Containers, insertions and the many jobs of a small word like about
Containers were the clue type that made me realise cryptic crosswords have a grammar and not just a vocabulary. They are also the type where my Thursday partner and I disagree most about what counts as fair.
1One word wrapped around another
A container clue builds its answer by placing one piece inside another. The outer piece is split open, the inner piece is dropped into the gap, and the result, read straight through, is the answer. The instruction to do this can point either way. Holding, keeping, grabbing, embracing and eating all say the first piece surrounds the second. In, inside, caught by and held by say the first piece goes into the second. Getting the direction backwards is the most common container mistake I make, even now.
An example I built for this page: Informer held by exercise class to chatter (5). Chatter is the definition. Informer gives RAT. Exercise class is one of the standard ways to clue PE, physical education, which every British schoolchild once endured. Held by tells you RAT goes inside PE, which gives P-RAT-E, PRATE, an old word for idle chatter. The surface reads like a complaint about the gym, which is the disguise, and the word to is doing nothing but joining the wordplay to the definition.
What makes containers harder than anagrams is that the pieces are rarely spelled out in the clue. With an anagram the letters are all there on the page. With a container you usually have to translate first, informer into RAT and exercise into PE, and only then do the insertion. Two stages means two chances to go wrong, and a failure in the first stage feels exactly like a failure in the second, which is why they took me so long to learn.
2The abbreviations that do most of the filling
Because containers so often need short pieces, they lean heavily on the stock abbreviations that setters share, and a large part of learning them is simply learning that stock. Some are obvious once seen, like N, S, E and W for the compass points or R and L for right and left. Others I only picked up by repeatedly failing to see them: SS for a ship, RA for the gunners or an artist, TT for somebody who does not drink, OR for ordinary soldiers, CH for church and I for one.
I keep these on the page facing the anagram indicators, in no particular order, because I found that alphabetising them made me look them up rather than remember them. The page is a mess of different pens and it is the most used page I own. When a clue refuses to open on the train, I look at it for a minute and then look at that page, and more often than not one of the old stand-bys is waiting in the middle of the answer.
The abbreviations are also where the shared conventions of cryptic setting show most clearly. Almost every broadsheet puzzle I have tried uses the same core set, with some variation at the edges. A few feel dated, and newer setters are slowly replacing some of the military and naval ones with more current references, but a learner who knows the core set holds a key to most of the containers they will meet on any weekday.
Worked through at the table
- Directions: N, S, E, W, and R and L for right and left
- Numbers: I, V, X, L, C, and O for nothing or a ring
- Ships and sailors: SS, AB, TAR
- Soldiers and gunners: OR, GI, RA, TA, RE
- Small words: A, AN, I for one, ER for hesitation
3About, around and the direction problem
The word about is the worst offender in the container family, as it is among the anagrams. In a container clue it can mean that one piece goes around another, or it can supply the letters C, CA or RE to be placed inside something else. Around behaves in a similar way but tends not to supply letters of its own. Outside, without and about can all mean surrounding, and without can also mean lacking, which sends you towards a deletion instead. I spent most of one winter being fooled by that last one.
The habit that helped was to stop reading the container word as a single instruction and ask what it connects. In a clue with the shape A about B, A is usually the outer piece. In B about A, B is. Setters are expected to make that grammar hold, and good ones always do. If the only way I can make an answer work is by reading the sentence backwards against its grammar, that is a strong sign I have misread the device rather than found a daring clue.
My Thursday partner holds setters to that grammar more strictly than I do. She will reject an answer she cannot parse cleanly, however well it fits the crossing letters, and will spend twenty minutes proving that the setter was fair. I am more willing to write in something that fits and trust the reasoning later. We have ended evenings on both sides of that argument, and the grids where she turned out to be right are the ones I have learned the most from.
4A small drill for the morning train
When I was learning containers I set myself a drill on the way in to work. I would take any short word from an advert on the carriage wall and try to find longer words with it inside. Rat gives prate, crate, pirate and grate, among others. Pet gives carpet, trumpet and puppet. The point was not to set clues but to get used to seeing short words sitting inside long ones, which is the whole skill a container asks of you.
The drill works best on a slow journey. On a crowded train at half past eight I rarely have room to open a newspaper fully, and a folded grid needs two hands, so ten minutes of staring at the advert above the door and pulling its words apart is a decent use of the time. It is also, I will admit, the reason I can still recite the telephone number of a firm of solicitors I have never once needed.
After a few weeks of this I noticed containers opening faster in real puzzles, and I think the reason is simple. A container is hard mainly because the answer is disguised as one smooth word, and the eye does not naturally break a smooth word into an outside and an inside. Practising that break on dull material, over and over, trained the eye to do it without being asked. It is the least romantic thing in this notebook, and one of the most useful.
Worked through at the table
- Pick one short word and hunt for longer words that contain it
- Say the outer and inner pieces aloud, not just the answer
- Check which way round the clue's grammar says the pieces go
- Translate every piece before trying to join them
Example clues on this page were written for the notebook, and the parses were checked twice, once on the train and once at home. Last corrected 2 Nov 2025.