But I probably wouldn’t have gone for it if I wasn’t such a fan of Arrested Development. In Gaelic, “gorm” is “blue” and “an” is “the”, so “Gorman” becomes “Bluethe”. Is ‘Bluth’ an Arrested Development thing? And is ‘Django’ a Tarantino thing? It’s better, I think, not to leap into the wordplay feet first: to play around with what the definition might be and what might cover the join.Īmerica Unchained in the Guardian BookshopĪgreed. In my early puzzles, I’d think of some wordplay and try to bolt on a definition. Where you can’t initially spot the join between definition and wordplay. Someone smugly said something like “um … but this isn’t actually a cryptic crossword clue, is it!”: I figured if the wording was plausible enough to provoke this response, there’s a compliment hiding in there.
#CROSSWORD EDITOR PLUS#
I wrote a puzzle themed on The Young Ones and one of the clues was:Ģ4d With leading parts of Mike, Rick, Vyvyan and Neil plus Alexei Sayle, ultimately playing scumbags (6) I don’t think it’s a fair criticism of cryptics, but I strive to avoid nonsense. It might be a sentence, but it’s not one anyone would ever write. One thing that puts off non-solvers is the idea in the popular imagination that a cryptic clue is something like: “The French glasses are hot after a pelican walks quickly (7)”. You seem to place a lot of importance on making your clues plausible snatches of language. This all works so long as I later make sure the puzzle works as a whole – mostly when the rest of the house is asleep. I’ll stare at a word, seeking inspiration and later, while kicking a ball around with my son in the back yard, something lands. I think most solvers will relate to the idea that your subconscious can solve: you were on the train, staring at seven down for ages and that night, while doing the washing up, the answer lands. So I leave my laptop on the side and at odd moments, I’ll tinker. I’ll happily spend an hour writing clues but it’s also something I can dip in and out of. It wasn’t can-I-get-one-published-and-tick-it-off-my-bucket-list? it was OK-can-I-become-a-crossword-setter? So I said: “if I write another with a decent grid would you take a look?” I didn’t want to be vanity published as a one-off novelty. Mike Hutchinson, crossword editor at the Independent, essentially said: “the grid’s awful but the clues are good”.
I had time on my hands, so I wrote a puzzle and shared it on Twitter. I find my words on stage by telling stories to audiences, so 2020 was pretty much a write-off. The pandemic forced me into a decent impression of early retirement. I used to think: I’ll wait until I retire and have a proper tilt at it.
The idea has been at the back of my mind since then … so just the 14 years before I put it into action. He was accurate: my puzzle was all over the place and I learned a lot from him.
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