Become an author!

Help Wanted: Cruciverbalists

Really. We need more people creating cryptic crosswords. If you've scanned Amazon for cryptic crossword books, you know. There are few reasonable books available for Canadians and Americans. So, I'm suggesting to you: jump in and become an author.

What to Expect

The materials listed on the previous post would cost you around $200 US.

Your first book of 40 puzzles could take about 300 to 400 hours to complete. Expect to earn about $3 to $4 per hour if your book sells reasonably well. Ok, you don't get into this for the money. Maybe think of it as a public service for people like us, starved for good puzzles.

How to Start

Hopefully, you read a lot. I got into this by keeping a notebook next to me while reading. Whenever I found a word that looked like a candidate for a cryptic, I would jot it down and maybe take a stab at a clue for it.

What makes a good candidate word? The best advice is to look for words or phrases (15 characters or less, but more than 3) that

• have one word embedded within another ('containers'). E.g., k(now)ing
• are made up of two or more words, not part of the meaning of the original word or phrase ('charades'). E.g., at+ten+dance
• reversed make another word
• can make a new word when a letter or two are removed from or added to the head, tail (or both), or middle
• work with a combination of the above

I usually don't try to find anagrams or make up hidden word clues while gathering words. The reason is that I don't like to have more than a third of the clues in a puzzle involve anagrams, and I avoid using more than two hidden word clues in any puzzle¹. If you tend to look for and build clues using other than those two clue types, you will gain a lot more useful clues. Too many of one type of clue in any puzzle makes the puzzle a lot less interesting.

After I had a few hundred clues, I learned Python and SQL (BTW, I was a programmer for 36 years), and created a nice little database to keep track of which words and clues I had used and which puzzle they went into. I wanted to avoid having multiple uses of the same word in the book; a problem that I've seen in other setters (especially one who seems to have about 30 books available). However, with such volume it may be inevitable but not in the same book. 'Salmagundi' (a mixture of things) twice in the same book?. Probably, you will get stuck reusing a word once in awhile but try to avoid it, or at least use a completely different clue for it.

1 This comes from Cox and Rathvon, RandomHouse Guide to Cryptic Crosswords, worth a look if you can find it. It has puzzles plus a guide for puzzle makers. Although $35 is a ridiculous price (Amazon).