Every crossword clue belongs to a type, and naming the type is most of solving it. Quick crosswords use the first two types on this page. Cryptic crosswords use the rest, and a cryptic clue always has the same anatomy: a definition at one end, and wordplay (machinery for building the answer from letters) filling the rest. Each type below comes with an example taken apart piece by piece. Every example was checked letter by letter before it was printed here, because a dissected clue that does not actually work teaches the wrong lesson.
1. Straight definition (the quick clue)
Clue: "Large flightless bird of Australia (3)" → EMU. No machinery at all: the clue is a compressed dictionary entry, and the only skills involved are knowledge and the crossing letters. General-knowledge clues ("Capital of Norway (4)", OSLO) and fill-in-the-blank clues ("___ and Jill went up the hill", JACK) are the same type wearing different clothes.
2. Double definition
Clue: "Fruit; a day marked for a meeting (4)" → DATE. Two definitions of the same word, side by side, with no wordplay. The trick is that the solver reads the clue as one idea and stalls; split it at the join and each half defines the answer on its own. BANK (river's edge; money house) is the other classic shape.
3. Anagram
Clue: "Listen, rearranged, without a sound (6)" → SILENT. Definition: "without a sound", at the end. Machinery: LISTEN, rearranged. Indicator: the word "rearranged" itself, an instruction that the fodder (LISTEN) is to be shuffled. Anagram indicators are words of damage or disorder, and spotting them is the whole game: confused, broken, mixed, wild, dancing, drunk, ruined, in chaos, adapted, novel.
4. Charade
Clue: "Vehicle and pet make a floor covering (6)" → CARPET. The answer is assembled from smaller words in order: CAR + PET. Definition: "a floor covering". Indicators are quiet ones, words of joining or sequence: and, with, next to, after, before, makes. A charade is an anagram with the letters kept in order, and it rewards solvers who split long answers into word-sized pieces on sight.
5. Container
Clue: "Ship's pole has 'as' inside it (4)" → MAST. One piece of the answer is placed inside another: AS sits inside M_T, and the result is a ship's pole. Indicators are words of holding: inside, within, holding, around, containing, swallowing, outside (the last group reverses which piece wraps which). Container and charade together build most long cryptic answers.
6. Reversal
Clue: "Animals turned into a pace (4)" → STEP. PETS, turned (reversed), gives STEP, a pace. Definition: "a pace", at the end. Indicators: back, reversed, turned, returning, up (in down clues, where "up" can mean written upwards), from the east and other compass tricks in harder puzzles. The shortest type to check and the easiest to forget: whenever a short answer resists, read the likely fodder backwards.
7. Hidden word
Clue: "Wealthy, found in the richest areas (4)" → RICH. The answer sits in plain sight inside the clue's own words: the richest. Definition: "wealthy". Indicators: in, inside, within, found in, part of, some of, held by. Hidden answers are why experienced solvers scan a clue's letter stream before they think about its meaning at all.
8. Homophone
Clue: "We hear a story about a dog's end (4)" → TAIL. TALE (a story) sounds like TAIL (a dog's end). The definition is "a dog's end"; the machinery is a word that sounds the same. Indicators: we hear, sounds like, audibly, spoken, reportedly, for the audience. Homophones are dialect-sensitive, which setters exploit and solvers argue about: a pair that rhymes in one accent may fail in another.
9. Deletion
Clue: "Weapon losing its head for language (4)" → WORD. Take SWORD (a weapon) and lose its head (the first letter): WORD, which is language itself. The definition hides in the tail of the clue, "for language", doing double duty as the purpose of the beheading. Indicators by anatomy: headless, beheaded (first letter off), endless, tailless, curtailed (last letter off), heartless (middle letter out).
10. Cryptic definition
Clue: "It gets a rise out of the baker (5)" → YEAST. No machinery and no plain definition either: the whole clue is a riddle whose surface points at an annoyed employer and whose answer is the stuff that makes dough rise. The question mark that often ends such clues is the setter's wink. Cryptic definitions are the type that divides solvers; they cannot be taken apart, only seen, usually a minute after the crossing letters have narrowed the field. For that narrowing, the Crossword Solver on this site takes the letters you have and returns every word in the list that fits them.
The indicator words, gathered
| Type | Words that give it away |
|---|---|
| Anagram | confused, broken, mixed, wild, dancing, drunk, ruined, in chaos, novel |
| Charade | and, with, next to, after, before, joined, makes |
| Container | inside, within, holding, around, containing, swallowing |
| Reversal | back, reversed, turned, returning, up (in down clues) |
| Hidden | in, inside, found in, part of, some of, held by |
| Homophone | we hear, sounds like, audibly, spoken, reportedly |
| Deletion | headless, beheaded, endless, tailless, heartless, curtailed |
A closing caution that this page owes you: indicator words are probabilities, not proofs. "Mixed" can sit innocently inside a definition, and "in" does honest preposition work in a third of all clues. The type is confirmed only when definition, machinery and letter count all agree, which is why the dissections above check all three every time.
Questions
How do I tell a cryptic clue from a quick one?
A quick clue is one straight definition. A cryptic clue is two clues in a trench coat: a definition, usually at the start or end, plus a piece of wordplay that builds the same answer from its letters. The surface reading is designed to mislead. If a clue seems to describe a small scene that makes no sense as a definition, it is probably cryptic, and the trick is to find which end is the real definition and which words are machinery.
Where is the definition in a cryptic clue?
At one end or the other, almost always. Cryptic setters are bound by a fairness convention: the definition sits at the very beginning or the very end of the clue, and everything between is wordplay. When you are stuck, read the first two or three words as a definition, try the same at the end, and see which reading leaves sensible machinery behind it. The middle of a clue is never the definition.
What do the numbers after a clue mean?
The lengths of the words in the answer, in order. (6) is one word of six letters; (5,3) is two words, of five and three; (4-4) is a hyphenated answer of two fours. They are not decoration: they are the first check on any guess, and experienced solvers test candidate answers against them before anything else.
Can a solver app read these clues for me?
It can read the pattern, not the clue. This site's Crossword Solver takes the letters you already have (from crossing answers) and returns every word in the list that fits them, which is often enough to crack a clue whose type defeated you. But no pattern tool parses wordplay, and the honest ones say so. The dissection skill on this page is the part that cannot be automated away, which is also why it is satisfying.
Sources
- Every worked example on this page was constructed for it and verified mechanically before publication (anagram letter counts, charade and container assemblies, the reversal, the hidden string and the beheading are all exact); the checking approach is described on How We Verify.
- The clue-type taxonomy and indicator conventions follow the standard cryptic references, principally Don Manley's Chambers Crossword Manual (Chambers) and Tim Moorey's How to Crack Cryptic Crosswords; no clue on this page is copied from a published crossword.
Update log
28 October 2026: published, with all ten worked examples constructed and checked on the same day.