Setting Things Right: The Manifezto Pt.2

Hi all, and welcome back to Setting Things Right, aka The Manifezto. Remember, these are just my ideas and opinions – please do add your own thoughts and disagreements in the comments!

In case you missed it, Part 1: Say What You Mean is here.

Part 2: The Duck-Rabbit

Which animals are most like each other?

On 23rd October, 1892, the German satirical magazine Fliegende Blätter (“Flying Leaves / Pages” or “Loose Sheets”) published an unattributed drawing, an ambiguous image that could be viewed as either a duck or a rabbit.

Captioned, “Welche Thiere gleichen einander am meisten?” (“Which animals are most like each other?”), with “Kaninchen und Ente” ("Rabbit and Duck") written underneath, this was the first appearance of the Duck-Rabbit illusion, later made famous by Ludwig Wittgenstein in his Philosophical Investigations, published posthumously in 1953, as a way to describe different ways of seeing. (Note: I use "Duck-Rabbit" rather than "Rabbit-Duck", as it appears on the Wikipedia entry ... just because I think it sounds nicer that way!)

So ... what has that got to do with cryptic crosswords?

What is a clue?

In the previous post, I said a fair bit about what I believe a clue is not. It is not a riddle or a secret code that needs to be cracked, uncovering an answer that’s hiding behind some enigmatic trickery. But, of course, before analysing what makes for good clues, it’s important to clarify exactly what a clue is.

Thinking about what we mean by a ‘clue’ in everyday language, there are a couple of important points.

Firstly – and here I’m paraphrasing Ximenes – a clue is something that is helpful in seeking an answer or solution. It enables deduction, via a logical mental process. That’s where I’d distinguish it from a riddle, say, which is specifically designed not to be helpful. So, when writing clues, you’re never really looking to deceive – yes, a good surface provides a disguise so that the cryptic meaning of the clue isn’t perhaps immediately obvious, but once the intended cryptic reading is seen, it should then be a clear and unambiguous description, representation or instruction. In Ximenes’ own words, a clue:

“... guides and it points: these are positive actions; so in crosswords its action, however superficially misleading, must be positive.”

Secondly, in everyday terms, a clue is something that provides only a partial pointer to the solution, needing to be considered alongside several other clues to provide the full picture. If you were to read a mystery novel where the entire mystery was solved through just a single clue, I doubt it’d be much fun.

That second point may seem incredibly obvious, to the extent that it doesn’t really need even to be set out ... so why have I said it’s an important point?

The reason is to avoid falling into a certain way of thinking about clues. I’ve already mentioned that a clue provides exactly what you need to reach the answer; it is a complete way of expressing the answer, with all the information you require. So, it is not itself merely a clue to the answer, it is the answer! (Or, the answer is the clue ... that you need as a part to solve the whole mystery.) If the broken glass was found outside the building, it couldn't have been a break-in, say. The clue "broken glass outside" is the complete demonstration of the "inside job" fact. Its status as a 'clue' is not in relation to its particular answer, but to that answer forming a piece of the entire puzzle – and, just as in any good mystery, it’s only once you have got all of the clues neatly fitted together that you’ve solved the entire mystery, the full crossword puzzle.

I realise this distinction may appear ridiculously pedantic, but with this subtle shift in perspective it no longer makes sense to think of a clue as being a clue to an individual answer. So, say, 15 Across is not a clue to the answer SETTER, but instead it is the complete demonstration of the answer SETTER (which itself then helps you to complete the puzzle as a whole). The idea here is to dismiss the notion that the clue is some sort of riddle or code that leads you to the answer, and instead start to think about the clue as actually being the answer.

This brings me to what I believe the essence of a clue really is: I propose viewing a clue as an illusion.

The cryptic clue as an illusion

The analogy I draw is with the ‘Duck-Rabbit’ illusion described earlier – a drawing that can be interpreted as being either of a duck or a rabbit, depending on how you look at it. Without loss of generality, let’s call the ‘surface reading’ the Duck, and the ‘cryptic reading’ the Rabbit. Now the Duck is there for you to see – it’s what the clue seems to say, on the surface. The Rabbit may not be quite so immediately obvious, but it’s there, unambiguously – and once you ‘see’ it, you can be absolutely sure it’s a Rabbit. You might wonder how you failed to see that Rabbit in the first place, because the ‘cryptic reading’ isn’t shrouded in some mysterious secret code; it is written in perfectly correct, more-or-less standard English. There’s no riddle to figure out, no code to decipher.

I think this is a fairly novel perspective on the essence of a clue, and it’s one that I believe offers an explanation for the cryptic crossword’s enduring appeal. Put simply, people never tire of enjoying illusions: they are intriguing, fascinating and memorable – or at the very least, pleasingly amusing. But it’s also at the heart of why I believe accuracy is the key principle involved. Without accuracy, you might instead be looking at a Duck-Rabtib – it’s possibly close, but there’s something about that Rabbit that just isn’t quite right ... and where’s the intrigue and fascination in that?

The Duck-Rabtib and other animals

The analogy can be stretched to demonstrate just why some clues don’t work. We’ve just met the Duck-Rabtib. Here are a few more possible variants:

• The Duck-Goose: in which the two views are so similar that there’s no surprise you can make a picture that simultaneously looks like both. The Duck-Goose might describe what’s often referred to as a ‘same-sidey’ clue, most obviously in the form of a double definition where both definitions are much the same (like “Match replica (6)” for DOUBLE) – and that’s why ‘same-sideyness’ makes for a poor clue.

• The Duck-RabbitTriangleSock: in which, yes, you can see the Rabbit, but there’s all sorts of other distracting stuff in the image that shouldn’t be there. An example may be a hidden word clue where the ‘fodder’ contains complete words that aren’t used – say, “Taxi involved in a terrific, absolutely brilliant ride (3)” ... the taxi CAB is hidden in “terrifiC ABsolutely” but what’s all that other stuff about?

• The Splodge-Rabbit: there’s the Rabbit, sure, but the ‘base’ image you’ve used is just an abstract nonsense, not resembling anything from the real world. “Cold sailor’s taxi (3)”? What does that even mean, what sort of image does it conjure up?

I don’t think any of these beasts would be successful (that is, intriguing or fascinating) as illusions, and so their counterparts similarly fail as clues.

Implications of the Duck-Rabbit

In most – maybe all? – cases where a clue doesn’t quite work, or even just doesn’t quite feel right, it can be traced to some weakness in the surface-cryptic illusion. I think there are a few important implications here.

Firstly, as mentioned above, it’s the key to why I believe accuracy is absolutely necessary in the cryptic reading of the clue. If the cryptic reading is somehow askew – whether that’s in simply using an incorrect definition or providing incorrect anagram fodder, say, or more subtly through using the wrong part of speech for the definition or a link word that points in the wrong direction – then that part of the illusion, the Rabbit, is just not quite right. Sometimes it may be ‘close enough’ that you can still appreciate and enjoy the clue, but even then it won’t have quite the same impact, or provide quite the same sense of satisfaction, as a truly accurate illusion: your Rabbit really does have to look properly like a Rabbit.

Secondly, it has to be recognised that making convincing illusions – and thus, writing convincing clues – is difficult! If it were easy to produce such illusions, then the fascination would likely be lost. And in a single puzzle, the setter is trying to produce 30 or so wonderful and varied illusions. It’s really just asking a bit too much to expect every clue to be a perfect illusion. Sometimes you’ll need to stretch a synonym, employ some Yoda-like grammar, introduce a little ambiguity, phrase a surface a tad awkwardly, or make other such compromises to ensure your clue ‘works’ even though it mightn’t be the best illusion. So, the solver may need to squint a bit to really see that Rabbit ... but as long as it is clearly a Rabbit – maybe with super-long ears or contorted into an uncomfortable position – then you’ve still got an illusion. If your Rabbit is accurate, even if a little odd, that’s fine. And if your Duck is beautifully drawn or surprisingly humorous in appearance too, so much the better – solvers will forgive a slightly ragged looking Rabbit (or, indeed, Duck) if the overall illusion is sufficiently entertaining.

Finally, the idea of ‘clue as illusion’ gives a slightly different perspective on the Ximenean / Libertarian ‘divide’ I mentioned in the previous post. I’ve often encountered setters who’ve used essentially incorrect cryptic grammar, in order to enable a lovely smooth surface reading, and who justify this through the excuse: “Oh, well I’m very much a Libertarian!” But I’d counter that such clueing is not simply ‘Libertarian’ but, rather, incorrect. I absolutely love the whimsicality and lateral thinking and stretchiness of setters who are truly Libertarian, but however inventive and avant-garde they are, the best setters still ensure that they’re drawing a Rabbit not a Rabtib. So for me, the supposed Xim / Lib ‘divide’ is just a matter of the degree of whimsicality you’ll accept. I don’t think it’s an especially useful distinction – very few setters, or solvers, could meaningfully claim to be either completely ‘Xim’ or wholeheartedly ‘Lib’.

How to draw a Rabbit: representation, description and instruction

Next time we’ll start to get into the detail of the various elements that can make up a clue. For now, just a quick aside as a start to thinking about the ‘anatomy’ of a clue. I’ve mentioned, a couple of times, the idea that a clue provides a representation, description or instruction which – together with the definition – enables the solver to deduce the answer.

A representation is something like a visual pun or a dingbat – it simply shows the answer. It’s not just a dingbat because, in order to be fair, it also needs a fair definition. So, putting a synonym such as “in” for HIP next to "river" for the cruciverbalist's favourite PO, we might have "Animal in river (5)". A representative part might not just be a synonym: an abbreviation, P as "quiet" maybe, or where you clue an O as “ring” or “bagel”, say, you’re using a representation too. (Though "Animal in quiet bagel (5)" perhaps doesn't quite cut it, style-wise, as a surface.) Placing the representative parts together shows you what the answer looks like, and a definition completes the whole picture to give you a full clue. Typically, you make the representation as a charade of basic elements, just showing them side by side.

A description goes a bit further, and might involve more manipulation of words and juxtapositions to put them in the right order. A description might tell you, for example, which particular letters to choose from a set (“clues regularly” for CES or LU) or where to position an element (“Animal in love, after beginning to procreate” giving HIP with O after P).

Both representations and descriptions can be thought of as passive or inactive, simply showing what’s needed: the former just plonking the various bits there for you to see, the latter adding some additional bits of information to clearly describe what’s intended. So you can happily string together a series of ‘descriptions’ that then, together, form a ‘representation’, just as we've seen with our enamoured hippo.

An instruction makes things much more active – telling solvers what they should do to construct the answer, for example:

Animal not suitable as a pet – smuggle one very quietly into house (5)

This is, in my view, quite different from a representation or description – you could think of it as being in a different “mode” perhaps – and so, for me, the interesting distinction is between clues that are active (or instructional) and those that are passive (or descriptive). Whilst it’s not ‘wrong’ to mix the two modes (no rules, remember!), a clue that does mix active and passive modes often reads as rather jarring, and so fails in terms of style; more importantly, mixing modes in this way can often lead to the overall grammar of the clue as a whole becoming awry, making it inaccurate.

But enough of that for now – in upcoming instalments of the blog, I’ll look in more detail at such considerations. I’ll outline the various different types of clue (spoiler: in my view, there are just four), the possible elements of wordplay and (in Ximenes’ language) subsidiary indications, and how these can be constructed and manipulated in a way that maintains accuracy in the whole of the clue, hence providing a satisfying Rabbit.

Til then, cheers!

Fez