Alan Connor looks at the newest kid on the cryptic block, an 'intermediate' puzzle from the Times
How do you get a non-solver into cryptic crosswords?
One way is to tackle head-on the trepidation felt by many: the sense that cryptic clues are based on a way of thinking and a set of conventions so arcane that six years at Bletchley would leave you none the wiser. Hence how-to guides such as our own Cryptic Crosswords for Beginners and Guardian crossword editor Hugh Stephenson's book Secrets of the Setters.
Another is to provide puzzles designed to be less arduous. At this site, you have Sunday's mellow Everyman and the weekly Quiptic, "for beginners and those in a hurry". Now those have been joined by the Times Quick Cryptic.
The new puzzle is introduced by the paper's new crossword editor Richard Rogan– who, for the avoidance of doubt ...
does not intend to increase the difficulty of the puzzles through the week, as happens with Su Doku
... and comes in a more compact 13-by-13 formation, giving the solver 56 fewer squares to peer at than does a normal broadsheet cryptic.
So that's one way of reducing the load. What are the others? So far, it seems to me that the Quick Cryptic demands less of the solver in terms of what you might call the very general knowledge required for some cryptics, or at least the sometimes specialist vocabulary that might require an inspired guess.
I wondered whether the same might go for some of the abbreviations and short references which are found more often inside crosswords than outside them - and that's not the case. The newcomer has to remember that nurses used to be called SENs, that a sailor might be a TAR and that the world of cricket has a panoply of notation.
Pointing out these speed bumps is not a complaint, by the way. Any solver converted by the Quick Cryptic will find this sort of thing soon enough in the full-fat puzzles, and it's hardly the job of this new crossword to reinvent the vocabulary of wordplay. (The inclusion of setters' pseudonyms may be innovation enough for some readers of the Thunderer – not to mention a hidden message in the first puzzle.)
And I was delighted to see that the surface readings of the clues – what they are apparently referring to before their true purpose reveals itself – are no less devious. Being willingly misled is the chief joy of solving. The decoding itself is the bit that's less convoluted here, with clues that you can more readily imagine dissecting for the benefit of a newcomer and meeting with a delighted "ah!" rather than a baffled "nope, still don't get it". And so we see, I think, a higher proportion of double- and cryptic definitions, in the manner of Rufus.
A quick word of advice to those, like this Times reader ...
Sir, I am not so sure this is a good idea. To fail to complete the regular cryptic crossword might just hint at a weakness in one's intellectual ability. To fail to complete the quick cryptic removes all possible doubt.
... who remain stuck: the Times solver blog Times for the Times has an explanation of every clue. And my favourite entry so far is from one "Joker" ...
8d Professional commoditynogoodinhosiery business (5-2-5)
... where we remove the G from STOCKINGTRADE of STOCK-IN-TRADE. Welcome to the world, Quick Cryptic.