Crosswords

I can't believe I haven't yet mentioned crosswords in my blog. They are something I have been trying to get into for a few years. I have had at least two "How to solve cryptic crosswords" books, and in recent weeks I definitely feel I have improved a notch or two.

My most recent "how to solve cryptic crosswords" is actually really hard. I look at that at lunch times, whilst in the evenings I have ago at my collection of Daily Mail crosswords. And I generally seem to make more headway with the Daily Mail ones.

So today, I figured I had some time to kill and picked up a copy of "The Sun". Which I understand to contain a good "entry level" crossword. And amazingly enough, I finished it. I was dead chuffed. Not only is it the first time ever that I have finished a cryptic crossword, but it is the first time I have ever answered all the clues in any crossword. (Excluding, perhaps, exceptionally easy ones. For example the ones aimed a children. Where the answers are "Honey", "Tasty", "Monster", "Breakfast" and "Spoon".)

Believe it - cos it's true.

I didn't do it completely unaided. But I honestly believe you are allowed to use dictionaries and the internet when doing cryptic crosswords. Especially hard ones. I worked out that "mountaineer" is an anagram of "enumeration", but failed to spot that "Esperanto" is an anagram of "person eat". I did however identify that I was to make an anagram of those letters and the answer might be "a set of words".

I had to use the straight clues to help in a few places. But I only wrote the answer in when I understood the cryptic bit. For example, "The others come down and hold". The straight clue is "curb, control", and using the letters in the grid I decided that the answer was probably "restrain". But how to get that from "The others come down". I believe the answer is "The others" = "rest" and "come down" = "rain".

This is the pastry and coffee I enjoyed while attempting the crossword.

Before my books got me solving the occasional clue, they taught me a few things about crosswords. Like, the Sun is easier than the Times, but it still a proper crossword. I also learnt that anagrams and "hidden word" clues are easy. And the frequency of those clues is an indication of how hard the crossword is. By that reckoning this Sun crossword is particularly easy.

Out of the 24 clues, eight were anagrams, and three were hidden words. I don't think there are any abbreviations at all. The very first thing I learnt about crosswords was that "queen" gives you the letters "ER". The second was that I should keep an open mind about that. There are lots of other crossword devices that were missing from this puzzle. For example references to historic figures or literature, references to other clues and that thing where consecutive clues are somehow linked and joined with ellipses. There was also a lack of clues going "back" or "up".

One of the many things I like about crosswords is that in both tangible and intangible ways you get into the mindset of the compiler. They might not be so big on abbreviations, for example! In my Daily Mail crossword book, I also appreciate how there are connections between puzzles. For example the first five all had a clue with the words "open course" in them. From looking at the answers I decided this was probably something to do with golf. Needlesstosay, I didn't get any of those clues. On the other hand, the next puzzles all contained clues about "stones". See if you can get them all!

• Stone could make them stay (8)
• Stone Oswald's assassin (4)
• Stone endless old poetess with anger (8)
• Stone's barely metamorphosed without one (5)
• An entrance of stone (5)

In other news I impulse bought a "cocquille saint Jacques". I had heard of this recipe from Michel Roux Junior's book, and so naturally thought it was an exciting delicacy that takes hours to prepare. Turns out that it is £1.49 from Morrison's and you just bung it in the oven for 12 minutes. It was pretty good too. Like a little fish pie.

Photographing food is an art in itself. But I definitely think my shell is the wrong way round.