Read yet another article about how to age well last month.
A lot of it is the same old stuff: eat healthily and not too much; get enough sleep; don’t smoke; don’t drink; have a positive attitude to aging (Dammit! Currently anaesthetising another facelift.) In addition to advice about keeping your brain engaged, there was a suggestion of a website that will teach you how to do cryptic crossword puzzles, and will give you one cryptic clue per day, with as many hints as you need to get the answer.
I signed up then and there and it’s been fantastic. (Learning how to do cryptics was my New Year’s resolution a few years ago, which never went anywhere. The main thing I learnt was never to have New Year’s resolutions. ) I currently have a 45 clue streak, possible because I’ve been going through the back catalogue. Having learned the tricks, I’ve improved hugely, which is quite gratifying. It’s strangely hit and miss, though. I solved today’s clue without needing any hints.
(Although, full disclosure, I did google synonyms for descent.)
However, the clue yesterday had me stumped.
My first thought was something to do with boats, but then the phrase “supplied by vessels” made me think of the cardiovascular system and blood supply. Vessels could also refer to something you drink out of, though, couldn’t it? I was making no progress, so in the end needed hints.
Hints come in different categories: ‘definition’, which is self explanatory and my favourite hint; ‘fodder’, which are the words that are chopped up to form part of your answer; and ‘indicators’, that tell you how to manipulate the fodder. This is a great way of explaining how cryptic crossword clues work, I think. The last sort of hint is when you’re completely at sea and scraping the bottom of the barrel, if I may mix my metaphors. It’s just giving you letters from the answer.
The excited looking man in the video presumably explains the stuff that’s written there in more detail, but to be honest I’ve never watched one. Well, after five – count them! – five hints, I finally worked it out.
I feel a little embarrassed since it’s a bit of medical jargon that you might have assumed I’d be more familiar with than most people. But there you go, clearly cryptic crossword people are cleverer than your average Joe! (With apologies to my son in law, obviously not your average Joe!)