Through my teens and early twenties I would have breakfast, sometimes with my parents but often alone, at a local diner which was run by a family friend named Paula. Between cooking orders she'd come to the counter and we'd work as a team to solve the daily crossword in the Boston Herald, an American style, straight puzzle. I loved these days. I loved the solving a puzzle with a friend and occasional diner who'd chip in an answer here and there. This is small town at its best.
I went to university and found not as many puzzle solvers and a poverty that made buying a daily paper impossible. Instead my cafeteria friends and I would play epic Gin Rummy games. Hard to believe that was what uni kids in the 90's were doing but we sometimes had people waiting their turn to sit in the next hand. You have a couple hours between classes? Gin rummy. Ask me to play now and you'll have to explain the rules. I don't know the official rules because we made up our own. (Yelling and pointing "Fuck You!" for anyone found hogging the aces was one)
At 23 I moved to Scotland and got married. It was a place where breakfast at a diner was a solitary affair. You don't talk to strangers and strangers don't talk to you. Having a puzzle in front of you is not an invitation to socialise - it's a wall shutting you out from everyone else - I'm busy doing this, leave me alone. New rules again. I didn't like these rules. Even worse, the puzzles in the paper were weird.
I tried asking others why the puzzles were different and I couldn't get an explanation I was happy with - "They're cryptic" seemed to validate my opinion but wasn't much of an explanation. I abandoned trying and just waited for my Games magazine to come (a continued present from my Mom) until they closed down again and I was without puzzles for several years.
In 2006 I made my NYR to finally understand cryptic crosswords. I bought books explaining them and a couple of collections - Big Book of The Daily Telegraph Cryptic Crossword #16 and Secrets Of The Setters - How To Solve The Guardian Crosswords by Hugh Stevenson. I read them - well I tried to read them. I tried the puzzles and got no where thinking if I just bashed through some kind of pattern would emerge, something would be recognisable. No offence meant to Hugh, I just don't think I was quite in the headspace to understand with the distractions of my then 6 & 2 year old daughters. I was trying to solve cryptic clues with a plain clue mentality. I think at that point I managed to be able to spot anagrams as the few puzzles I tried (And I don't know if reading a book on how to solve Guardian puzzles and then trying to solve Telegraph puzzles was the problem?) but what was missing was the ability to recognise things like "around" = CA or C and "About" can mean so many things it's impossible to assign it one job. There was little solid ground for me to get a footing and eventually I put the challenge aside and decided I'd train to run a half marathon instead - that would be easier.
2014 I renewed my NYR challenge to understand cryptic crosswords. I started with the Geelong Advertiser as it had a puzzle with cryptic and quick clues, and The Age. I'd buy the paper each day and try to reverse solve the clues. On a good day I might get five answers which one could hardly consider satisfying. I was also getting frustrated because I did not know why this part of the clue meant that part of the answer.
After a few months of this I was making very short progress. One particular day I was having a rant about something and my husband suggested "Why don't you blog about this stuff. You're a good blogger." which was more likely his plea for me to stop talking to him about puzzle frustration because he really doesn't care (Same goes for me having to listen to his rants about software releases and progress on data blah blahs) and perhaps find like minded people. Find my own online diner gang of puzzle people.
I started the blog and Twitter account on a Monday morning, May 5th, 2014. I used the current puzzle - the LR in the picture at the top of the blog. My original idea was, if the cryptic stuff didn't take off I always have crochet - there's a massive online community for yarn craft. Turns out I needn't have worried. Although the traffic here is small I'm overwhelmed by the joy of finding fellow solvers. People who are happy to contribute to solutions and give background on why a thing is thing in a clue. I've found my diner.
I put focus to the big challenge: Solving the DA puzzles. I found The D.A. Trippers and lurked a while, then once I launched "Crypticrochet" I asked questions, opening up as a total noob. I broke down every clue and wanted to understand all the thinking and mechanics behind them. Then all the other compilers. One clue at a time, uncovering new elements, new abbreviations, the scary world of cricket and so on. DA causes enough puzzler's strife that a support group was inevitable.
I was never a big fan of Twitter, preferring Facebook but I gave it another try with this puzzle angle. I found most of my puzzle friends there and have learned, through trial and error, how to use Twitter as a networking tool. I really need to thank @LRxword especially for his willingness to share and support my blog on Twitter and for introducing me to more cryptic fans.
At the end of July last year a friend in the Cryptic Crossword Society on Facebook asked if anyone thought opening a second group exclusively for learners would be be good; a place for new solvers to understand what cryptic clues were and how to solve them and also start to write clues with feedback available. I instantly replied yes! We had the Cryptic Crossword Learners group up within an hour. I designed an image and we were off. That group currently has just over 2,600 members in only 9 months and it's been great to see people go from absolute beginners to writing their own clues over in CCS with confidence. My other diners.
I really did not expect to be able to say: I achieved my New Years' Resolution. How often do hear someone say that? I can now solve a cryptic crossword puzzle in the newspaper. What I don't understand, I know I have some great people around me I can ask for support. That's a wonderful feeling, so I thank all of you for your contributions, even if it was to say I had completely screwed something up.
I have trounced my NYR so hard that I have compiled my first puzzle. I was still fiddling with it last night, and it's not perfect and most likely sucks but I did one. I used Crossfire for the Mac. There's no theme, I didn't pay any attention to where to put hard or easy clues or any other kind nuance. I just copied a grid, let the program fill in words, edited out the weird ones, wrote the clues, checked they worked and here's the result:
I'm envious and in awe that DA can get a puzzle done start to finish in three hours. That's what thirty years of experience can bring. I'll put the solution up tomorrow, but let me know what you think.
Thanks again to you all for helping me achieve my goal. You've helped keep it fun an interesting which is the best motivation to keep learning anyone can ask for. I had thought once I had a good understanding of cryptic crosswords I'd drop the blog and move onto something else, but I've had so much fun from it that I'm keen to keep it going. Thank my husband for getting me to start this in the first place.
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