ANAGRAM CLUE: The new stadium designed for a football club (4,3,6)
For is a linkword here in the sense that the wordplay is to be arranged for the answer. The essential point for indicators of anagram clues is that they show a rearrangement, a disturbance to the natural order or a change to be made. There are very many ways of doing this, some reasonably straightforward but others requiring a stretch of the imagination. For example, words and phrases related to drunkenness and madness have to be taken as involving disturbance so that stoned, pickled, tight, bananas, nuts, crackers and out to lunch could all be misleading ways to indicate an anagram. I am often asked for a comprehensive list but, because there are so many, unfortunately there is no such list. The table that follows on the next page is designed to expand on the various categories of rearrangement by giving a few examples of each overleaf:
TOP TIP - ANAGRAMS
Early crosswords did not indicate an anagram; solvers were required to guess that a mixture of letters was needed. This is universally regarded as unfair on the solver so that there will always nowadays be an indication of an anagram.
| INDICATORS FOR ANAGRAM CLUES | |||
| ARRANGEMENT | sorted | somehow | anyhow |
| REARRANGEMENT | revised | reassembled | resort |
| CHANGE | bursting | out of place | shift |
| DEVELOPMENT | improved | worked | treat |
| WRONGNESS | amiss | in error | messed up |
| STRANGENESS | odd | fantastic | eccentric |
| DRUNKENNESS | smashed | hammered | lit up |
| MADNESS | crazy | outraged | up the wall |
| MOVEMENT | mobile | runs | hit |
| DISTURBANCE OF ORDER | broken | muddled | upset |
| INVOLVEMENT | complicated | tangled | implicated |
2. The sandwich clue
A sandwich can be considered as bread outside some filling. Similarly in this clue type, the solution can be built from one part being either put outside another part or being put inside another part.
This is an example of outside (with an abbreviation to be made in wordplay):
SANDWICH CLUE: Simple mug holding one litre (6)
This is an example of inside with a clear instruction as to what’s to be done:
SANDWICH CLUE: Family member put us in the money (6)
Note that about has multiple uses in crosswords (see Chapter 10).
| SOME INDICATORS FOR SANDWICH CLUES | |||
| OUTSIDE | contains | clothing | boxing |
| houses | harbours | carries | |
| grasping | enclosing | including | |
| restrains | protecting | about | |
| INSIDE | breaks | cuts | boring |
| piercing | penetrating | fills | |
| enters | interrupting | amidst | |
|
held by
|