Anagram
Rearrange the letters of the fodder. The definition still tells you the answer.
Watch formixed, broken, confused, wild, shaken, scrambled, crazy, off, upset
NOTES → STONE · scattered
How it plays →Clue Guide
Fourteen cryptic clue types
Every cryptic clue is built from one of 14 devices, grouped into three families. Click any card for a full walkthrough — how the trick works, a worked example solved step by step, and how to spot it in the wild.
Letterplay
4 typesAnagrams, hidden words, reversals, and letter selectors — the building blocks of cryptic wordplay.
Selector
Take only some letters: first, last, odd, even, or the middle of the fodder.
Watch forfirst, initially, head / last, finally, tail / oddly, every other / heart, middle, core
CANDLE → C N E · oddly
How it plays →Hidden
The answer sits verbatim inside the clue text, usually straddling word boundaries.
Watch forin, within, hidden, part of, some of, buried, lurking, sheltered
waTERMELon → TERM · buried inside
How it plays →Reversal
Spell a word backwards. On a grid, direction words double as reversal flags.
Watch forback, backward, returning, reversed, overturned, up, west, recalled, flipped
DESSERTS → STRESSED · backwards
How it plays →Wordplay
5 typesCharades, containers, deletions, homophones, and the art of reading a clue twice.
Charade
Stick two or three synonyms together, end to end, to build the answer.
EAR + NEST → EARNEST
How it plays →Symbol
Swap in a letter that stands for something: N = north, P = parking, O = nothing.
O = zero · N = north · P = parking
How it plays →Container
Put one word inside another. The indicator names the insertion.
Watch forin, inside, holding, around, clutching, swallowing, enclosing, without
T ( R ) AP → TRAP · R held in TAP
How it plays →Deletion
Remove the head, tail or heart of a word and keep what is left.
Watch forheadless, endless, heartless, beheaded, curtailed, nearly, almost, gutted
CART → CAR · endless
How it plays →Homophone
The fodder is not spelled like the answer — it only sounds like it.
Watch forheard, sounds like, reportedly, we hear, aloud, on the radio, they say
NIGHT → KNIGHT · they say
How it plays →Weirdplay
5 typesThe advanced toolbox: double definitions, rebuses, homoglyphs, substitutions, and foreign words.
Translation
A foreign word does the work. A city or country name is usually the flag.
Watch forin Paris, in Berlin, in Madrid, German, French, Spanish
chat (French) → CAT
How it plays →Homoglyph
Play with what a letter looks like: W is an upside-down M, C is half an O.
Watch forupside-down, turned, half, bent, backwards, on its head
M upside-down → W
How it plays →Double Definition
Two separate definitions of one word, bolted together with no wordplay at all.
FIRM → solid + company
How it plays →Rebus
Digits and letters stand in for sounds: B4 = before, GR8 = great, M8 = mate.
B4 · GR8 → BEFORE · GREAT
How it plays →Substitution
Swap one letter of a real word for another. The indicator flags the change; the build shows the exact replacement.
Watch forwith a change of heart, after a letter swap, when one becomes another, after replacing one letter
COT → CUT · O becomes U
How it plays →Think you can spot them all?
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