… where the last five letters are reversed for the memorable answer MEMOIR. To the beginners: any other questions? To the addicts: any much-loved examples to share? And to everyone, let's finish with a cheeky clue from Anarche's recent Leveson-themed puzzle …Ģ2d Account involving married footballer and me appearing in the Mirror (6) … where you knock back A SIP for the city with an A-list listing building, PISA. Here's another from Rufus:ġ1ac There's a marked inclination here to knock back a drink (4) The fun of a reversal clue comes when the expression hinting at the device fits smoothly into the surface meaning of the clue. ![]() … which asks you to put one thing inside another, as described here: in this case you whack N for "name" inside LORE for "learning" and reverse the lot for ENROL. Then again, you may have to assemble two or more parts and then reverse the lot, as with this from the Observer's Everyman …Ģ5ac Learning about name written back to front in register (5) … where the grass is HAY and "love" takes its Wimbledon sense of "O" twice for YAHOO. Here we combine RABBI and a reverse of NOT for RABBIT ON.ġ1ac Rude type making love twice on grass, perversely (5) Other times, it may be that only part of the answer is indicated by a reverse, like this from Hectence:Ģ5ac Holy man's not returned from ramble (6,2) The extra device ( as described here) is indicated by "somewhat": we take four of the letters of "snooker table" – KERT – and reverse them for the answer, TREK. Just like in the examples above, we have "trip" as a definition and "over" as our hint to go into reverse. These can also go backwards, as with this from Aardvark:Ģ6ac Trip over snooker table somewhat (4) An example is hidden answers, where you write in something hidden among the words of the clue. Setters being what they are, reversals can be combined with the other devices we've been looking at in this series. Of course, it would be no fun if you always merely took one word, reversed it and got another word. (Of course, "north" often simply means "N" that's how crosswords roll, I'm afraid.) It's not always that simple It's worth remembering that the "north" of a grid is taken to be the top, so "northwards", "heading north" and so on mean there's a good chance of a reversal. In downs, look for anything that might suggest going from low to high: up, climbing, rising and so on. In acrosses, keep your eyes peeled for any words that might mean "reversed": back, rearing, retreating and so on. So how to spot them?Īs the Rufus example shows, this is a device where the wordplay in across clues is different from that in down clues. This time, it's a down clue, so the instruction is to imagine a drink (LAGER) flowing from the bottom of the space up to the top to give the solution, defined as "fit for a king": REGAL. Or you can transcribe it slowly and neatly that's your choice. That instrument is the TUBA and you can triumphantly scrawl ABUT in your grid. Solving this is a matter of seeing, after some pondering, that it is made of a definition ("rest on"), then a word for an instrument and an instruction to write it backwards. ![]() The reversal is a device you can expect to find often in puzzles in its simplest form, it typically works with shortish words. "Return friends' makeup" is an expression you might plausibly hear outside of crosswords, with a sense that is immediately clear – albeit, as ever, irrelevant to the solving. Two other things about this clue: first, you can often ignore the punctuation in cryptics, in this case the apostrophe second, what a deft and economic "surface reading". The only word which works is PALS, which you can write in backwards to give the colloquial term for make-up, SLAP. But even the fanciest cosmetic counter doesn't have any SIMA, SORB or SDUB. This is an example of how the cryptic crossword can be easier than the quick: there are many four-letter words which mean "friends" – BUDS or BROS, say, or AMIS. What you're really being asked is to think of a word which both (a) means "makeup" and (b) is a word for "friends" when you "return" it: that is, when you spell it backwards. Here's an example from the setter Firefly: Whatever devices it uses, a cryptic clue offers you two chances to get the answer: a definition found either at the beginning or the end (in bold type in the examples below), and some wordplay (look out for the colours).
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