Alan Connor demystifies the devices used in cryptic crosswords for beginners and asks experienced solvers to share their favourite examples. This time: off with their heads
Hello and welcome back to Cryptic crosswords for beginners. We know by now that crossword setters seldom fail to notice if a word has certain characteristics – if it gives another word when spelled backwards, say, or if it contains some other word inside itself.
And so it is when it's possible to remove the first letter from a word (say, SWORDPLAY) and leave behind another, perfectly serviceable word. Yep, it's decapitation time.
In the examples that follow, there are two routes to the answer: a definition (indicated in bold) and some wordplay (some sample simple decapitations, displayed in italics).
How does it work...?
The Guardian's quiptic puzzle is aimed at cryptic beginners and/or those who don't want to spend half their afternoon staring at a single grid. Accordingly, it has one of the clearest, neatest examples of a decapitation, from the setter Pan:
20ac Birddecapitated dog (5)
So here, you take a word for dog, BEAGLE, and remove the first letter for a five-letter word denoting a bird, EAGLE.
Here's another, from Chifonie:
1d Snakes and their associates decapitated (6)
This time it's a six-letter word for "snakes" that you're looking for. So you think of some serpentine associates - LADDERS - and remove the L to give you ADDERS.
...and how do I spot it?
It will not surprise you to hear that the device is not always flagged with the word "decapitated" – that would be too simple, after all. The same trick might be indicated by any word that fits the apparent meaning of the clue – so in a floral context, Logodaedalus chooses "cut" ...
3d Cut festivalflower (5)
... to change EASTER to ASTER and Paul's clue set in a barber's ...
4d Hair needing highlights with a bit off the top (7)
... takes "a bit off the top" of STRESSES to leave you with the shorter TRESSES.
The letters facing the guillotine don't even need to be a familiar word, so you're likely to work backwards in Paul's clue ...
18d Brutal, lying decapitated (8)
... to end up with RUTHLESS and confirm that TRUTHLESS might indeed mean "lying". And in Brendan's mercantile image ...
23d Export from Chinaneeding to be cut, top-sliced (6)
... you slice the top off TOO LONG to leave the delicious answer OOLONG.
It's not always so simple
Other times, the setter might actually give you the word that needs decapitation, rather than defining it. So Araucaria is asking you for a two-stage operation ...
25ac Unluckyto lose leader, splashes out (7)
... that is, to take the first letter from "splashes", leaving PLASHES, then to jumble those letters (throwing them "out") for the answer HAPLESS.
And, as with almost all the examples in this series, there is a variant of this clue where you do just the opposite of what we've been discussing: finding a hidden answer that goes backwards rather than forwards, say. Here's one, where Paul asks us to "shake the bottom" ...
2d Going further shaking bottom, extremely cutesinger (7)
... of BEYOND and take the "extreme" (that is, the first and the last letters of CUTE for BEYONCE.
And as that example shows, decapitation might be combined in a single clue with some other devices from our toolkit, as in this clue from Jambazi ...
4d/2d Comedianchecks uponGreen, top radio star (5,6)
... where we ignore the apparent reference to Charlotte Green and write VETS upwards, then add ECO and a decapitated WOGAN for the answer STEVE COOGAN.
Over to you
Jambazi is known locally as Tramp, and under that pseudonym he wrote my favourite example of decapitation ...
3d 1930s documentary– decapitating searcher for Holy Grail with his armour? (5,4)
... in which MAIL is made to play nicely and naturally with KNIGHT for the deathless and poetic GPO Film Unit celebration, NIGHTMAIL. Utterly butterly. Newcomers, any questions? And seasoned solvers, any favourite examples to share?