The Times How to Crack Cryptic Crosswords. Tim Moorey

3, here), leading to trifle = toy.

      TOP TIP – SURFACE MEANING

      The ability to look beyond surface meaning is what newbies find the hardest part of cracking a cryptic clue. My advice can only be to keep trying.

      4. Exploit word-lengths

      Use friendly word-lengths such as 4,2,3,4 with the central two being perhaps something like in the or of the; and 4,4,1,4 nearly always embracing the letter A, from which something like once upon a time may be the guessable answer.

      5. Study every word

      Consider each word carefully, separately and together. Disregard phrases which go naturally together such as, say, silver wedding, and split them into their parts. It could be that the definition is silver on its own and wedding is part of the wordplay.

      In doing this, think of all the meanings of a word rather than the one that comes first into your head.

      For example, forget drink in its marine sense in the next clue and switch to alcohol. The indicator some makes it a hidden clue.

      HIDDEN CLUE: Some termed ocean the drink (5)

      Here is another misleading image in the second example below, which has nothing to do with music:

      HOMOPHONE CLUE: Cor Anglais’s third piece heard (3)

      Last, an instance, overleaf, of how separating the sentence into even its smallest parts is sometimes needed. This clue is a further demonstration of a letter selection indicator, empty for lane leaving the two letters le, and of a deceptive definition.

ADDITIVE CLUE: Perhaps a lorry needing empty lane (7)

      6. Write bars in grid

      Given word-lengths that indicate more than one complete word (e.g. 3-7, or 3,7), some solvers automatically write the word divisions as bar-lines into the grid and find that helps. The bars can be either vertical or horizontal depending on whether they are split words or hyphenated words. This little trick can be especially useful when the word to be found is in two parts and the first letter, say, of the second of the parts is given by an intersecting solution.

      7. Ignore punctuation

      In a nutshell, only exclamation marks and question marks at the end of a clue are meaningful; other punctuation should usually be ignored. For example, the anagram fodder can include letters or words with a comma or other punctuation in between, as in this tricky clue:

      ALL-IN-ONE ANAGRAM CLUE: Sort of roll, A–E etc? (9)

      Another example of this is seen in the clue that follows:

      HIDDEN CLUE: Rabbit produced from magic hat? Terrific (7)

      The question mark and capital T are both to be ignored. There is more on misleading punctuation in Chapter 9