Cryptics (1 of 12): Anagram Clues

There must be some kind of mix-up.

Almost every cryptic crossword clue has a straight part and a cryptic part. The straight part is a definition…sometimes a bit vaguer than an American clue would be, but pretty close. The cryptic part includes an indicator, a hint at the kind of wordplay going on here. In anagram clues, the non-indicator raw materials are the anagram itself.

I’ll keep using this typography to make my examples easier to get. None of the examples will be taken from the puzzle itself…after coming up with 3,860 clues, it was easier to just come up with a few more than worry about spoiling anything for you.

Failed play-turned-movie's troubled cast (4)—CATS

This stings a bit, because Janice and I really liked Cats the movie, but I feel like we were the only ones. The straight part, the definition, is “failed play-turned-movie.” The cryptic part is “troubled cast.” Cats is an anagram of cast, and “troubled” is the indicator—you're meant to imagine the letters shifting around a bit, like they're anxious.

The list of possible anagram indicators is…formidable. Just about any word that suggests physical or mental motion or instability or inadequacy or approximation can be bent to the purpose. Like “about.” Or “bent.”

The 's is a link between the two parts…it looks like a possessive, but it's actually a shortened “is.” Simple prepositions can also act as this link, but a cryptic clue doesn't really need one…the link is usually only added to give the clue more surface sense.

Online game is lewd or absurd (6)—WORDLE

Ha! Take that, most successful puzzle of the 2020s! (Since “lewd or” is the anagram, all I’m really saying is that Wordle is an “online game.” The whole phrase, read literally, is more likely to refer to the lewd Wordle variant, Lewdle.)

Anagrams are far and away the most popular kind of cryptic clue, used more than 50% of the time according to George Ho’s database of many popular cryptics. I’m still tabulating, but my early data suggests they’re much less common in the Ubercross C, something closer to 20% (around 700 clues). Respectable but not dominant.

When I make an anagram clue, my first stop is usually The Internet Anagram Generator. I don’t understand why Google promotes inferior alternatives to this one. It was the best in the late 1990s, and it still is. Let’s hope the following clue has no relevance to its fortunes.

Tangled plot: framed to deny access to longtime audience (10)—DEPLATFORM

If you really want to leave no stone unturned, you can download an anagram generator with a customizable dictionary. There are a few good freeware ones out there (this one isn’t too bad, I’d say). Just be sure you’ve got a good word list to plug in there.

The Ubercross format means I can play with answers of almost any length, but with anagrams, I discovered a bell curve. Answers shorter than five letters often have only awkward anagrams or no anagrams at all, like the words THAN, FIVE, and HAVE. But once you get past a certain length—I’d put it at around 11-15 letters—you often end up with too many anagrams and too few good ones. It’s a struggle to make three or more random words look like they go together naturally.

Still, sometimes you find something elegant outside the “ideal” length. So it’s always worth a try.

Boors in sinful, vicious police state arranging Putin’s dreamed-of empire (5,2,6,9,9)—UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS

P.S.: A few anagram clues will show an anagram not of the answer, but a synonym of the answer. This usually strikes me as unfair. But very occasionally—like, in less than one clue out of a hundred—I might justify it for an anagram that just has a couple of letters mixed, if I can give it a more specific indicator. Something like…

Felines with shifty rear ends started to fish (4)—CAST (CATS anagram, since the “shift” is just in the rear-end letters)

Still, that’s a bit out there. You gotta be mindful of the line between “rewardingly tricky” and “too tricky.” Even if finding that line is sometimes more art than science.

After AI revolution, protest becomes docile (9)—COMPLIANT (COMPLAINT with its A and I “revolved”)

(Hmmm, my laptop’s fan got really loud after I typed that last clue. Should I get that looked at? Eh, it’s probably nothing.)