Clever Crossword Clues

You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett. I’ve been playing a lot of crosswords lately on my smartphone.

I have an Android phone.

I’ve seen you do it.

And there’s a program on there called Shorties.

Shorties.

With a Z. In honor of Will Shorts.

Okay.

And it lets me choose from about a half dozen crossword puzzles.

And the thing is, coming back to crosswords after having been away for a while,

Just kind of refreshed my mind on the kinds of clues that they use.

And the crossword constructors are a pretty clever bunch.

Oh, yeah.

And so you’re getting in the minds of these really smart people.

And I just wanted to share with you a few of the things I was reminded of,

A few of the ways that they put their puzzles together.

For example, one of the aha moments comes with double meanings.

Oh, yeah.

English words have a lot of double meanings, right?

For example, if I give you the clue Latin quarters and the space has four letters, what would you say?

It’s not pesos.

I’m thinking 25-cent pieces, Latin quarters.

Yeah, but remember, double meanings.

Quad, Latin quarters.

I don’t know.

Casa.

Oh.

Right?

Because Spanish is a Latin language, and quarters is also a way of saying rooms.

Sure, yeah.

So, casa.

And you start to get into these, and you’re like, oh, okay, you clever devil.

Now I see what you’re up to.

Here, here’s another one.

If the clue is hula hoop, with a question mark at the end.

Hula hoop?

Yeah, no, those question marks are significant.

That’s right.

They mean you can’t take it literally.

So it’s probably a figurative or punny answer.

How many letters?

Three.

O’s?

You land at the airport.

Yeah.

There’s a lovely Hawaiian woman.

Right.

She puts something around your neck.

A leg.

Yeah.

It’s a hoop because it’s in a circle and it’s Hawaiian, so the hula connotation, right?

Oh, man.

So sometimes it’s really, really tricky.

I just love this stuff.

I’m going to put a bunch of links on the website to some clever crossword clues that some people have collected, including Chuck Schneebel.

He’s got a great list.

But my all-time favorite I came across recently.

And this is a different kind of clue.

And I’ll explain why after we’re done with it.

Name a city in Czechoslovakia in four letters.

In Czechoslovakia in four letters.

Yeah.

I have no idea.

Oslo.

Oslo is in Norway, but the letters O-S-L-O are inside the word.

So sometimes the questions are about the form of the word, the orthography of the word,

And have nothing to do with the meaning of the word.

Maybe I should start doing crosswords on a smartphone instead of it.

Because I keep breaking so many pencils over these kinds of clues.

Yeah, but when you break a smartphone out of frustration, it’s a lot more expensive, trust me.

In any case, we’ll put some clever crossword clues on our website.

We’ll link to a bunch of pages with some great stuff.

And if you’d like to share yours, 1-877-929-9673, or send them an email to words@waywordradio.org.