British Crosswords
It's been a while since the British claimed superpower status over anything.
French claim to have the best food, Germans the best cars and Americans the most money,
the best sex and the funniest comedians. The British have spotted dick.
But the British reign supreme over one thing: the crossword puzzle. Throw away
Russell and Whitehead and Turing and Hawking, and the UK is still an intellectual powerhouse for its engaging puzzles, puzzles that make their American cousins look like idiot manchildren.
Aside from the familiar grid and across/down arrangement, a British-style, or
"cryptic," crossword is nothing like the average American puzzle. That's because each clue is a puzzle in itself — whereas American clues are basically quizzes, British puzzles use anagrams, homophones, charades and other artifices to encode an answer, often behind several layers of disguise. An American puzzle might clue "carpenter" as "wood worker"; a British puzzle would clue it as "fish mounted over a door sign."
American puzzles are witless and boring. Aside from the occasional lame pun
("Surfer's stop" is "TV channel"), they rely on rote knowledge of facts and synonyms, and they gauge their difficulty by the relative obscurity of their clues. Brute force, a good dictionary and patience are all you need. British puzzles, on the other hand, force the solver to think creatively, to match wits with the puzzler and follow the twists and turns of phrase to find the answer. (Ironic, seeing as how "thinking outside the box" is such a mantra of American business.) A single clue might employ multiple synonyms, instructions on changing words around and even a hint at the answer. For example, "take off with a sinful vixen" could be the clue for "she devil." "Take off" is a synonym for "shed," but it is also an instruction to "take off" an element of the answer, in this case the "d." "Sinful" is a synonym for "evil," and "sinful vixen" is a hint to the final answer. Wee!
A good puzzle is never a one-sided affair. It is a competition between the puzzler and the solver, with the puzzler throwing out riddles and traps to frustrate and entice the solver. A jigsaw puzzle, for example, could be just a mass-produced Milton Bradley job, with four or five preset shapes, or it could be a handcrafted affair, with each piece a different shape, cut to confuse and challenge the solver. A bad jigsaw puzzle, like a bad crossword, is a rote exercise; try enough combinations and the answer will appear.
American puzzles are fun at first, until you realize that even the best rely on a regular set of clues and tactics, and the only challenge remaining is the obscurity of the clues or the size of the puzzle. After a few months of working American crosswords, the only joy remaining is in completion. Not so with British puzzles. Working a British crossword means getting into the head of the puzzler, thinking like them, seeing their word plays and tricks.
While a few American publications — The Atlantic Monthly and Harper's, among others — run British crosswords, the vast majority of puzzles stateside are American style. Of course, it shouldn't be surprising if a country that prides itself on money, sex and Tom Green should also remain stuck on puzzles that emphasize empty knowledge and joyless play over wit and subtlety. There are, however, some pretty good puzzles online.
So while the British may have to suffer bad weather and Robbie Williams, they can take solace in knowing that their intellectual diversions trump those of their arrogantly vapid allies. Only one question remains: If the British are so smart, why do they still eat spotted dick?
— Clay Risen (clay@flakmag.com)
