Cryptic Crossword Puzzles 'LINK' Download Free

Timer The Timer indicated by the clock icon begins counting as soon as you start the crossword. If you do not like working against the clock, select Menu then Hide at the top of the puzzle. Click/tap Show to restore your view of the Timer.

This daily brain-bending game is one of the best ways to test your puzzle-solving skills. In cryptic crossword, each clue is a cleverly disguised puzzle, and the goal is to use the clues that are given to figure out the correct word or phrase.

Cryptic Crossword Puzzles Download Free

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Fill Ins is like a clue-less crossword where you fill in the grid with the available words from the word bank. Each word corresponds to a row of cells - by length and by the letters that cross with the words in the intersected rows. Start by trying to match the longest word with its row.

The object of the game is to piece together the jigsaw puzzles as quickly as possible. This game is dynamic as with each match a new piece pops up on the board. The pictures change every time you play for a fresh experience. Beat the clock and finish them all!

Mahjongg: Age of Alchemy is a Mahjongg solitaire game in which the player must match tiles of the same kind in order to clear the board. Race against the clock to complete as many Mahjongg puzzles as you can!

The daily mini crossword puzzle is the perfect size for a quick break during the day. It's also great for kids or beginners who are just starting out with puzzles as it can usually be finished quicker.

This addicting game combines the best of word searching and crosswords. Challenge yourself by finding as many words as you can in a game board filled with letters. Outspell is designed to engage your mind while providing endless hours of entertainment.

With cleverly designed themes, each game brings its own unique twist to the classic crossword game. Whether you're a game enthusiast, puzzle master, or just someone looking for a fun challenge, Themed Crossword has something to offer.

A cryptic crossword is a crossword puzzle in which each clue is a word puzzle. Cryptic crosswords are particularly popular in the United Kingdom, where they originated,[1] as well as Ireland, Israel, the Netherlands, and in several Commonwealth nations, including Australia, Canada, India, Kenya, Malta, New Zealand, and South Africa. Compilers of cryptic crosswords are commonly called "setters" in the UK[2] and "constructors" in the US. Particularly in the UK, a distinction may be made between cryptics and "quick" (i.e. standard) crosswords, and sometimes two sets of clues are given for a single puzzle grid.

Cryptic crossword puzzles come in two main types: the basic cryptic in which each clue answer is entered into the diagram normally, and "themed" or "variety" cryptics, in which some or all of the answers must be altered before entering, usually in accordance with a hidden pattern or rule which must be discovered by the solver.

Cryptic crosswords originated in the UK. The first British crossword puzzles appeared around 1923 and were purely definitional, but from the mid-1920s they began to include cryptic material: not cryptic clues in the modern sense, but anagrams, classical allusions, incomplete quotations, and other references and wordplay. Torquemada (Edward Powys Mathers), who set for The Saturday Westminster from 1925 and for The Observer from 1926 until his death in 1939, was the first setter to use cryptic clues exclusively and is often credited as the inventor of the cryptic crossword.[3]

The first newspaper crosswords appeared in the Sunday and Daily Express from about 1924. Crosswords were gradually taken up by other newspapers, appearing in the Daily Telegraph from 1925, The Manchester Guardian from 1929 and The Times from 1930. These newspaper puzzles were almost entirely non-cryptic at first and gradually used more cryptic clues, until the fully cryptic puzzle as known today became widespread. In some papers this took until about 1960. Puzzles appeared in The Listener from 1930, but this was a weekly magazine rather than a newspaper, and the puzzles were much harder than the newspaper ones, though again they took a while to become entirely cryptic. Composer Stephen Sondheim, a lover of puzzles, is credited with introducing cryptic crosswords to American audiences, through a series of puzzles he created for New York magazine in 1968 and 1969.[4][5][6]

Torquemada's puzzles were extremely obscure and difficult, and later setters reacted against this tendency by developing a standard for fair clues, ones that can be solved, at least in principle, by deduction, without needing leaps of faith or insights into the setter's thought processes.

Here the composer intends the answer to be "derby", with "hat" the definition, "could be" the anagram indicator, and "be dry" the anagram fodder. I.e., "derby" is an anagram of "be dry". But "be" is doing double duty, and this means that any attempt to read the clue cryptically in the form "[definition] [anagram indicator] [fodder]" fails: if "be" is part of the anagram indicator, then the fodder is too short, but if it is part of the fodder, there is no anagram indicator; to be a correct clue it would have to be "Hat could be be dry (5)", which is ungrammatical. A variation might read Hat turns out to be dry (5), but this also fails because the word "to", which is necessary to make the sentence grammatical, follows the indicator ("turns out") even though it is not part of the anagram indicated.

Torquemada's successor at The Observer was Ximenes (Derrick Somerset Macnutt), and in his influential work, Ximenes on the Art of the Crossword Puzzle (1966), he set out more detailed guidelines for setting fair cryptic clues, now known as "Ximenean principles" and sometimes described by the phrase "square-dealing".[7] The most important of them are tersely summed up by Ximenes' successor Azed (Jonathan Crowther):

Most of the major national newspapers in the UK carry both cryptic and concise (quick) crosswords in every issue. The puzzle in The Guardian is well loved for its humour and quirkiness, and quite often includes puzzles with themes, which are extremely rare in The Times.[8]

Cryptic crosswords do not commonly appear in U.S. publications, although they can be found in magazines such as GAMES Magazine, The Nation, The New Yorker, Harper's, and occasionally in the Sunday New York Times. The New York Post reprints cryptic crosswords from The Times. In April 2018, The New Yorker published the first of a new weekly series of cryptic puzzles.[9] Other sources of cryptic crosswords in the U.S. (at various difficulty levels) are puzzle books, as well as UK and Canadian newspapers distributed in the U.S. Other venues include the Enigma, the magazine of the National Puzzlers' League, and formerly, The Atlantic Monthly. The latter puzzle, after a long and distinguished run, appeared solely on The Atlantic's website for several years, and ended with the October 2009 issue. A similar puzzle by the same authors now appears every four weeks in The Wall Street Journal, beginning in January 2010.[10] Cryptic crosswords have become more popular in the United States in the years following the COVID-19 lockdowns with several "indie" outlets and setters.[11]

Cryptic crosswords are very popular in Australia. Most Australian newspapers will have at least one cryptic crossword, if not two. The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age in Melbourne publish daily cryptic crosswords, including Friday's challenging cryptic by 'DA' (David Astle). "Lovatts", an Australian puzzle publisher, regularly issues cryptic crossword puzzle books.

A cryptic clue leads to its answer only if it is read in the right way. What the clue appears to say when read normally (the surface reading) is a distraction and usually has nothing to do with the clue answer. The challenge is to find the way of reading the clue that leads to the solution. A typical clue consists of two parts:

There are many sorts of wordplay, such as anagrams and double definitions, but they all conform to rules. The crossword setters do their best to stick to these rules when writing their clues, and solvers can use these rules and conventions to help them solve the clues. Noted cryptic setter Derrick Somerset Macnutt (who wrote cryptics under the pseudonym of Ximenes) discusses the importance and art of fair cluemanship in his seminal book on cryptic crosswords, Ximenes on the Art of the Crossword (1966, reprinted 2001).[12]

There are many "code words" or "indicators" that have a special meaning in the cryptic crossword context. (In the example above, "about", "unfinished" and "rising" all fall into this category). Learning these, or being able to spot them, is a useful and necessary part of becoming a skilled cryptic crossword solver.

A typical cryptic crossword grid is generally 1515, with half-turn rotational symmetry. Unlike typical American crosswords, in which every square is almost always checked (that is, each square provides a letter for both an across and a down answer), only about half of the squares in a cryptic crossword are checked.

Variety (UK: "advanced") cryptic crosswords typically use a "barred grid" with no black squares and a slightly smaller size; 1212 is typical. Word boundaries are denoted by thick lines called "bars". In these variety puzzles, one or more clues may require modification to fit into the grid, such as dropping or adding a letter, or being anagrammed to fit other, unmodified clues; unclued spaces may spell out a secret message appropriate for the puzzle theme once the puzzle is fully solved. The solver also may need to determine where answers fit into the grid. 2351a5e196