[rovek]

I don't know if this is a cultural difference with cryptic crosswords in general or if it's specific to NYT crosswords, I used to do NYT crosswords with my American partner (I'm British) and the wordplay never made sense to me. Answers often seemed to be made up of words which could literally relate to the clue but combined made no sense as a term or phrase, even as a pun.

Edit: Don't want to sound like I'm deriding their style too much, my partner always got the wordplay so clearly there was a learnable style to it

[Normille]

  >I used to do NYT crosswords with my American partner (I'm British) and the wordplay never made sense to me

Can't say I've ever tried an American cryptic [I regularly do the UK Guardian and Telegraph ones] but the ones quoted above don't make sense to me either:

  >Q: “It may turn into another story” A: Spiral Staircase.

Would be "...turn into another storey". In a UK cryptic there'd have to be an indication that there was a homonym involved story/storey.

  >"Pasta dish at the centre of a murder mystery...The answer was poisoned penne.

Ditto. UK version would need to indicate a homonym was involved pen/penne. And, as someone else points out, a 'Poisoned Pen' is a letter, not a murder mystery. Very strange clues indeed.

Some freely available UK cryptics:

* Guardian Quiptic: https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/series/quiptic/latest

* Guardian Everyman: https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/series/everyman

* Chambers: https://chambers.co.uk/puzzles/cryptic-crosswords/

RANDOM ASIDE: My favourite anagram, which has been involved a couple of times in UK cryptic clues is:

VINDALOO AND RICE which is an anagram of LEONARDO DA VINCI

[mcphage]

> In a UK cryptic there'd have to be an indication that there was a homonym involved story/storey.

Well, that one can be chalked up to US/UK spelling differences—"storey" is not correct US spelling.

[hoppyhoppy2]

I'm just a casual, very infrequent crossworder, but I've noticed that many of the more punny or clever clues for NYT Crossword end in a question mark. If you see "It may turn into another story?" as a clue in a NYT crossword you know from the question mark that there's probably some wordplay or a pun involved in the answer.

[tzs]

Yup. There are several rules for how clues relate to answers in the NYT puzzle, and that's an import one. Here are some more [1].

Another thing casual or infrequent solvers should be aware of: day of week matters. NYT puzzles are easiest on Monday, getting progressively harder throughout the week reaching a peak on Saturday. The Sunday puzzle is midweek difficulty, but bigger.

This article [2] gives an example of how the same 4 letter word might be clued on Monday and Saturday:

Monday: “Nabisco cookie”, “Cookie with creme filling”, or “‘Twist, Lick, Dunk’ cookie”

Saturday: “Snack since 1912”, “It has 12 flowers on each side”, or “Sandwich often given a twist”

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/crosswords/tips-and-tricks

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/guides/crosswords/how-to-solve-a-cro...

[zem]

yep, the thematic entries are nothing like cryptics; the only similarity is that they both involve wordplay. the wordplay here is closer to jokes like "what fruit wanted to conquer the world?" "alexander the grape!" - that is, while the answer will not be a real word or phrase as would be required in a cryptic, it will be logically derivable from the theme and the clue.

one interesting thing about the non-thematic entries in an american crossword is that the only form of wordplay they allow is what in cryptic parlance would be called a "cryptic definition", that is, a clue which is a straight definition in which the words need to be read laterally. the nyt cryptic definitions are as good as any i've seen in the guardian, particularly my all-time favourite,

John, to Ringo (3)

for LOO

[whoisburbansky]

I don't actually get how "John, to Ringo" translates to LOO, would you mind explaining?

[Edit]: Ah, totally missed the toilet connotation, thanks folks!

[SlickNik]

I suspect - John is slang for the toilet, and Ringo here would be an Englishman - so what would an Englishman call a toilet? A loo. groan

[simondw]

"John" is another word for bathroom. So is "loo", at least in the variety of English that Ringo speaks.

[zem]

specifically, 'john' is american slang for a toilet; the corresponding british slang is 'loo'. 'ringo' is an example of a very well known englishman, so 'to ringo' is an acceptable indicator to clue 'to an englishman'.