Word Play - A Curate's Egg

[A ‘curate’s egg’ is a famous idiom that describes something made up of both good and bad parts, often with the implication that the negative elements ultimately spoil the whole thing. It is a quintessential British term used to describe a mixed blessing or something that is uneven in quality. The phrase comes from an 1895 satirical cartoon published in Punch Magazine titled "True Humility".It depicts a nervous, low-ranking priest (a curate) eating breakfast with his bishop. When the bishop points out that the curate has been served a rotten egg, the curate desperately tries to be polite to his superior, replying, ‘Oh no, my Lord, I assure you! Parts of it are excellent’.] Cryptic clues arise when someone looks at a word and sees a completely different way of expressing it, generally in a humorous way. As an introduction: A cryptic clue is made up of two parts - a Definition and the Wordplay The Definition is what you would expect in a normal crossword - a word or phrase which is a synonym of the answer. However it may be in slang, and may also be a pun. The Wordplay is the method of working out, or building, the answer. The entire clue - the Surface - is a phrase or sentence which should make complete sense in its own right even if that sense has nothing to do with the answer. As examples of Wordplay take the word ‘curate’ meaning assistant cleric or (archaically) parish priest. The first thing you might notice is that it is actually made up of the combination of the two words ‘cur’ and ‘ate’. So an alternative expression might be ‘outcast dog devoured’. Put this together with one of the real definitions and you have a cryptic clue - ‘Outcast dog devoured ancient parish priest (6)’. How clues are constructed is treated in full in a later section: at this point I just want to give an idea of the many possibilities available. In a similar way curate is a combination of the abbreviation ‘Cu’ (International Symbol for copper) and the word ‘rate’. So an alternative definition is ‘copper’s speed’. If this was used in a clue there would most likely be an effort to convince you that copper meant policeman. Misdirection is a common tool used to disguise a true meaning. However it would not be valid for the clue to say ‘policeman’s speed’. This is a second degree reference (policeman = copper = chemical element) which is only considered fair where the association is reasonably obvious. (There is an example later.) Another way to look at this word is that it is the letter ‘u’ contained in the word ‘crate’. Continuing on with chemical elements, U is the International Symbol for uranium. So ‘box containing uranium’ or ‘box of uranium’. The latter is almost a second degree reference, but since ‘box of’ usually denotes ‘in a box’ this would be acceptable. We could have said ‘uranium in a box’: the inclusion can be specified from either point of view. The word ‘rat’ is contained in the word ‘cue’. This leads to the phrase ‘hint about deserter’. The word ‘at’ is contained in the word ‘cure’. As well as being a word on its own, ‘At’ is also the International Symbol for astatine, a rare halogen element. Therefore we may say ‘astatine included in medical treatment’. When written as ‘curé’ we have the meaning (in French use) a parish priest. Since any form of punctuation (including accents) is usually ignored, we could create the definition ‘French priest rails at’. Here the word ‘rails’ is used in the sense of ‘encloses (by rails)’, with the apparent meaning ‘bitterly denounces’. Also, because of the close association of ‘curé’ and ‘curate’ the final clue would probably end up as ‘French priest rails at English colleague (6)’. The letters ‘ra’ (Egyptian Sun God, member of the Royal Academy - a distinguished artist, chemical element radium) are contained in the word ‘cute’. So we might end up with 'Winsome Egyptian god within/included'. Slightly more complicatedly, the letter ‘a’ is contained in the word ‘curt’, then combined with the letter ‘e’. E is the abbreviation for ‘east’ amongst others, and is also one of the musical notes. Using this we can have ‘a short note about’. There are still more combinations on this same general theme: cu + rat + e; ra in cut + e; right down to possibly c + u + r + a + t + e. For example: ‘Novice priest initially crumbles under Religious and Temporal exams (6)’ In a previous example we had ‘rat’ included in ‘cue’. The word ‘rat’ is the reverse of ‘tar’. So our definition could be changed to ‘hint about returned sailor’. If we look at the whole word backwards we get ‘etaruc’ which is a combination of ‘eta’ and ‘ruc’. The former is a letter of the Greek alphabet (a letter from Greece?) or the abbreviation for Estimated Time of Arrival. The latter is the first three letters of the word ruck (endless throng?), the middle three letters of the word truck (stripped-down lorry?), or the abbreviation for Royal Ulster Constabulary. One of the possible combinations of these definitions, with a synonym for reverse, should give a satisfying result. A little less obviously, curate is ‘curare’ (a poison) with its second ‘r’ replaced by a ’t’. Looking in the dictionary at the many words r and t are abbreviations for (ignoring capitalisation and following full stops), we could arrive at ‘poison runs into teaspoon’. Whether we could introduce a parish priest to make a successful clue is not so clear cut. It is worth noting here (a fuller explanation is given later) that compilers are not restricted to known abbreviations in defining single letters. Since ’t’ is the initial letter of the word ‘time’, this could be expressed in a clue by the common phrase ‘first time’. Other alternatives are ‘second attempt’ or ‘third rate’. In a similar vein, curate is ‘curse’ with the ’s’ replaced by ‘at’. Perhaps this could be worked into something on exorcism, which has an obvious tie to the clergy. Have a go. Also not as obvious is that curate is the overlap of ‘cur’ and ‘rate’, or even ‘cu’ and ‘urate’ (a salt of uric acid). Once again we could create an alternative definition, but probably not a decent clue. Our word can also be created from the phrase ‘cut rate’ by deleting the first ’t’ (and the blank, although this would not be specified). Here we could come up with ‘discount when missing tea, say’. In another form of deletion, curate is ‘accurate’ minus the initial ‘ac’. Ac is the abbreviation for account or bill. So we could have ‘precise account suppressed’. And now one which is not at all immediately obvious, and yet is understood by everyone (for some it is almost the definition of cryptic): curate is an anagram of ‘a truce’ or ‘rue act’. In this case the actual letters in an anagram must appear in the clue (see later for some exceptions). The compiler is not allowed to create secondary definitions of the words in the anagram. Perhaps this is why they are so popular with solvers. Another even easier form of clue has the actual letters of the target word appearing in a block in the clue. In this case curate can be found in the phrase ‘occur at evening’. A compiler needs a lot of skill and cunning to disguise this type of clue. One way is to have the letters reading backwards - as in ‘get a rucksack’. Less obvious would be to have the letters of our word appearing as every second letter of a phrase in the clue. So ‘actuarial tie’. Once again there might be a problem relating this to the clergy, but there are other phrases which can be constructed. What is missing is computer programs to generate such phrases, similar to the myriad available for anagrams and rhymes. Perhaps if one appears, the use of this type of clue will increase. Even less common are clues using every third letter in a phrase. On a completely different tack, it is possible to say that curate sounds like ‘curette’, ‘cure it’, ‘cure hit’, ’cue rat’, ‘queue rate’, or even ‘Kuwait’ (if we introduce a lisp). It is then permissible to specify a secondary definition for the homonym that is chosen. We could end up with ‘hears Rod commit treason’ (cue rat). Now we have broken the sound barrier, we might introduce a Spoonerism. Spooner was a Doctor of Divinity so he would grace this clue rather well. His main claim to fame was reversing the starting letters of two words. Unfortunately the only ones I can come up with are ‘rue Kate’, ‘roo Kate’ or ‘rhu Cate’, none of which seems to lead to a satisfactory clue. This has not exhausted all the possibilities for this word - lets leave some for the compilers to test you with. What it does show, is how English allows people who are fascinated by odd and quirky relationships, so many opportunities to create new and surprising associations. One other form of clue which I will mention is where the Wordplay isn’t really wordplay. It is a second definition. This comes about because the majority of words in English have more than one meaning - often many meanings. Dictionaries are so bulky because of this. And many words can have opposite meanings. One word often in the news lately is ‘sanction’ which can be either ‘punitive action’ or ‘approval’. I find this type of clue the most difficult to solve because you are given no idea how to construct the answer. Because curate has such a restricted meaning it is difficult to come up with a decent clue. The only one I have been able to construct is ‘Young priest’s Minister (6)’. One thought that may have arisen is that it looks a lot easier to write a clue than to solve it! In a sense this is as true of cryptic crosswords as it is of trying to dismantle anything that has been well constructed - particularly if deceptive artifice has been used, as in say, a bomb. However there is generally a sense of fair play involved: if the answer is a common word the clue may be complex; if the answer is an uncommon word the clue should be relatively easy. Of course easy in itself, is a relative concept. The second observation about this is that it is not so simple to consistently write good clues. In a later section there is a detailed analysis of how a good clue should be constructed. There are some rules which should apply to any cryptic clue. Apart from that, on a personal level, a good clue should satisfy you from first reading to final solving. If at any time you feel let down, it is not at your level. As you progress through this manual you will find many examples, and may find some of them difficult. Take heart from this observation: the hardest cryptic clues to solve are those you approach from scratch, i.e. knowing none of the letters involved. When you are doing a crossword the first answer immediately makes some of the remaining clues easier. It is amazing how knowing just one letter in the right place can push your thinking in the right direction. And of course the more answers you get, the more extra help you get. Btw, the letters where two words cross are called Checkers.