The Difficulty Dial
As a cryptic crossword setter you don't always know exactly how difficult or otherwise your own puzzle is - they're all easy when you know the answers! And each solver is a little different, with their own combination of vocabulary and knowledge. Most puzzles on MyCrossword and in the national newspapers are intentionally targeted at the 'Goldilocks' zone of just chewy enough to be interesting without being frustratingly tough.
There are times though when you have a particular level of difficulty in mind. You may want to intentionally set a more accessible 'coffee break' puzzle, the kind that the Times calls a Quick Cryptic and the Guardian calls a Quiptic - or at the other end of the scale you may plan your puzzle to be more akin to a Guardian Prize puzzle, or the Telegraph's self-explanatory Toughie. So how does one go about calibrating the difficulty level?
I used to run a second account on here (Jaspa) focused on 'quiptic-style' puzzles and over time developed some ideas on what makes a puzzle more - and less! - accessible to the solver.
Plain sight vs synonyms
Most cryptic clue devices fall into one of two categories: firstly, what I call 'plain sight' i.e. those where the letters needed are right there in the clue (somewhere!) and secondly those that are based on synonyms.
The classic plain sight devices are:
- anagram
- hidden
- alternation
- acrostic
- letter selection (first/middle/last/outer etc)
Plain sight devices are inherently more straightforward to solve - the answer is in front of the solver's eyes, they just need to find it (or its component parts). Solving is therefore a question of logic.
A 'quiptic' puzzle should have a decent proportion of these sorts of clues.
The synonym-based clue, on the other hand, can be made much tricksier... the solver needs to think of the same alternative word as you did when you wrote the clue! And you can make the construction as simple or as convoluted as you like:
- charade
- container
- deletion
- reversal
- aural wordplay
- substitution
- movement
Solving such clues is less a question of logic and more a question of... imagination!
If you closely analyse a 'toughie' puzzle you will most likely see a great deal of synonym-based shenanigans going on. It is of course totally fine to use these devices in any level of puzzle - it's really down to exactly what synonyms you choose per clue...
Indicator words
... which, in a seamless segue, also stands when it comes to choosing your indicator words. An anagram denoted by 'frustrated' should be easier to spot than one indicated by 'in resort'; a soundalike word tipped off via 'we hear' is more identifiable than one using 'escaping from trap'. You get the idea.
Moving parts
You can, of course, combine devices in a clue. Whether you should, and to what degree - that is one of your calibration levers. One kind of tough clue is where multiple 'moving parts' interact - an alternation wrapped round a synonym-reversal plus a last letter, that sort of thing. The solver needs to identify not only the tricks but which strings of letters they clue.
One particular tip for making a clue on the tougher side: use your anagram count for more partial anagrams than full ones!
Trip hazards
Another setter gave me the delightful term 'trip hazard' for the kind of thing in a clue that looks like it should mean one thing but you intend it to mean another. For instance, a classic indicator word could actually be your definition, or you could be asking the solver to read 'for' as part of anagram fodder rather than as a linking word.
For a 'toughie' you might want to deliberately plant such traps; for a 'quiptic' they are best avoided - even accidental ones, so do check for them.
Obscurity
Vocabulary-wise, most solvers probably don't expect to need a dictionary for a 'daily' crossword, and certainly shouldn't need one for a 'coffee break' puzzle. An overt 'toughie' could have words in that a solver may never have encountered before, but they should be able to deduce the answer via wordplay, even if they check afterwards.
If you do find yourself stuck with a tricky word ('gridfill trauma') a great piece of advice I have heard many times is: "Hard clues for easy words, easy clues for hard words!"
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I do hope these suggestions have been of some use - now go write some clues! 😁