Online cryptic crosswords hard11/4/2023 ![]() It’s mainly grown through word of mouth and social media. Though it’s been around for only about six weeks so far, Cluedle, a free service, already has more than 350 subscribers. He chatted to some friends including Otter, who ultimately built the website, and so Cluedle was born. As the group grew, the idea of a website that emailed daily cryptic clues to users hit Ancer. ![]() The successful online course led to more requests for tutorials from friends and friends of friends, and Ancer decided to start a WhatsApp group in which he shared a cryptic clue each day and explained how to solve it. “It’s a bit like taking your brain to the gym. “There’s a lot of research that has shown that doing cryptic crosswords improves your memory and teaches your brain to be agile,” he says. That’s why it initially seems so difficult – you don’t have the language. “Once you learn a bit of the vocabulary and the lingo, you can solve it. “Teaching the basics of how to solve cryptic crosswords is like teaching a language,” says Ancer. UCT thought it would be an enjoyable activity people could do during lockdown. Shortly afterwards, the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown began, and he was asked to run an online course instead. “Everything comes into focus and it’s like a rush of adrenaline.”Īncer’s desire to spread his passion came to the fore when he was asked to run a cryptic crosswords workshop at the University of Cape Town (UCT) Summer School, which mainly attracts retirees. “It’s an ‘aha’ moment when you realise this is how it all works,” he says. After thinking and thinking, he had it – a car key that sounds like the colour khaki. At first you can’t see a single answer and then you see a solution, and suddenly the grid starts solving itself and you eventually work it all out.”Īncer still remembers the first clue that he solved in which he had to find “a colour that starts your car”. “I loved how you could look at a puzzle, a grid, and when you first read it, it makes absolutely no sense. Guided by his colleague, Charles Machanik, a crossword aficionado, Ancer’s skills and passion grew. “I became obsessed with trying to be the first person in the country to solve the Business Day crossword because I knew that I would be able to solve it before anybody else could even see it.” “The time they printed the following day’s Business Day coincided with our lunch break, so I started to look at the paper’s crossword,” Ancer recalls. Working night shifts as a sub editor at The Star newspaper in 2001, he began spending his “lunch break” at 21:00 solving Business Day cryptic crosswords. Yet he later developed a love affair with the practice. When, growing up, he watched his mother do cryptic crosswords, Ancer himself felt nothing but confusion. It’s much easier than people initially think, he claims. ![]() “They give you a definition and the word play, and you use the word play, for example an anagram or hidden word, to unlock the solution,” Ancer says. Unlike regular “coffee-time” crosswords, which generally seek a synonym or piece of trivia, a cryptic crossword offers players two opportunities to solve clues. Developed with his friend, computer fundi Alastair Otter, who programmed the website, Cluedle allows Ancer to teach those interested how to unravel the mystery of cryptic crosswords “one clue at a time”. ![]() Though Ancer’s children may not believe him when he tells them that wordplay is just as much fun as PlayStation, a rapidly growing number of Cluedle users are fast coming round to his way of thinking. Now, through Cluedle, a website he co-created, sub editor and journalist Jonathan Ancer is spreading the magic of solving cryptic clues. In a world in which we face more problems than solutions, the rush of decoding cryptic crosswords is that much more satisfying.
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