At the Clinic we have put together a number of lists to assist crossword solvers, containing such things as abbreviations, anagram indicators, deletion indicators etc. For each form of ‘code’, those indicators which solvers are likely to encounter in any type of crossword are marked as ‘Standard’ and those likely to be found only in barred crosswords are flagged as ‘Advanced’. Because of the number of abbreviations, there is a separate list (Common Abbreviations) containing only the ‘Standard’ ones. All the lists can be searched and sorted, and you can select how many items you wish to see on each page.
The lists are shown below. By default they are arranged alphabetically, but they can also be be sorted by date of last update.
| List | Last Updated |
|---|---|
| All Abbreviations | 23/11/27 |
| Anagram Indicators | 26/02/17 |
| Container and Contents Indicators | 26/02/14 |
| The Cryptic Lexicon | 26/02/17 |
| Deletion Indicators | 26/02/17 |
| Drag and Drop Indicators | 24/10/21 |
| Hidden Indicators | 26/02/17 |
| Homophone Indicators | 26/02/14 |
| Intermittent Selection Indicators | 25/09/10 |
| Juxtaposition Indicators | 26/02/17 |
| Letter Selection Indicators | 26/02/17 |
| Link Words and Phrases | 25/12/01 |
| Replacement Indicators | 26/02/15 |
| Reversal Indicators | 26/02/17 |
| Single Letter Indicators | 26/02/17 |
| Single Letters in Blocked Puzzles | 26/02/17 |
| Standard Abbreviations | 23/11/27 |
| Whimsical Indicators | 23/11/27 |
The page below presents some advice aimed at those who are relatively new to writing clues for the monthly Azed competitions:
Writing Clues for Azed Competitions
Each of these links will open in a new tab.
If you spot any errors in the lists or have suggestions for inclusions, please contact us using the details on the Contact page.
Thank you for putting together and maintaining this resource, invaluable for solvers and setters alike. As a setter, I have been using it regularly for a couple of years now. and I couldn’t do without it.
However, for me and perhaps for others, the default settings for displaying the lists are not the most helpful. I invariably adjust the number of items displayed on the page to ‘All’, and sort by the main (non-alphabetic) key. Is there a way to make these settings stick, or would you consider adjusting the defaults to reflect this?
Hi Typoe (some sort of Herman Melville joke, perhaps?), welcome to the blog, and thank you for your generous remarks.
We’re always very happy to look at potential changes to the site. Regarding the pagination, the relatively low default value dates back to when the performance of our hosting platform was not the best. Since we changed hosts late last year, performance hasn’t been an issue, so I’m minded to set the default to ‘all rows’ for all tables except the Lexicon, with the option for the user to reduce the number of rows per page. If anyone feels strongly that this is a bad idea, let me know, otherwise I’ll make the necessary modifications next week.
Regarding the default sort order, the recent introduction of a dropdown filter on the fields which categorize the indicator was intended to provide a more satisfactory way to select only the required indicator types: so, for instance, in the Deletion Indicators table, selecting ‘Reduction – first letter’ from the ‘Variety’ dropdown will show only first letter deletion indicators, while additionally selecting ‘Standard’ from the ‘Type’ dropdown will further restrict the results. I’ve found that I no longer need to sort the lists at all when using them as a setting aid – does this feature make things easier for you, or have I misunderstood the issue?
Hello, Doctor Clue. I didn’t have Melville in mind for my moniker on this site, but I can see that it’s a plausible connection. I chose it for the rather trivial reason that Typoe is a typo for Type O, but it’s always nice to accrete meaning to a pseudonym, so thank you for that!
Thank you also for your response to my question. I think that changing the pagination to “All rows” would be a great improvement for solvers and setters alike.
As regards the sort order, the recently introduced drop-down filter is a significant improvement that undoubtedly makes life easier for setters. Once we have an idea for a clue, we typically know the category we want to focus on within the list and can filter it accordingly. Often, though, I just like to browse the whole list for ideas, and I think that it’s more natural for a setter to browse by category rather than by alphabetical order. I think that the opposite would be true for a solver. That makes me wonder whether there should be a setter versus solver flag. Anyway, I think that any changes in that area should probably take into consideration feedback from many others.
So for now, the change to “All rows” would be appreciated, and it would be interesting to hear from other users on the default sort order.
Hello Typoe
I have increased the number of rows to be displayed for each table upon loading to 1,000. This should mean that for all lists except the Lexicon and All Abbreviations the complete table will be displayed by default.
When it comes to sort order, it’s a bit of a balancing act. When I first set the site up, I decided that I would try to keep things as simple as possible, and would use only the facilities available within WordPress and off-the-shelf plugins; I’ve managed to (almost, at least) stick to that, but it does rule out any sort of personalized display based on a user profile. Purchasing the Professional version of TablePress has enabled us to improve the display of the lists, and there are some more enhancements in the pipeline relating to the identification of indicators which meet specific criteria. When it comes to the default sort order, only a single click is now required either to sort on the indicator type or to filter on a specific indicator type, such that the sort by type becomes irrelevant, all displayed values then being the same. As you suggest, there is almost certainly no ‘one size fits all’ choice for the default order, so my inclination is to leave things as they are – but my thanks for your thoughts and suggestions.
Do you have any truck with the Reverend Spooner?
Hi LizR, and welcome to the blog
I enjoy a good spoonerism, and I think the odd one can add variety to a puzzle, assuming (as with homophones generally) that they don’t rely on pronunciations that will only ‘work’ for a proportion of solvers. The problem I have with using them in my own puzzles is that deception pretty much goes out of the window as soon as “Spooner’s” or ‘for Spooner’ is included in the clue, and any less explicit indication has to be questionable at best. I recently set a puzzle where a quarter of the definitions were spoonerized – with this being stated in the preamble, I then had no need to include any indication of spoonerism in the clues themselves, which was great.
I don’t mention spoonerisms in the Clinical Data section because there are so few (fair) ways of introducing them. Do you have a view on them yourself?
Hello Doctor Clue (I do hope that’s a pun on Dr Who, by the way!)
I think these are very much for occasional use only, but sometimes they’re too good to miss out. Given that the solver has to decypher a charade before it can be “unSpoonerised” I don’t think the deception is completely lost.
Also, if you sometimes use Spoonerisms, you do at least get the chance of a double bluff, something like “Boy left first half to Spooner (5)” for LADLE.
West bishes,
Liz
PS I do like the idea of telling the solver that there are a number of Spoonerisms, I may “borrow” that 🙂
I wouldn’t mind attempting that crossword you mentioned. Is it available on the site? (I had a look but couldn’t see it).
Hi Liz
The crossword isn’t on this site, in fact it isn’t anywhere at the moment because I haven’t decided whither it should be directed (it will probably end up with the Magpie magazine, but they’ve already got one of mine in their queue). That does mean, though, that it still belongs to me, so I could send a copy to the email address associated with your comments if you would like. It’s a themed puzzle with four different types of clue, the difficulty level being probably around the average for, say, an Enigmatic Variations/Inquisitor, or a Magpie ‘B’ grade.
I’m intrigued. If you wouldn’t mind sending me a copy, I’d love to have a go.
I often use your site for inspiration when writing clues. What about a list of connectors?
https://www.crosswordunclued.com/2009/07/connectors.html?m=1#:~:text=What%20are%20connectors%3F,superfluous%20to%20its%20cryptic%20meaning.&text=The%20above%20is%20a%20charade,wordplay%2C%20the%20rest%20is%20padding.
Hi Human634, and welcome to the blog.
I’ve had a look at the page which you reference, and the term ‘connector’ appears to embrace two components that I see as being distinct from each other. What I call a juxtaposition indicator appears within the wordplay of clues, and describes the position of one element with respect to another (eg ‘A after B’ to indicate BA) – there is a list of these indicators on the site. What I generally call a ‘link’, on the other hand, forms a bridge between the wordplay and the definition; there is no clear consensus regarding what is acceptable (and unacceptable) in this regard, and I have seen a great many variations used by setters. These days I tend to stick to wordplay and definition only in my own clues, but I’d be happy to put together a (necessarily subjective) list of those links which I consider fair to solvers. One of the problems is that the wealth of senses given by Chambers for the most common prepositions means that it is possible to bring forward some justification for just about all of them (eg ‘to’ = both ‘answering’ and ‘with the result of’, ‘in’ = both ‘within’ and ‘consisting of’). Watch this space!
I was not truly disagreeing with your initial premise: that “piece of’, “bit of”, and such could refer to any part of the word and are not in themselves suggestive of a word’s first letter. With that said, setters and solvers together determine the meaning of indicators, and allowing “piece of” etc. to refer to any part of a word renders the solver’s task essentially impossible. We therefore decide that those indicators refer specifically to the first letter of the word, and use other indicators such as “second of” and “end of” to identify letters elsewhere in the word. The alternative is to use only “beginning”, “start”. and a limited few additional indicators that strictly refer to the word’s first letter. Such would make setting and solving cryptics unacceptably dull.
Agreed. There are many instances in cryptic wordplay where custom and practice either qualify or override a strict literal interpretation. I felt that ruling out ‘piece’ was contrary to this precept, for the reasons which we have both mentioned. I list ‘end’ as a last letter selection indicator, but it is surely only custom and practice which determine that it is not equally valid as a first letter selector.
That doesn’t mean that popularity trumps all other considerations. I won’t accept ‘touring’ as a containment indicator or ‘jolly’ for RM no matter how many times I see them.
Letter Selection Indicators
Whereas “piece of” to indicate selection of the word’s first letter has been discontinued, why are “bit of”, “hint of”, and the like acceptable? [I would wish to expand the universe of indicators as much as is possible.]
A very fair question!
Fundamentally, I think it’s impossible to rule definitively on how familiar words can be applied in a cryptic context to a string of letters. For instance, when we talk about ‘a bit of’ something, that something is invariably an abstract (non-countable) noun – ‘a bit of wood’ is not a small part of a larger wood.
‘A bit of that [specific] cake’ and ‘a piece of that [specific] cake’ come to pretty much the same thing, and I’m not sure that either implies that the bit/piece comes from any particular part of the cake under consideration. But whilst I might like to think that ‘glimpse’, ‘suggestion’ and ‘hint’ carry some idea of the part being peripheral, I’m not sure that I can adduce any evidence to support that. Only indicators like ‘start’ and ‘initial’
I conclude that the removal of ‘piece’ was arbitrary and based on personal preference. Azed is happy to accept it in clues, and therefore I have reinstated it in the list of first letter selection indicators. I also noticed that ‘suspicion’ and ‘dash’, which seem every bit as good to me as the ones mentioned above, were not in the list, so I have added them. I’m more than happy to consider including others on request.
“Soupçon” comes to mind.