Solution: A Befuddling Cryptictionary Answer: FICUS
About Cryptics
This puzzle heavily features Cryptic Clues: a seemingly normal sentence or phrase that secretly contains a puzzle. They are featured in the Minute Cryptic and, famously, the Globe & Mail’s Cryptic Crossword. A more in-depth explanation can be found here, but here is a quick explanation with an example Cryptic: “Monkey with no cigar, as nature intended. (7)”
Each Cryptic can be divided into two distinct parts: a definition, and wordplay. The definition is always at either the start or the end of the clue, and the rest is wordplay. Additionally, these clues also indicate the length of the solution in brackets at the end, so our example Cryptic above has a solution that is seven letters long.
The definition is simply a synonym or phrase with the same meaning as the answer. In our example above, our definition is: “as nature intended.”
The wordplay is a way of creating the answer by manipulating letters and words. Wordplay is made up of two parts:
- Fodder is the letters and words to mess with. In our example, the fodder is: “no cigar”.
- Indicators tell you how to manipulate the fodder. In our example, the indicator is: “Monkey with”.
“Monkey with no cigar, as nature intended.”
To “monkey with” something is to play with it, often carelessly. In our Cryptic, this indicates that we want to take our fodder and monkey with it. In other words, we rearrange it (i.e. an anagram indicator). If we take the letters in “no cigar” and re-arrange them, we can form the seven-letter word “organic”, and something that is organic is “as nature intended” it to be. Thus, our answer is “organic”.
Solving The Cryptics
On the second page, there are 6 ripped-out pieces of paper. Each looks like a dictionary entry taken from our “Cryptictionary” (whose cover is on the first page), complete with the word (redacted, of course), the part of speech, and the definition. The definitions are all Cryptic Clues. Below are detailed solutions to each Cryptic, with the different parts highlighted in different colours.
1. Chief to destroy me. R.I.P. (5) - Solution: Prime
In this clue, we want to take our fodder, and we want “to destroy” it. That is, we want to mess it up or rearrange it. If we rearrange the letters in “me. R.I.P.”, we obtain the word “prime”, and the “prime” thing is the most important one, or the “chief” thing.
2. Head honcho's old second reserves stories? (5) - Solution: Holds
We will start by noticing the question mark at the end. This indicates that the use of “reserves stories” might be a bit unexpected. We want to take the “head”, or the start, of the word “honcho’s”: the letter “H”. Then, we append the word “old”, without modifying it. Lastly, the word “second” is commonly abbreviated as the letter “S” (e.g. “the world record time for the 800 metre sprint is 1m40s.”), so we add the letter “S” on the end. This gives us the word “holds”, and when someone at a library holds books (or puts them “on hold”), we could say the person reserves stories.
3. Listening to MT Void. (5) - Solution: Empty
This Cryptic uses a fun indicator: “listening to” suggests that we need to think about what the fodder sounds like. If we say the letters “MT” out loud, we might notice that it sounds like the word “empty”, and if something is empty, we might say that it is void.
4. Messy forests are said to contain a castle. (8) - Solution: Fortress
There is a lot going on in this clue. Let’s start with “are said”. Much like clue 3, this is a homophone indicator. We want to know what the word “are” sounds like when it is “said”. In this case, that’s the letter “R”. Now, let’s look at the first two words. You can probably guess by now that “messy forests” simply means to rearrange the letters in the word “forests”. We’ll arrange it to say “FORTESS” and then look at our last bit of indicator. “To contain” suggests that we put something inside of something else. In this case, we want to take our letter “R” and put it inside the letters “FORTESS”. If we insert it between the “T” and the “E”, we get the word “fortress”, another word for a castle.
5. Pokémon’s mixed-up pouch is missing a donut. (5’1) - Solution: Pichu’s
This clue wants us to do two different things to our fodder, and we can do them in either order. Let’s start with “missing a donut”. A donut looks a lot like the letter “O”, so we can try substituting that in. If our fodder is “missing” the letter “O”, we get rid of it, leaving us with “PUCHIS”. Now, let’s look at “mixed-up”. We want to take the letters in “PUCHIS” and mix them up, or re-arrange them. It turns out that by rearranging the letters (and separating the last one with the apostrophe in the clue), we can obtain the word “Pichu’s”. Since Pichu is a Pokémon, if something is Pichu’s, we can say it is a Pokémon’s.
6. Wood in the middle of street. (4) - Solution: Tree
We want to take the letters in the middle of the word “street”. If we remove the first and last letters, so that only the letters in the middle are left, we get the word “Tree”, an object known for being made of wood.
The Extraction
We have now obtained six words. If we read them in the order presented, we get “Prime holds empty fortress Pichu’s tree”. This couldn’t possibly be read as a complete sentence, so how do we know how to arrange the words? Well, this is a Cryptictionary (or Cryptic Dictionary), so we should try sorting them the way a real dictionary would: alphabetically. If we do this, we get the phrase: “Empty fortress holds Pichu’s prime tree.” That’s right, it’s another Cryptic Clue! Let’s solve this.
“Empty fortress holds Pichu’s prime tree.”
Just before starting, it is worth noting that on the back cover of the Cryptictionary, there is a large “(5)”. Perhaps our final answer will be 5 letters long?
Let’s start at the beginning. What might an “Empty fortress” be? Well, perhaps it is the word “fortress” without the letters inside. If we “empty” it out, we get just the letters “FS”. Next, we see the word “holds”. Instead of the letters we removed, our “FS” will “hold” (or contain) something else. But what will it contain? “Pichu’s prime”, of course! We want to index our fodder, and take only the letters whose indices are prime numbers. In this case, those are the 2nd, 3rd, and 5th letters: “I”, “C”, and “U”. If we take these letters and put them in between our “F” and “S”, we get the word “FICUS”, which is a genus of tree.
SOLUTION: FICUS
Author’s Notes
I had so much fun writing this puzzle, but it took forever to make a Cryptic that was sorted alphabetically with an answer that met very specific constraints (there were very few possible words that weren’t explicit!). The idea of using a dictionary to clue alphabetical sorting was added very late in the process, but it worked out very well. I’d like to thank Sarah Chan for that suggestion, as well as Ty Ghaswala for suggesting the title’s initials be “ABC” to also clue alphabetical order.
I’ve always loved the Minute Cryptic, yet I always disliked the Cryptic Crossword. Minute Cryptics are easier for me (even if they aren’t Ximenean), so I did my best to style them like the Minute Cryptic (the highlighter colours are the same as their guide, too). This was the first use of Cryptic Clues in Key Clues, so we were very worried about making them too difficult or unfun, but I think this puzzle turned out well.
Big inspirations for this puzzle were the Minute Cryptic, as well as the puzzle simply called “Where??????????” from the Key Clues 2023 hunt. The iterative nature of that puzzle is what inspired the mechanism of solving Cryptics, then putting their answers into another Cryptic. My only regret is the first clue not reading “Chief is destroying me. R.I.P.”, but I did not realize this until I could no longer change it. This year’s hunt is awesome, and I’m extremely excited for next year's.
Sincerely,
“I stammeringly lost ringlet. (5)”