Guidance for Featured Setters

All the below is intended and framed as guidance for setters submitting featured crosswords to the editor, rather than iron-clad rules: particularly in the case of themed puzzles, setters may deliberately stray from any of the guidance if there's a strong enough thematic justification. This guidance is not exhaustive or comprehensive but should give sufficient flavour of what is and isn't acceptable; in all cases, the editor's decision is final.

1. Grid

• 15×15 blocked grids – no Quicks, Minis, Jumbos, irregular shapes or barred puzzles.
• Conventional rotational symmetry
• No large groups of contiguous blocked cells
• 'Fully connected', and preferably 'well connected': that is, you can 'travel' from any non-blocked cell to any other non-blocked cell via some route that only contains non-blocked cells – preferably via a number of possible routes.
• Variety of word lengths incorporated.
• No contiguous 'unchecked' cells – unches. In exceptional cases, a 'double unch' may be acceptable – although not at the start of a word – but no triple unches (or more).
• All lights to be at least close to 50% checked:
  • 3-cell lights need at least two checkers.
  • Others need at least 50% checked with an even number of letters, and (n – 1) / 2 for an odd number of letters (so, 2 checkers for 5-cell entries, 3 for 7, etc).

2. Answers

• Generally answers should not be too obscure – but solvers may not mind needing to look up a few words in Chambers or visit Wikipedia to clarify some general knowledge, especially in the service of a theme, say.
• No entries that could be perceived as offensive or otherwise inappropriate.
• Try to avoid over-repetition of particular word types – e.g. plurals, "-ing" words, etc.

3. Clues

Clues will be judged on:

1. Accuracy
2. Fairness
3. Style

3.1 Accuracy

The cryptic reading should be grammatically correct and coherent. Examples to consider:

• Possession should be indicated where appropriate, e.g. "April first" is not A, needing "April's first"; "hot inside" is not O, needing "inside of hot", etc.
• Terse 'telegram' style (e.g., elided commas) or 'Yoda' grammar is fine.
• If punctuation or capitalisation affects the cryptic reading, it shouldn't be ignored – e.g. "Cat cruise? (3)" can't be TOM as Cruise needs capitalisation to refer to the actor.
• Anagram indicators should suggest movement or disturbance rather than some final settled state, so we generally prefer to avoid nounal anagram indicators (e.g., "soup").
• Aural wordplay ('homophones' / puns, Spoonerisms) should mimic the actual answer, or part of answer, without any further manipulation – no-one really knows what a backwards or split 'homophone' sounds like. The exception is where a homophone is used to clue a single letter – "sea", "eye", "you", etc.
• Where link words (between wordplay and definition) or juxtapositions (between elements of wordplay) are used, the overall cryptic reading of the clue must remain grammatically correct.
• Pay attention to directionality of link words; a directional link word should point from the wordplay to the definition. So WP for DEF or DEF from WP are fine, but not WP of DEF or DEF gives WP, say. A definition shouldn't appear at the 'wrong' end of a link word, even in a double definition.
• Where elements are clued as verbal phrases, they shouldn't then be treated as if they were nouns, e.g. "Hear fashion cat is visiting church (5)" = C(ATC)H uses an imperative anagram indicator "fashion cat" – that phrase can't then be said to be a 'thing' that "is visiting" the church.
• Try to avoid 'same-sideyness' – where a wordplay element shares an etymological root with its corresponding part in the answer, say, or where two meanings in a double definition are too closely related.

3.2 Fairness

Clues should be 'gettable' and only be as convoluted as necessary, for example:

• Don't introduce elements in wordplay that are consequently removed (e.g. "Take steps to doctor a cat, leaving America (3)" can't be ACT, as a stand-alone "a" is introduced in the anagram then removed by the deletion).
• In subtractive anagrams, the secondary anagram should usually be indicated.
• Aural wordplay, although not necessarily needing strict homophones, should reflect a fairly plain non-regional British accent.
  • E.g., "flaw" and "floor" are acceptable: even if you, as a rhotic speaker, wouldn't say them the same way, you can be reasonably assumed to understand when others do.
  • If a particular accent is required for the wordplay to work, it should be indicated.
• 'Txt-spk' or similar should be indicated as such.
• We prefer ambiguity to be avoided, especially where the ambiguity can't be resolved by crossing letters. E.g. "Celebrity backing singers (4)" could be either STAR or RATS, and should be, say, "Backing celebrity singers (4)".
• Indirectness should be avoided – where a synonym is only being manipulated but kept largely intact, that's fine (e.g. "Backing celebrity singers" (4) for RATS), but not anagrams, hiddens, single letter indicators, etc where the recognition of the intended synonym becomes too difficult.
• Where answers are <50% checked, it's good to reflect this in the difficulty of the clue, especially if the crossing letters are 'unfriendly' (leading to too many possible entries).
• Any Special Instructions should be relevant, and not require solvers to perform mental gymnastics beyond that which they could reasonably be expected to achieve whilst solving in the mobile app, say (no requirement for 'pen and paper').

3.3 Style

Clues should be pleasing as both surfaces and cryptic readings, and should generally respect accepted crossword conventions, for example:

• 'Hiddens' should be fully hidden within their fodder, with no extra words involved.
• Abbreviations should be either indisputably in general use (e.g. S, M, L as clothes sizes) or supported by either Chambers or Collins dictionaries:
  • Y/N for 'yes'/'no', A/D for Across/Down, or B/G for 'boy'/'girl', say, are not accepted – although they could be argued to be in general use, they make life far too easy for the setter!
  • "T" for model is discouraged – even though a convention, it doesn't really work.
  • "posh", say, as U still appears in Chambers so although out-dated is still considered 'fair'.
• Mostly shorter clues are preferred – review any clues over ~10 words to ensure they are absolutely necessary and still provide a smooth cryptic reading.
• Puzzles should include a variety of wordplay types – no strict limits are applied, but generally in a standard puzzle:
  • anagrams should be limited to around 6 (with partials counting half);
  • hiddens to 2 or 3 (perhaps one more if at least one is a reversed hidden), as these are usually the easier types of clue.
• Indicators or other wordplay elements should not be repeated for the same purpose:
  • e.g. it's fine to use "around" as a container in one clue and a reversal in another, but not for two containers.
  • Innocuous link words and juxtapositions may be repeated (within reason).
• Usually, any answer contained in the puzzle should not also appear in the clues – especially if those clues are close together or clue crossing answers.

4. Conclusion

As stated above, this guidance is not intended to be a comprehensive set of 'rules' but a general set of guidelines to help set out expectations. Discretion will be applied to individual puzzles and clues. If you have any questions or doubts, do contact the editor.

Many thanks to all setters who are considering submitting a puzzle to MyCrossword's "featured puzzle" series – we look forward to your submissions!