How to solve cryptic crosswords

27 May 2025

This tutorial was written for a little free crossword website that I built to share some crosswords I wrote in 2023. The original version can be found here.

Cryptic crosswords have a reputation for being mind-bendingly difficult. I suspect this is because most people first stumble upon the cryptic in a newspaper and simply try their luck. A typical clue might read like this;

Pink baggy is strange place to store money (9)

To the novice puzzler this clue reads like bizarre financial advice, but to the seasoned solver this clue barely poses a challenge. The answer is PIGGYBANK. Can you work out why?

Cracking a cryptic

Trying to solve a cryptic clue without first learning the rules is a bit like trying to play chess without knowing how the pieces move; you probably won’t get far. Let’s take another look at that clue;

Pink baggy is strange place to store money (9)

Here, as in all cryptic clues, the literal interpretation is designed to mislead and amuse you. To solve it you’ve got to see past the surface level meaning of the phrase.

To do so, it can be helpful to think of a cryptic clue as including a normal (“quick”) crossword clue, plus some additional help in disguise.

The quick clue in the above is simply “place to store money.” There are of course many valid answers that could fit this definition, including; wallet, purse, bank, coffer and treasury. A particularly devilish clue writer might even go for “pocket” or “mattress.”

In a quick crossword you would need to use the answer length “(9)” and any intersecting answers to rule out possibilities. If multiple plausible answers still fit in the available space it might be impossible to solve the clue until the crossword is more complete, or you might fill the word in only to have to scribble over it later when you realise your answer wasn’t right.

WORDPLAY

Cryptic clues offer another way to arrive at an answer; wordplay. You can think of wordplay as a hint in disguise, or as a teeny-tiny puzzle to solve for every clue.

In the clue we’ve been discussing, the wordplay is; “Pink baggy is strange.” This is an example of an anagram clue. In other words, if we mix up the letters of “PINK BAGGY” we can make the word “PIGGYBANK,” which matches our quick clue; “place to store money.”

You’ll notice that this example wordplay tells us “Pink baggy is strange” rather than “Pink baggy is an anagram.” Here “strange” is operating as an anagram indicator. Remember that the wordplay is disguised in the clue text so that the literal meaning appears to be something else. The clue writer could have written; “A place to store money that is also an anagram of pink baggy.” But that wouldn’t be as fun would it?

Part of the joy of solving cryptic crosswords is learning to dismantle the absurd pretext of the clue and identify what the setter is trying to tell you. Remember that despite the misdirection, the setter really wants you to solve the clue, they just want to tickle your brain while you do it.

As you develop your solving skills, you’ll get better at reading cryptic clues and identifying their parts.

Takeaway: Every cryptic clue includes a quick clue and some wordplay

Types of wordplay

Cryptic wordplay can come in many forms, but it generally falls into a few key clue types. Wordplay can involve things like anagrams, homophones, selections, exchanges, double definitions and plain old puns. I’ll explain all of these below.

Anagrams

Anagrams, are one of the most common clue types you’ll come across in a cryptic crossword. They involve mixing up some part of the clue text (sometimes called the “fodder”) to produce a word or phrase that matches the quick clue. Anagram clues will always include an anagram indicator to tell the solver that the letters need to be mixed up.

Here are some examples of anagram clues with the fodder, the indicator and the quick clue highlighted in different colours.

You’ll notice that each clue uses a different indicator that disguises well amongst the rest of the clue text. There is no official list of allowed anagram indicators, but they generally evoke movement, newness, destruction or change. Some anagram indicators can be well disguised in a clue; like “resort” (think sort again) or “doctor” (think document forgery). In general, if you think parts of a clue might be an anagram it’s worth a try.

Note; In the above clues you might notice that while the quick clue can take up one or more words in the clue text, it always appears at the beginning or the end of the clue. This is a general rule that applies to all cryptic clues, not just anagrams.

Selections

Another kind of wordplay common to cryptic clues is “selection.” In these kinds of clues, the answer already appears in the right order in the clue text, but it is disguised amongst other letters. Selections clues must indicate how the answer letters ought to be selected.

The simplest form of this is “words within words”. Like anagrams, these clues always come with a quick clue, an indicator and some fodder.

With each of these you’ll find that the fodder contains each letter of the answer one after another. Indicators for words within words can vary almost as much as anagram indicators; look for words that imply insertion, containment, concealment or possession.

A non-exhaustive list of hidden word indicators can be found on cryptipedia.

Other kinds of letter selections are also common to cryptic wordplay.

For example selecting all the first or last letters of words in the fodder;

Indicators for initials include; “starts”, “capitals”, “heads”, “leaders”, “initially”, “tops” etc.

Indicators for final letters include; “at last”, “finals”, “tails”, “ultimately”, “bottoms” etc.

Letter selections can also include alternating letters, taking every second or third letter in a sequence.

Indicators might tell you to take only the odd letters e.g. 1st, 3rd, 5th, or every even letter i.e. 2nd, 4th, 6th. Or they might imply any regular pattern; say every third letter.

Alternate letter selection indicators include words like; “regularly”, “evenly”, “at odds”, “alternating” etc.

Exchanges / charades

Exchanges (also called charades), form another very common kind of wordplay you’ll meet while solving cryptic crosswords.

Charades clues require solvers to exchange individual parts of clue for alternatives that can stand in their place; these parts are then joined together to produce the answer. Here are some examples;

A (the singular article) can stand for “one” the number.
MP (short for Member of Parliament) can stand for “politician”.
A+MP = speaker (e.g. “guitar amp”)

Blank is synonymous with “colourless.”
ET stands for extraterrestrial which can mean “alien.”
BLANK+ET = quilt

By can mean “next to” (as in “by the seaside.”)
Pro is short for professional (as in “she’s a pro-skateboarder.”)
Duct is synonymous with channel (as in tear duct or aqueduct).
BY+PRO+DUCT = additional result.

DE = of French i.e. a French word meaning “of” (e.g. “Tour de France”)

FEATS = achievements

DE+FEATS = losses

Charades as you can see from these examples make use of all sorts of tricks to form parts of words. Anything that you could exchange in a normal quick crossword is fair game of course, but additionally cryptic clues can use a range of common tricks to clue for word parts. Examples of these include;

• Roman numerals (e.g. five = V, 99 = IC)
• Chemical symbols (e.g. gold = AU, potassium = K)
• Official country codes (e.g. Austria = AT, Germany = DE)
• Nato phonetic alphabet (e.g. Foxtrot = F)
• Sporting terms (e.g. love = O in tennis)
• Visually similar characters (e.g. ten = IO, nothing = O)
• One-word selections (e.g. midnight = G).
• Widely known foreign language words (e.g. the German = DAS, Chinese tea = CHA). Note that these have to be widely known; a setter would expect your average English speaker to know the French word for “the” = LA/LE/LES, they wouldn’t expect them to know the French word for horseshoe.
• Conventional abbreviations that would appear in a dictionary, e.g. Circa = C, Extra large = XL, Firm = CO, Doctor = MD

For a non-exhaustive list of common crossword abbreviations see this wikipedia page.

NOTE: Charades clues are one of the few clue types (along with double definitions and puns) that generally don’t include an indicator word. I like to think this is because exchanging words for what else they can stand for is the basic operation of all crossword solving.

Homophones (sounds-like)

Homophones, if you remember from school, are words that have a different meaning but the same sound. Cryptic clues that use this kind of wordplay are sometimes referred to as sounds-like clues. In the examples below interpreting the sounds of words in the clue text (or their synonyms) will lead you to the right answer;

Homophone clues will always include an indicator which implies speaking or hearing; examples include “I hear”, “spoken”, “announced” or “received” (as in “Received Pronunciation”).

Because homophones are often very apparent once read, sounds-like clues are sometimes combined with charades wordplay. In other words, before interpreting the sound, a solver must exchange some elements of the clue text. Whether this is done usually depends on how difficult the setter thinks the clue will be to solve. For example, a setter might not expect international solvers to be familiar with Australian cattle dog breeds, so “healer I hear” -> “heeler” might be hard enough. By contrast “Attack a sail reportedly” is probably too easy to be enjoyable to solve, so a bit more misdirection is called for.

Double definitions

Double definitions are clues that have two parts, both of which can operate as a “quick” clue. The wordplay in double definitions involves finding two distinct words or phrases that can signal the answer independently, but when placed side by side appear to form a phrase.

While double definition clues can have any number of words, very short clues are usually double definitions, so look out for them.

Puns

Puns (also called “cryptic definitions”) are not particularly common in cryptic crosswords, but they do crop up. Pun clues bend the rules of cryptics by mixing wordplay with definition. Like a quick clue, the entire clue is the definition. Unlike quick clues, the meaning is disguised behind a layer of misdirection.

Take the following clue for example;

Flower of New Orleans? (3, 11)

On the surface this clue seems to require some relatively niche knowledge of Louisiana botany. In fact, it requires the common knowledge of famous US rivers, and the ability to think outside the box. A flower here is signalling “something that flows”, say “the Mississippi.”

Going further

With all of the above, you are now armed with everything you need to solve 99% of cryptic crossword clues. Everything except practice that is…

If you want to read futher I can highly recommend David Astle’s book Rewording the Brain which goes into much greater detail about the rules and methods for solving cryptics. But, I’d humbly recommend that you simply try to apply what you’ve learned by solving some cryptics yourself. The point of any game, after all, is to play. And the best way to get better at anything is to practice.

As mentioned at the top, I’ve built a little website to publish some crosswords I wrote in 2023. The site is live at https://cruxcrosswords.com and publishes a new cryptic every Sunday (until I run out). The website has no ads or analytics and I have no plans to monetise it; it’s a gift! Check it out if cryptic crosswords are your thing.