We are introducing special rules for the Guardian Quick Cryptic blogs, the new 11×11 format to teach cryptic crosswords:
We will delete any post that:
- disparagingly suggests the crosswords are easy and/or
- brags about a specified fast solving time (relative i.e. quicker/slower than last time is fine)
and point to this announcement.
Thank you everyone who is positively embracing the new Quick Cryptic Crossword in the Guardian. It has been brilliant to see others encouraging and supporting those beginners who are using them as a tool to learn the dark art of cryptic crosswords.
Unfortunately, we have found negative or bragging posts can set the tone for everyone else. I volunteered to blog this new format to help learners, not intimidate them with flashy tricks. These crosswords are designed to be accessible to support people new to cryptic crosswords and neither the puzzles nor the blogs are targeted at proficient solvers, although those coming to support have been amazing, so thank you.
Whole-heartedly welcome this step!
Well said Shanne!
Good policy. Thanks for putting it in place.
Yes, spot on!
👍 💡
Hear hear.
Good stuff! I confess to finding the “simple/easy/gentle” descriptions of crosswords, and statements/assumptions that everyone knew crossword language a little off-putting when I began, it would have been easy to feel stupid and I know I am not stupid. Realising many commentators have been doing this for many years, being tenacious, and the occasional encouraging responses I got from people in the comments and their replies kept me from giving up… and now I do nearly all the crosswords almost daily and enjoy them even when I can only do half of them! So my thanks also to the whole community of friendly
commenters.
Excellent. Couldn’t agree more. The more people who are lured into solving/attempting to solve cryptic puzzles can only be a good thing.
Seconded.
Currently having fun working through the Quick Cryptic with jumper junior. Very useful.
Thank you.
Any/all help is so gratefully received. The time and expertise you guys & girls donate to the site is fantastic.
“It’s only easy if you know the answer”
Thus, I find almost every clue very, very difficult.
Excellent decision, I totally agree with this policy.
Great stuff – that is the way it should be.
I wouldn’t object if the same rules applied to the cryptic blogs as well. Not that I am discouraged by comments that break them (it’s far too late for that), just irritated.
One of the things I found discouraging at first was hearing an ingenious or amusing clue I had met for the first time dismissed as “that old chestnut”. Familiarity breeds contempt, I suppose.
I may have been mildly guilty of this sin a few weeks ago when these were introduced, not having fully realised their intended clientele.
I’ve not been inclined to visit quick cryptic blogs since, despite having done them, as my reasons for visiting others don’t really apply to these: namely to praise good clues, groan at one or two, and to seek explanations for any that I’ve been unable to solve or parse. If I were to visit the quick cryptic blogs, I’d probably just say “Good fun”, which is not all that illuminating.
These will be an ideal source for any friends who express a desire to dip their toe into the world of cryptics, if I find any. Most of my acquaintances think I’m weird. 🙁
GDU@15 most of my acquaintances are the same, which is why I really enjoy the community here. In day-to-day life, no one shares my enthusiasm for cryptic crosswords. My wife has a special tolerant and supportive facial expression for when I start excitedly explaining a particular clue, but I suspect her internal monologue is willing me to shut up.
Gladys@14 – It’s a tricky one, because naturally, there are some very well-worn ideas that have been used many times precisely because they’re good or they work. First time, it’s funny/clever, second time it’s “Ah yes, I’ve seen that before”. By the tenth time… Your objection is fair, but I also have sympathy for those who’ve been there and done that.
Wholeheartedly agree with these rules. The restricted 11×11 is a great initiative to help the early stages of getting into cryptics, but that needs to be partnered with a community that’s welcoming to solvers of all levels.
Completely agree for the Quick Cryptic but wouldn’t want this applied to the normal cryptic (well maybe the solving times but that gets policed fairly effectively by the forum members). I quite like seeing whether other members found the regular crossword difficult / easy and I find it interesting rather than irritating that we often experience the same crossword differently
What a shame special rules are needed, but glad they’ve been introduced! I regard myself as a perpetual beginner in that I never seem to improve but keep trying! My only slight grumble is that the Quick Cryptic grid is quite small. I’d like a full size crossword with the same level of clueing, though you could argue we already have that with the Quiptic, another favourite.
Very well said.
I’m a Yank whose lifelong experience with American crosswords leaves me with a long backlog of the relevant Yoko ONO/Brian ENO knowledge and wildly unprepared to tackle the east-of-pond cryptics. This site has been invaluable for getting in the groove and seeing how they work – I only wish I had looked into simpler ones when I was starting out. Since I’m still starting out, the new series seems useful. I’ll check it out.
The New Yorker recently discontinued its Sunday cryptic, sadly. It was pitched at a less-seasoned solving population. The archive is there and anyone looking to get some traction with easier – but still fun! – cryptics can find a bunch of them on the NYer website under Puzzles & Games. They have also substituted Mini puzzles a couple of times a week about which, the less said the better. They are still putting their hardest puzzle of the week on Mondays which is now their sole remaining redeeming quality, in my eyes.
An excellent idea
Well said. I could have done with this when I started out! In fact, it’s still helpful.
Can you tell the intellectual snobs on the Guardian quiptic pages to stop telling us how “gentle” and “straightforward” the quiptics are?
I read these new Special rules for the Guardian Quick Cryptic blogs in under a minute! 🙂
(Sorry, I’ll get my coat.)
Excellent rules. I have occasionally found the comments on the main blog off-putting – though without 15 squared I wouldn’t have even reached my current level of incompetence. (Can I at least boast that I have finished a Picaroon puzzle? Not something I thought I would ever write.)
Also thanks to the Guardian for a brilliant innovation.
I wholeheartedly agree with the new rules. Even on the standard cryptic blog I find comments like “did this before the commute had finished” off-putting.
Good luck to all the newbies and do perservere. You’ll find some setters easier than others and some whose wavelength you’re on and others you’re not!!
Wholeheartedly agree. Incidentally, people wanting access to more approachable cryptics could be pointed in the direction of the online Guardian archive. There are a huge number of previous Quiptics available, going back to 1999.
I think this is brilliant. I have a friend who stopped using this site because of the boasting know-alls and because they were lambasted for saying so. So BRAVO 15^2.
My heart has recently been going out to Steffen@10, so very dogged and determined, and yet so (seemingly) downhearted. I definitely felt the same when I began; I knew no one else who did cryptics and the internet was in its infancy, and then I was given a copy of Chambers Crossword Dictionary and the introductory pages were a MASSIVE REVELATION, especially Don Manley’s essay. I very heartily recommend this book and I see that today the 2000 edition is less than £4 (post free) on Amazon. That’s less than a pint 🙂 (I don’t know if later editions have the same prefatory material). I think it took me 2 or 3 years to actually finish a Guardian crossword and I do still struggle from time to time, especially when I’m ill, and I wouldn’t then be without unscrambleDOTnet, although it’s not perfect, for example it didn’t grind today’s “rude farts”. Please persevere, I promise that one day you will feel the most immense satisfaction. The very best of luck to you all.
Unfortunately what many of the condescending commenters seem to forget is that they weren’t born able to solve a cryptic, even they had to start somewhere! And the chestnuts only become old once you’ve built up a body of experience.
Sad that you have to have these special rules in place to stop the smug harshing other folks’ squee.
Good move… sometimes blogs do go a little MMA… which might be amusing as an onlooker but not if ur actually in the octagon…
Gladys@14, Catnip@17 et al, my reaction to an “old chestnut” is usually to praise a deity, as I value a leg up when solving! Take anagram indicators, which can range from the straightforward to the frankly utterly astounding, which can provoke a certain resentment from experienced solvers. I’m grateful if I can easily deduce that the clue IS actually an anagram!
All encouragement to new solvers, we’ve all been there, and I find it’s very easy to feel baffled on a daily basis..
Hear Hear Shanne.
I have nearly always found the commentators on 15 squared to be very helpful and kind. And the bloggers even more so.
The Quick Cryptic is an excellent idea. I hope that it gets a lot of novices (after three or four years I now think of myself as a beginner rather than a novice) involved in cruciverbalism.
I think these rules would be followed naturally by anyone with an ounce of emotional intelligence (or genuine, altruistic interest in getting beginners ‘hooked’!)
On the other hand, they shouldn’t, I believe, apply to the ‘main’ crossword blogs. When one has been infuriated (having just solved one of their favourite setters’ puzzles, though it may have seemed – sadly – less challenging than one may have expected and hoped for) by other commenters complaining about it’s ‘difficulty’ and, worse, actually baselessly traducing a particularly brilliantly crossword, then are the more ‘seasoned’ solvers supposed to stay shtoom?!
(Undrell@31 – I respectfully disagree; I find that those who quibble over unusual anagrinds are often not seasoned (though they may wish to appear so!) I myself cannot think of a single example, in over half a century of daily solving, of an anagrind that I’ve considered unfair; indeed, the more selcouth the better!)
THANK YOU! Learning each week and have given up so many times before but loving this level – feeling confident to at least have a go at some other quick cryptics. Today no 8 the first one I have completed without any help 🤩
These are very good rules, and I am grateful to the many people who have been following these rules all along through their own good judgement and kindness to others.
I am slightly puzzled by William F P’s comment @33, which seems to be putting two things in the same bucket of undesirables: (1) someone finding a crossword to be difficult; (2) someone complaining that a crossword is unfair.
It is always acceptable to find a crossword difficult. No one else has any say in the matter. If someone else found that same crossword to be easy, then they could choose to say so (but I don’t see why they need to).
If, on the other hand, someone claims that a crossword is unfair, then it seems entirely reasonable to gently suggest otherwise if, indeed, you found it to be superbly well constructed and not at all unfair. But again I suggest kindness. Everyone has their own search space when seeking an answer to a clue, and if a particular crossword is filled with clues that operate outside that search space, then the crossword may seem unfair to them (even if *you* liked it).
To characterize these requests for kindness as “are the more ‘seasoned’ solvers required to stay shtoom?!” seems to me to be slightly missing the point.
I make a confession. I just now typed
elevensquared.net
into my browser to see if some enterprising supporter of the Quick Cryptic has acquired the domain name. It turns out that no one has.
As an enthusiastic beginner, thank you for the policies and thank you for this website! Looking forward to improving my skills with this ‘dark art’ 🙂
This is an excellent innovation, which I’ve only just come across. I hope it’s a resounding success!
I read these rules in less than 30 seconds. Can anyone beat that? 😝