[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...