Hacker News Reader

Comment by thom | Hacker News Reader

Note for Brits that this isn’t cryptic (dare I say ‘real’) crosswords, but I assume it could be retooled for that.

American Crosswords are different in two key ways as I understand it:

Firstly, all "serious" British crosswords are "Cryptic" ie once you figure out what the answer is, it's apparent why that's the correct clue, but figuring out the answer from the clue involves lateral thinking and some skills learned from years of staring at such clues.

e.g. Private Eye's crossword 726 (back in April), clue 23 down,

"He finally gets to penetrate agreeable person (relatively) (5)"

The correct answer is "Niece". "Nice" can mean agreeable, the final letter of "He" is E, and so by having the letter E "penetrate" the word nice you produce "niece", a person who is a relative.

[ and yes, Private Eye is a satirical magazine, the crossword clues are, likewise, intended to make you a little uncomfortable while you laugh ]

Secondly, British crosswords are arranged with black "dead" squares between letters to produce more of a lattice, in which many letters only take part in one word, as a result longer answers are common

e.g. same crossword, clue 26 across is

"Figure on getting your teeth into our statistical revelations (6,9)"

The answer was "Number Crunching".

Brit here. I woke up one morning – I was 15, so this was in the 90s – with the word ‘microdot’ in my head. The first thought, clear as anything, as if it was painted across the inside of my eyes. Microdot!

Puzzled, I didn’t move and set about figuring out why. Eventually I realised that I had solved, in my sleep, a crossword clue that I had not even gone to bed thinking about. I’d read it at my grandma’s house earlier the previous day.

Tiny picture makes computer work on time (8)

The brain is amazing. I’m not even any good at the cryptic crossword!

For non-cryptic solvers, this clue is parsed as follows:

Definition: Tiny picture

Wordplay: Computer [MICRO] + work [DO] + time [T]

I like solving both American-style and cryptic crosswords now, but I never realized that the British called the black squares "dead squares" in English. In my experience, this term is never used in American English, but it's the term most often used in Brazilian Portuguese crosswords (casas mortas). To my knowledge, it's also not used in Spanish (cuadros negros/celdas negras), French (cases noires), or Italian (caselle nere).

I wonder how the dead-square terminology reached Brazil. I think the popularity of crosswords there was originally due to Italian immigrants, who might not have said "dead squares".

I've heard people call the "letters [that] only take part in one word" unches (an abbreviation for "unchecked squares").

I don't know if it would be usual to call these "dead" here that was just the obvious word for them to me, as someone with relatively little crossword ability and I didn't ask an expert. I lack whatever spark it is allows several of my friends to do cryptics with great success, in Private Eye for example once it enters my mind that somehow the answer might be the slightly childish "BOOBS" it might take me days to realise "BOSOM" fits the clue much better and aha, now I can solve an adjacent clue because that fourth letter is an O not a B...

Why do you use only the last letter in "He?"

The relevant clue there is ‘he finally’. The ‘finally’ is the part that hints at only taking the last letter of ‘he’.

Cryptic crosswords in the UK often have hidden prepositions and clues like this.

sorry that solve for Niece made no sense. Why pick the letter E? am I daft or is it more of a function of practice on these?

“He finally” means the final letter of he. “Agreeable” means nice. “Penetrates” means put the e in nice. “Person (relatively)” means a relative, i.e. niece. Clues are basically always partitioned by the definition of the thing, and how to construct the thing. When the two agree you can be confidant you’ve got the right answer.

I'm reminded of an article I read about an AI that competed in a crossword competition and one particularly difficult clue it faced was "Apollo 11 and 12 [180 degrees]". I don't know if it would be allowed as part of a cryptic crossword, but the number of letters in the (words of the) answer were 8, 4.

The answer to that clue is included here:

https://www.uh.edu/engines/epi2783.htm

That would usually be considered an invalid cryptic clue.

For cryptic crosswords I’ve found https://www.crosswordgenius.com/ impressive (once you get past the kind of clunky UI)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com