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Hi

Can you please help this dumb frustrated person (me!) out.

I purchased two books recently in order to help me to understand how cryptic clues work, in order that I can learn how to solve cryptic crosswords.

Though these books are very good there are times, with both books, that I am becoming very frustrated as I get confused on aspects of clues that I feel I should understand.

I’ll give you an example.

I am reading about clues in which you are meant to remove the final letter from a word. Some examples of these last-letter-removal indicators are given, such as “endlessly”.

Here’s an example of a clue in the book that I am to solve:

Endlessly short-tempered, note (8).

Now, the answer, as given in the book is CROTCHET (a type of note).

The explanation of the answer given by the book explains that another word for short-tempered is “crotchety”. Endlessly tells me to remove the last letter of this word to get CROTCHET.

This is where I get so frustrated.

In the clue, how am I supposed to know whether to take the last letter from short (T), or to take the last two letters from short-tempered (T D), or, indeed that I have to find another word for short-tempered, and then remove the last letter of that new word?

I feel so dumb for not knowing this, and it really zaps my confidence and morale.

Is it simply a case of “trial and error”? That the clue could have wanted me to remove the last letter from the word immediately following “endlessly”, or it could have wanted me to find an alternative word and remove the letter from that new word?

I feel so dumb for asking this.

Thank you.

it's considered a little unfair (though not unknown) to be expected to remove more than one letter in these cases.

"endlessly" would imply the last letter, though i have seen similar examples where first and last letters are removed.

I agree when this device is used it's both unusual and unfair to remove more than 1 consecutive letter but it is also quite commonly used to remove both first and last letters of a word.

Hi chrise, your 2nd post wasn't there when I started typing.

Here’s a selection of devices to remove outside or end letters that I’ve seen recently...
Peeled
Parameters of
Skinned
Without tips
Suburbs of
Cases of
Discovered (as in dis-covered)
Detailed (as in de-tailed)

No problem, ginge

Sometimes clues do the opposite by taking the middle out and leaving the first and last letters.
Heartless and empty are indicators.

Another recent favourite was “skin and dice” which encouraged you to remove the outside letters of the words that followed and then make an anagram out of what remained.

This can also be achieved with “broke the hearts of”.

You're not dumb! I bet most people on here had that kind of problem to start with

I think there isn't an exact answer to your question about "trial and error", except that, yes, it quite often is. If one way doesn't work, try another.
In this case, if you remove T and D, you are left with shor-tempere, there's no anagram indicator and there are too many letters anyway. These truncated words don't evoke anything much, so maybe time to think of another word for short-tempered (or look in a thesaurus, which does give crotchety under the sub-heading "quick to anger").

I'm not much good at it myself, but looking at the words in a clue from as many different ways as you can think usually provides the answer.

Don't give up!