
The Novel Area of Cryptic Crossword Solving - bmcgavin
http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00567/full
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kickscondor
I'd love to see more of a breakdown of the makeup of cryptics: what percentage
of the answers involve anagrams, reversals, homonyms and so on? And how many
clues encode the answer in pieces? Seems like a lot of puzzles use a composite
of clues like that, with anagrams coming in second. Homonyms and reversals
seem pretty rare. The "& lit" type clue is almost never present.

But I wonder: are there regional differences? Have certain types of clues
fallen out of favor over time? Can I follow puzzlemakers that shoot for more
variety?

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dave2000
One type of clue that's fallen out of favour, according to a book I read about
it a while back, are those which require knowledge of, for example, the
classics. It used to be that you needed a pretty good private education, but
as English speaking has become more international, and as fewer and fewer
English speakers (as a percentage) have that sort of education, those clues
are less likely to be useful.

Different setters take different approaches; it's why the papers almost almost
name the setters, and why it's a big deal when one retires as they're sort of
unique.

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camperman
Good research from French city daily reading matter!

