Life And The Art Of The Cryptic Crossword

Cryptic crossword
Image for representation only

 

Just the other day, after finishing a healthy breakfast of two digestive biscuits, a cup of tea with nothing, and half a glass of orange juice, I happened to glance at a news item which lit up my eyes.

Now you may wonder what this news could be that brought a smile to the face of a man who hadn’t tasted fine food since the year 900 AD under the doctor’s orders.

Among the political wheeling dealings, promises of a bright future, man’s inhumanity to man, accidents, brutality and tips on the life married, was a small little story which said, “Intelligent people always solve crosswords.

The truth is that I have been a crossword solver since the days in college. And I never started with the easy ones but straight with the cryptic kind.

The Times of India then carried the ultimate puzzle, straight from the UK (it now appears in the Economic Times).

Now you must be wondering if, I am one of those intelligent fellows, with thick glasses, a glint in the eye, an unkempt beard and a know-all sort of look.

Absolutely NO. On the contrary, I was an ordinary sort of person with a non-descript look who you wouldn’t look at once, let alone twice.

I was the sort of fellow who would melt in the background easily without being noticed.

So coming back to the crossword, how on earth can a man, whose intelligence ranked par with an ant, with the latter winning hands down, could be a crossword solver, first-class?

The answer is simple. Blame it on the schooling you know. The school I went to taught us British curriculum, believe it or not.

So here I was mugging about the industrial revolution instead of India’s Independence struggle and reading about Jethro Tull (not the band, silly, but the agriculturist) instead of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru.

The geographical locations of Hartford, Hereford and Hampshire were extremely easy to locate over Assam, Tripura and Meghalaya.

Now, the guy who sets these crossword is British, and an absolute Englishman at the core.

So if this chap thinks he is intelligent by coming up with clues which are rather British, then he obviously, couldn’t fool many of us, considering our backgrounds.And if the guys thinks he has bowled the perfect googly, pitching on leg and taking off, by using simple words like sailor, bill, port then sorry old boy, we have your clues in our grasp.

So when you say sailor we counter it with – Jack, AB or Salt, bill means use ac, soldier is RA, RE, GI and port is Rio.

And if you throw down a clue like Irish question involves a disputed country (4) then we know the answer is Iraq – Irish = IRA and question = Q. Voila.

And if you put one across like Refurbished star brewery is short of English fruit (10) – the answer is – come on, you go on and try it.

But let me assure you. It has nothing to do with intelligence. It is the case of inadvertently knowing things English, which matter for a typically British crossword.

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Babu Kalyanpur
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