Cryptic crosswords for beginners: boys and girls

In the example clues below, I explain the two parts of each one: there is a definition of the answer and there is some wordplay – a recipe for assembling its letters. In a genuine puzzle environment, of course, you also have the crossing letters, which hugely alleviate your solving load. Hence “crossword”. Also, the setters’ names tend to link to profiles of the individuals behind the pseudonyms.

Sometimes a clue will make reference to a boy or a girl. What letters is the setter expecting you turn them into?

Gel

Happily, “girl” is rarely nowadays used in a clue to indicate the letters BIRD or BIT in an answer. A different vintage word survives, one that won’t have “(derog.)” alongside it in the dictionary. And when there is a GEL, it’s often specified that the girl in question is posh, as with Vulcan’s clue …

We’ll come back to girls’ and boys’ actual names below; for now, it’s worth remembering that “gel” is not always posh; it’s used by Norman Stanley Fletcher to his daughter in Porridge:

And the GEL might equally be a GAL – or, especially if specified that she is of the upper crust or is in some sense “stepping out”, she may, even nowadays, turn out to be a DEB.

Son

Every boy is some mother’s son. So when Chifonie give us this clue …

… we change “boy” to SON and “to take home” to NET for the poem, a SONNET. Since he’s not always acting as someone’s SON, he might also be a LAD or even a TAD – as in, I suspect, a tadpole.

Di

Other times, you’re asked to imagine you’re folksily addressing a girl, with a diminutive form of a woman’s name. Here’s Arachne:

So we take RUE and insert SH and the girl DI for the writer RUSHDIE.

When it is a girl’s name, I try DI, EVE and ADA first; if one of those is not the girl in question, then I often get the answer from the definition and work backwards to confirm the presence of a MO, a DOT, a MIA, an ENA, a VI … and so on.

Al

And so it is with boys. Here’s Gordius:

With boys, ED and AL are my go-to names, but I may later find that the child in question was the slightly longer TED or ALI, or indeed TOM, LEN, DAN, TIM, or NED.

There’s also IAN, though he’s still often referred to as a Scotsman.

Bet

And sometimes the setter might be kind enough to give you the long form of the name you’re to shorten. That said, “kind” is not a word that springs to mind when confronted with this from Paul:

It’s a SHERBET DIP.

If you’re wondering whether “boy” or “girl” might offer still more of crosswords’ abbreviations, we’ve discussed the fact that you might see “b” and “g” in genealogy but not in the dictionaries – but that’s in one of our not-for-beginners features.

If you’re tempted by a puzzle where every across clue begins “boy” or “boys”, Araucaria kindly provided one in 2011.

Finally, beginners: any questions? And seasoned solvers: which boys and girls do you encounter most in cryptic crosswords?

Find a collection of explainers, interviews and other helpful bits and bobs at alanconnor.com

The Shipping Forecast Puzzle Book by Alan Connor, which is partly but not predominantly cryptic, can be ordered from the Guardian Bookshop