I love cryptic crossword, but there's so many "inside rules" that make them hard to approach for newcomers. It doesn't help that there really aren't a lot of good easy cryptics.
The thing with chess, even if you don't know the rules, you can still play and (potentially) lose the game. If you don't know some random american trivia, you're stuck forever.
That's the game! The 'inside rules' for a cryptic are what makes it cryptic. Without them you just have a word puzzle.