Xword
CROSSWORD CONFIDENTIAL
(Confessions of a cryptic crossword compiler)
(c) David Astle (aka DA)
When I look at Britney Spears, I don’t see hipsters or big hair or a mixed-up kid standing at the Las Vegas Chapel of Love, but the word, PRESBYTERIANS – her anagram. Same with Mel Gibson – I see BIG MELONS. Or Red Symons (SYNDROMES), Steve Irwin (INTERVIEWS), Meg Ryan (GERMANY) and Eric Clapton (NARCOLEPTIC).
It’s sick in a feverish way. Try as I might, I can’t help it. The condition is chronic, worse than tennis elbow, or narcolepsy. No name is safe from my broiling head. I see Pat Rafter and think ‘hit the roof’, or marvel at Martina Hingis ‘ahing’ amid martinis. I drive through Nunawading and imagine Mother Superior walking knee-high through water. My copy of War and Peace (CRAP AND A WEE) is littered with frivolous brainwaves, words like permafrost (two hairstyles +ST), theologist (tight + loose) or stratagem (mega-tarts backwards) circled for the future.
What future? How can a victim of such verbal delirium hope to last a day? The answer is cryptic crosswords, the solution that ended up choosing me. To thousands of solvers across and down the eastern seaboard I’m better known as DA, the Friday compiler of the cryptic in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
Going by the mail in the last 20 years, or the chatroom passion in this modern e-era, I seem to be loved or hated with zero in between. I’m either the antichrist or the alchemist. Half the solving public reckons my initials stand for Dangerously Addictive. The other half: Don’t Attempt.
The fever began in childhood. With a surname like Astle (which has ten anagrams at least) I felt born to wordplay, my life of clue-writing on the wall. While other kids were playing Kaboom or spin the bottle, I was throwing Scrabble cubes on the floor like I Ching pieces. On a family holiday to Uluru I spent the best part of the 6,000 kilometres reading a book called 1001 Riddles in the backseat, absorbing puns and twisted ways of thinking.
Travel increased at high school. A long commute lent me time to unravel the Herald’s puzzles, where the VIP of compilers was LB, or Lindsey Browne. The same man would receive my first shambolic grids in years to come, a Clayton’s apprenticeship that saw my first crossword accepted in 1981, two years into a journalism degree. One-Across was scaffolding (‘Back off in burning metal framework’) and I felt like Christmas. At long last the mania had a place to go.
Since then I’ve filled out 200 grid books with criss-crossing words and scribbled clues. To answer the eternal question – when I mix socially – a puzzle tends to start with a chosen word (like HELIX) or clue (‘Cough elixir with a twist’) and so the pattern evolves. Every entry length is duplicated in the opposite corner, the interlock drifting towards the centre. I’ve filled a dozen dogeared books with promising words and names, each listed according to length. Under 9, say, is Eurotrash, irukandji, Clijsters and ipso facto, each awaiting the sly treatment.
To answer Eternal Question #2, making a crossword takes half a day, with untold hours of mulling to follow. Every puzzle is different, depending on themes, tougher patterns, or gnarlier letters, but meshing the grid usually takes an hour, the rest of the time reserved for clue drafting. And I do mean draft. Ideally I let the first clues simmer during a walk or bouts of insomnia, giving rise to leaner, fresher versions. Does it dominate my imagination? Yes. Do I have any choice in the matter? Until a vaccine is invented, no.
Strangely, I’m not alone. Fairfax has a rolling roster of eight compilers, the likes of whom pretend to act normally as librarians, architects and lawn-mowing franchisers. We’ve only met once, and that was in a Crows Nest restaurant with black and white tiles. Slurping mee goreng (3,6) and so-so miso soup, we tried to work out the collective noun for crossword makers. Harriet Veitch, our implacable editor, offered the best with a vexation of cruciverbalists.
The box below will introduce you to the darker arts of solving, but the best advice for would-be solvers is to grab the solution grid and look back at the clues the day before. Keep peeking and I warn you, the bug will bite.
No question, the bug bit Paul and Jenny, two Sydney-siders who met over a DA puzzle in a crowded pub in 1997. (As a favour, a year later, I smuggled a customised crossword into the Herald where the first letter of every across answer spelt out Jenny’s marriage proposal. Paul accepted, though he did need help with 13-down.) Over 20 years I’ve seen my grids and clues appear as an altar screen, a Guinness coaster, a manuscript, a worry toy, and a school operetta in rural Victoria. Clearly the obsession STUCCUTS (cuts both ways).
Crosswords have shaped my life, mentally and matrimonially. Back in the late 80s, working for Time-Life Books, I met my future wife over a howitzer photo. It was animosity at first sight. She thought I was a gasbag, and I thought…well let’s just say we didn’t exactly click. The godsend was her crossword habit. Secretly she loved the cryptics, and I never had a clue. After six weeks of cold war in the office, Tracy made a fateful discovery. I wasn’t just the pest who ‘borrowed’ her stapler during the week, but her annoyance of choice on a Friday afternoon, my clues often haunting her weekends. In the spirit of anagrams, the flabbergasted solver opened the way to lovers.
GETTING DOWN TO IT – HOW-TO SIDEBAR
By and large, every cryptic clue is one half wordplay, one half definition, though not necessarily in that order. Here is a sample of the six most common clue types:
ANAGRAMS
(Always need a signpost, a word suggesting mixture or upheaval.)
Canoe traveling sea (5) = CANOE
Japanese ruler converts Mao kid (6) = MIKADO
CHARADES
(Where words are broken into smaller units, such as featherbrain = feat-herb-rain, or nong = non-G.)
Clergy making love a lot (7) = SEXTONS
Navel ring selection (6) = O-RANGE
CONTAINERS
(Words or letters within words, such as isle in mad gives you MISLEAD, or E in HITCH gives you HI TECH. A signpost is needed to suggest holding.)
Worry about horse slaughter (7) = CARNAGE
Journo embraced by chic Scandinavian (7) = SWEDISH
DOUBLE MEANINGS
(Where a clue comprises two definitions.)
Eats birds (7) = SWALLOWS
Handbag for criminal cohort? (9) = ACCESSORY
HIDDENS
(Look within. The answer is lurking.)
Shy bride holds cross (6) = HYBRID
French anthem has charm (7) = ENCHANT
HOMOPHONES
(Where Sunday sounds like sundae. A signpost of sound is needed.)
Twist jewelry, say (5) = WRING
Heard you look in Africa (6) = UGANDA
Warning: the harder the puzzle, the more these recipes will blend. Start with the simpler puzzle and work your way up the cryptic ladder. Go cold, UK. (Good luck.)
[Sunday Life, June 2004]