I've never been able to make any headway across or down with cryptic crosswords.
Call Me Old-Fashioned (9 letters - megaphone), but cryptic crosswords suggest that in a scarily large proportion of the human race, evolution has proceeded by unnatural selection.
Conventional crosswords give you satisfyingly solid facts. Wordsworth and his Family had Two Meals of What Each Day? (8 letters - porridge). The answer sits reassuring and sturdy, just like the cereal.
I accept that cryptic and sensible crosswords both use language and thought to get from A to B. But cryptics get there via J, W and Q in that order.
I dislike cryptic crosswords because they're baroque in thought and I like the functionalist style.
Because I drudge in my writing to get effects by being lucid, and they get far better effects by being obscure. Because they're not British.
The word ‘‘cryptic'' comes from Greek, and their purpose is all Greek to me. While sensible crossword clues and answers are bluff, direct, honest, Anglo-Saxon, cryptics are foreign and devious. Change that last word; they're Small Insect's Truncated Reception Apparatus (3 letters). Yes, deviant.
I dislike them also because of the body language they encourage. Sensible crossword solvers sit foursquare, eyes fixed, face solemn.
Cryptic solvers sit forward then back then sideways, eyes darting, face smug. I want to Half a Forced Start (4 letters - kick) them. The urge is especially strong when they're doing their
crossword in ink. Wrong? Moi?
I feel the resentment towards cryptic crosswords that an outsider feels towards any group of initiates. Cryptic solvers exude the same air of creative triumph as people who have gone through childbirth, except that in the latter pastime, the path from conception to production is less tangled.
I resent also the double standard they've created. Ring up friends to tell them that Observe the Cook in Hot Water (6 letters) is Seethe, and you're an enthusiast.
Ring them up to announce that Warmest of America's Great Lakes (4 letters) is Erie, and you're a bore. Where's the Logic (9 letters - syllogism) in that?
Cryptic crosswords are indeed full of wit. But as Noel Hold Off a Timid Bovine (6 letters - Coward) noted, wit should be used sparingly like caviar, not spread around like marmalade.
One supposed function of cryptic crosswords is to help fight Alzheimers. Seems to me that spending your retirement working out Woolly Headed Tot Went Ahead (6 letters - addled) is more a case of Event Pronounced Evil in the Caribbean (11 letters - dysfunction).
The only time I've felt empathy towards cryptic crosswords and their devotees was when I read about the English commuter who always kept his day's copy of The Times, and spent his evenings memorising the answers to its puzzles.
Next morning on the train, with paper carefully folded so nobody could read the date, he would blaze through the cryptic at light speed, while the carriage watched in awe.
That was truly an example of how to be Finally I Own Underground Poetry (10 letters - subversive).
And if I may pre-empt the thousands of cryptophiles about to reach for their High-Class Pelvic Communicator (6 letters - laptop), I acknowledge here and now that when it comes to appreciation of such an admirable pastime, I'm a total Richard Seddon's Skull (8 letters - dickhead).
- David Hill is a Taranaki writer
