Perhaps the time is right to make a confession. As compilers, we can take pleasure in planting false anagrams, luring solvers to mix the wrong bunch of letters. For example, a false anagram of MONASTERY could be HOLY PLACE, which could well tempt a solver into treating the phrase as fodder rather than the answer’s definition.
The other step in the false-anagram strategy, from a setter’s point of view, is ensuring the signpost stands between the other two elements, so causing confusion about which way to look. I fell for this trick myself a few years back, working in a Sydney pub. The clue came from the Sydney Morning Herald and seemed simple at first glance:
Serene hold crumpled Tyrol pants (10)
Piece of cake, I thought. You mix TYROLPANTS to render a word meaning serene hold. With that conviction I spent a lunch break barking up the wrong tree, musing the likes of PLATYSTORN and TROYPLANTS and wondering why nothing clicked.
Back behind the bar, the light bulb flickered. What does serene hold mean anyway? Damn it. All the while I’d been crumpling the wrong ten letters. Tyrol pants was the definition, not the fodder. Instead of treating serene hold as a legit phrase, I should have seen SERENEHOLD as a cluster. On the spot I made a pair of LEDERHOSEN before you could say ‘Yodel-lay-hee-hoo’.
Careful then of the current clue – Ignorance spoilt nice scene. You have to decide whether the answer is a synonym of ignorance (meaning we mix NICESCENE), or vice versa, where nice scene hides in twisted IGNORANCE.
/>
Ask yourself: which is more likely? Are we seeking ignorance or a nice scene? Which makes more sense as a definition? The odds favour ignorance, a word in any thesaurus. Compare that to nice scene, which may hint at PANORAMA or ARCADIA or even RIVIERA (if you look at ‘nice’ twice), but which cluster is the surer bet?
Time to fetch the Scrabble tiles. Or make a wheel. Map the dashes. Whichever method alerts your brain. NICESCENE. Start looking for patterns. Importantly, ignorance, your definition, is a noun, ending in NCE, the same trio lying in the fodder. Is SENICENCE a word? CENISENCE?
Of course, you can always solve this clue from the other direction. Do you know a nine-letter word for ignorance? There’s STUPIDITY, I suppose. And DISREGARD. Yet neither sits in NICESCENE, so you swirl on.
That’s when SCIENCE emerges. You may recall your early lab classes, the teacher saying that science stems from the Latin for knowledge, and knowledge of course is the flipside of ignorance. Remove SCIENCE from NICESCENE and you have EN left over. ENSCIENCE? NESCIENCE?
I’m thinking that we’ve just solved our second clue. The beauty of cryptics is that almost every clue gives you the chance to confirm your answer. NESCIENCE means not-knowledge in its barest form, a little like those two numbskull boys and their wine glass. But seriously, put up your hand if you knew the word nescience.
NESCIENCE IS BLISS – the Piñata Principle and rare words
Without betraying too much, I can tell you that NESCIENCE is the most obscure answer in the Master Puzzle. Other entries will be far more familiar, with the possible exception of one Italian.
As a puzzle-maker you’re expected to play at either end of the pool, wading in the shallows of pop culture and plunging into the erudite. Neither end is ‘better’ than the other, yet both are important. For me the perfect puzzle swoops between highbrow and lowbrow, Dvořák and Tupac, with the occasional NESCIENCE to tease the vocab.