The clue workshop
Cryptic Workshop
Solve the clue. Understand the trick.
No daily editions of Cryptic Workshop are published yet. These are practice rounds: original, machine-validated and clearly labelled, but not yet through human editorial review. Difficulty labels are the author's intention, not calibrated evidence.
Master rounds are written for strong tile-game and cryptic-crossword players: obscure but valid vocabulary, denser puzzles and fewer helping hands. They are the hardest rounds here.
Gentle 12 rounds
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Standard 12 rounds
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Expert 18 rounds
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Master 16 rounds
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How to play
A workshop session of three cryptic clues. Each clue has a definition at one end and wordplay that builds the same answer. Solve them in any order; hints teach the trick step by step.
How a cryptic clue works
- Every clue has two parts: a definition (a plain meaning of the answer, always at the start or the end) and wordplay (a second route to the same letters).
- An indicator word tells you which kind of wordplay, or device, is in use. For example "upset" or "broken" often signals an anagram, and "returned" a reversal.
- The numbers in brackets give the answer's length, for example (6), or (4,3) for two words.
- Read the surface for its meaning, then read it again as a set of instructions.
Devices you will meet
- Anagram: rearrange the letters of some words in the clue.
- Hidden word: the answer sits inside consecutive letters of the clue, often across a space.
- Reversal: write a word backwards.
- Charade: join parts one after another.
- Container: put one part inside another.
- Deletion: remove a letter, for example the first ("headless").
- Initial letters: take the first letter of several words.
- Double definition: two different meanings of one word, side by side.
- Homophone: the answer sounds like another word ("we hear"). These are kept to standard UK pronunciation.
- Compound (Expert and Master): several operations nested, such as an anagram placed inside another word, or a charade written backwards. The result of one step is the material for the next.
- &lit and semi-&lit (Master): the whole clue, or a stretch of it that includes some of the wordplay, is also the definition.
- Cryptic definition (rare, Master only): no wordplay at all, just one deliberately misleading definition. These are always flagged as such in the explanation.
- Abbreviations are the conventional crossword ones, for example TA for thanks, O for ring, E for energy, T for time, P for quiet, R for right, N for new.
- Fair play: anagram material is always literal words from the clue, in order and side by side; indicators are standard ones that mean exactly one thing; containers and charades read in the order the indicator promises; every word of the clue is either definition, indicator or material (or a plain link word such as "is" or "from").
Playing a workshop
- Choose a clue from the tabs, type your answer and press Submit (or Enter). Clues can be solved in any order.
- Your answer must have exactly the number of letters in the brackets. Spaces, capitals and hyphens are ignored when checking.
- A wrong answer is not recorded against you: it is simply not accepted, and your letters stay so you can adjust them.
- When a clue is solved or revealed, its explanation card opens: definition, device, indicator, wordplay material and the exact letter operation.
- Move on with Next clue when you are ready. Nothing advances automatically and there is no timer.
Hints, step by step
- Each clue has its own ladder, taken in order: 1 identify the definition, 2 name the device, 3 highlight the indicator, 4 show the wordplay material, 5 show some letters.
- Highlights appear in the clue itself: the definition is underlined, the indicator is boxed and the wordplay material has a wavy underline, each also labelled in words.
- Hints never cost points. Your result records how many you took.
- Reveal the answer is available at any time after a confirmation. A revealed clue scores 0 and marks the round as assisted.
- Reveal all remaining ends the workshop with a revealed result.
Naming the device (optional practice)
- Gentle clues name their device for you.
- Standard clues offer a list of devices to practise naming before or after you solve. It never blocks answering.
- Expert clues keep that list closed until you ask for it.
- Master clues offer no device list at all. The hint ladder still names the device (and, for a compound clue, the operations it combines) when you take that step.
- A correct guess also counts as knowing the device, so the hint ladder skips that step. Guesses earn no points and cost nothing.
Scoring and difficulty
- Each clue is worth an equal share of 100, rounded once at the end. Only clues you solve yourself score.
- Gentle: direct definitions and a single named device (anagram, hidden word, reversal or initial letters).
- Standard: no device label, smoother surface readings, and charades, containers and double definitions join in.
- Expert: subtler indicators and definitions, and at most two devices combined in one clue.
- Master: written for a seasoned cryptic solver. Answers have at least seven letters, are real words a strong solver would know (not just anything in the Scrabble list), and clues are compound (anagram inside a container, subtractive anagram, reversed charade, reversed hidden word, selected letters in a charade, a homophone of a charade), &lit, double definitions with misleading surfaces, or an occasional flagged cryptic definition. Hints are the same ladder with no free device list.
- Each difficulty is a different set of clues. These labels are the author's intention and have not yet been calibrated with players.
Example
"Quiet: listen, upset (6)". The definition is "Quiet"; "upset" signals an anagram of LISTEN, giving SILENT.
Release status for Cryptic Workshop
- Engine rules and tests: passed · Pure engine and construction checker with unit tests (anagram, hidden offset, reversal, charade, container, deletion, initials, nested compound trees, &lit, subtraction, letter selection, homophone)
- Mechanical clue validation: passed · Every clue's wordplay is recomputed by validate.ts; semantic review is still open
- Browser walkthrough (keyboard, touch, refresh, hint, completion): passed · tests/e2e/cryptic-workshop.spec.ts
- Second-editor semantic review of every clue (docs/05): open · All original clues, including 48 Master and 18 added Expert clues with every synonym and homophone link, are listed in docs/REVIEW-LOG.md
- Human editorial review of every round: open
- Reviewed practice bank (10+ rounds per advertised difficulty): open
- 30 scheduled reviewed daily editions: open
- Approved dictionary membership layer: open
- Observed player pilot and difficulty calibration: open
- Manual screen-reader and real-device checks: open