I was first introduced to cryptic crosswords in 2022 by a friend. In August 2023, I became sufficiently interested to take out a subscription to the Times Crossword Club. I have been attempting to improve since then, with steady progress apart from a hiatus from January—April 2026. Perhaps I was crossworded out after 3 years. Hopefully I’ll return stronger!
Many newspapers regularly publish ‘quick cryptics’, which, despite the name, require considerable practice to get the hang of. For example, I estimate it would take someone with good general knowledge and a quick mind a year of daily completion of the Times Quick Cryptic to reliably get their completion time in under 15 minutes. Quick cryptics tend to avoid obscure words as answers, and to be smaller (at 11×11) than full cryptics. This doesn’t always mean they’re easier – there is much variation.
Around March 2024, I finally managed to start completing the full cryptics–although it would be at least another year before I expected to complete 4+ out of 7 Times Cryptics in a typical week–and my interest shifted to these. I’m still into quick cryptics, but more as a race to see if I can get good times (under 4′ for the Times Quick Cryptics published on weekdays is a good time). Good times in the 15×15 depends more on the difficulty of that days’s puzzle, but very roughly speaking, under 15′ is good, under 10′ is very good, and under 7′ is elite.
I have constructed a few cryptic crosswords (eg here) with the help of Crosshare. Try them out!
I published some preliminary suggested norms for Vietnamese cryptic crosswords in 2023, but lost them along with my old website. The beginnings of a rewrite are here.
The Listener: Road to First Solve
The Listener crossword is arguably the Everest of the British cryptic landscape. It is a barred-grid puzzle notorious for its thematic complexity, unnumbered clues, grid manipulations, and the sheer intellectual stamina required just to understand what the setter is asking of you. I am currently documenting my “Road to First Solve”—a systematic attempt to bridge the massive gap between mastering the daily 15×15 and successfully cracking a Listener without resorting to message boards. It is a gruelling exercise in advanced cryptography as much as it is in wordplay.
Mephisto: Road to First Solve
The Sunday Times Mephisto is a different breed of monster. While the standard daily cryptic relies heavily on lateral thinking and colloquialisms, the Mephisto is an exercise in pure, obscure vocabulary, tethered exclusively to the heavy, physical volume of Chambers Dictionary. The wordplay is strictly Ximenean and flawlessly fair, but the answers are frequently arcane—obsolete Scottish agricultural terms, obscure biological classifications, and forgotten poetry. This section will track my progress in tuning my brain to the precise, mechanical frequency required to confidently dismantle a Mephisto.
The Typology of Crosswordese
If you spend enough time in the grid, you quickly realise that setters share a highly specific, slightly archaic dialect. Certain words exist almost entirely because they are incredibly useful for grid construction. To shortcut the learning curve, I am building an ongoing taxonomy of these frequent offenders. This enterprise categorises the classic tropes of “crosswordese”—the obscure garden plants, the invariably specific types of seabird, the heraldic terms, and the architectural features—that trip up beginners but serve as the bedrock of a veteran solver’s arsenal.
Times for the Times
No solver becomes elite in a vacuum. It is vital to give credit where it is overwhelmingly due: I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to the bloggers and the community at Times for the Times. For anyone looking to improve, parsing a completed grid and understanding why an answer is correct is the only way to genuinely level up. The daily unpicking of clues by the TfT team is an indispensable resource that demystifies the setter’s logic and serves as the ultimate daily masterclass in cryptic mechanics.
The Foundation: Reading Ximenes
To truly appreciate—or attempt to construct—a cryptic crossword, you must understand the architectural blueprints of the craft. Derrick Macnutt, writing under the pseudonym Ximenes, codified the strict structural rules of fairness, grammatical precision, and elegance that govern the modern cryptic puzzle. His seminal work, Ximenes on the Art of the Crossword, is mandatory reading. It is not just a historical artefact; it is the theoretical bedrock of the entire discipline. You can (and should) read the text in its entirety here.