In a normal crossword, each clue is basically a definition of the answer. In a cryptic crossword, you get two clues for the price of one: a wordplay clue and a definition. The tradeoff, though, is that the two clues are (if the cryptic is written well) seamlessly integrated, and that you don't know which is which. For example, "One waterfowl by city on the Nile" clues for "Aswan"; Aswan is a city on the nile, and "one waterfowl" is "a swan." There are many different kinds of wordplay, which are explained at that site up above: homophones, anagrams, and concatenations are probably the most common, with double definitions, embeddings, and a few other things also acceptable. There are lots of common abbreviations, as well: cardinal directions, states, chemical symbols, titles (such as "doctor"), and so forth. Initial letters (such as "front of elephant" meaning "e") are also abundant.

Whenever there is wordplay aside from concatenation or double-definition afoot, there will generally be a so-called "keyword." For instance, "scrambled," "doctored," and "mixed" are transparent keywords for anagrams; there are also other, more devious ones, such as "hurried." "To the north" or "to the back" are keywords for "in reverse." "In speech," "audience's," and "oral" are keywords for homophones. And so forth. Finding these keywords is often the key to solving a clue, as the keywords often quickly lead to discernment of the dividing point.

There is one more type of clue, and it is the sneakiest. A ! at the end of a clue (pronounced "bang") means that the same thing -- all of the clue -- codes for both the wordplay and the definition. For instance, "Down and out!" clues for "dejected"; "dejected" means down and out, "Down" stands for d, and "out" means "ejected" (in one meaning.) These are slick, and very hard to concoct, as you might imagine.

When doing cryptics, you will notice that each clue has a number in parentheses after it, such as "Parent's sister cracked a nut (4)." If you are any good at pattern recognition, you will notice that this is the number of letters in the answer. Since you already know this from the grid, you might wonder of what use this can possibly be. The answer is that not all answers are one word; thus, you could have something like "That is, what you might do to a wreck (2,3)", cluing for "TOWIT." Here, the (2,3) tells you that the answer is two words and that the first word is the first two letters of the answer and the second word the last three. You may also have hyphens, such as (4-5), cluing for a nine-letter hyphenated word with the hyphen after the fourth letter.

Anyway, I have so far created some number of these puzzles. (Note: For some time many of these puzzles violated standard cryptic ethics. These have all been remedied at this point.

• Puzzle 1 is my first effort. The grid is mongrel, to say the least, but other than that I think it's pretty good for a first attempt. (January, 2000)
• Puzzle 2 has a much nicer grid that Puzzle 1, and the clues also conform much better to cryptic standards. I also think it's easier. The tradeoff of the conforming, however, is that the grammar is quite rocky (ideally, the seamlessness mentioned above is achieved.) (April, 2000)
• Puzzle 3 is the first of my renewed efforts. I started writing cryptics again when, after doing quite a few, the clue for 1-across just popped into my head. "Hey!" I thought. "That's interesting." While it's unfair to say that the entire grid revolves around that clue, it was certainly the impetus to my second round of cryptic writing. It has quite a few lame clues, unfortunately. (September, 2000)
• Puzzle 4 is my first themed cryptic. Unfortunately, the theme clues are all exceedingly transparent... if you've heard of them, that is. (September, 2000)
• Puzzle 5 is another themed cryptic, much better than the previous one. The theme is in the clues, not the answers - and all of the theme clues are relatively well done (i.e. not forced.) (September, 2000)
• Puzzle 6 has been taken down because it's really ridiculous and not fit for general consumption.
• Puzzle 7 is a small and not very aesthetically pleasing grid. The "theme" behind this is multiple-word answers, something which I had very few of up to this point. Because of this imbalance, I resolved to write a cryptic with lots of them, partly to see if I could do it, and partly for the new experience. And it wasn't, in fact, that difficult, though this is definitely not my best work. (September, 2000)
• Puzzle 8 is themeless, and is I don't think overall as good as Puzzles 6 and 7. It has pretty good clues; it's just that they're not that clever, and the answers themselves are not that interesting or catchy or anything. (October, 2000)
• Puzzle 9 sacrifices difficulty for cleanliness; this is probably the easiest cryptic I've written thus far. There are a couple of cheats, but nothing major (you may not even notice.) (November, 2000)
• Puzzle 10 is the first effort of an older Mike. (December, 2005)
• Puzzle 11 is a labor of love I've been working on during boring seminar talks over the past few years. I like it. (October, 2006)
• This puzzle is a cooperative effort with Mark Penney. I wrote the grid, and he provided the majority of the clues. Note that the clues are much better than previous puzzles. (April, 2001)
• A collaborative effort with Joon Pahk; I wrote the grid, and most of the clues. (October, 2001)
• My second puzzle with Joon; we combined on the grid, and he wrote most of the clues, which are quite clever by and large. (November, 2001)

For cryptics not written by me, check out the Cru Cryptics Archive.
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