Hidden words, and learning to read a clue on a moving train
The hidden-word clue is often called the easiest type in the cryptic toolbox, and it is the one I most often fail to see. Most of this entry was drafted in pencil between Highbury and Moorgate, which is where I do most of my solving and most of my missing.
1The answer printed in plain sight
A hidden clue contains its answer written out in consecutive letters, usually running across the boundary between two or more words. The setter says so with an indicator such as in, some, part of, held by, within or found in, and gives the definition as usual at one end. An example I wrote while waiting on a platform: Flower part found in carpet alone (5). The answer is PETAL, spelled out by the last three letters of carpet and the first two of alone.
That is the whole mechanism, and it sounds too simple to be difficult. The difficulty is that the eye reads words, not streams of letters. A fluent reader recognises carpet and alone as units and never looks at the seam between them, which is exactly where the answer is waiting. Setters know this and choose phrases in which the hidden answer straddles words that are strongly familiar on their own. The more natural the phrase, the more completely the answer disappears into it.
Another I made up: Wine hidden in ship or tea chest (4). The answer is PORT, formed from the P at the end of ship, the whole of or and the T at the start of tea. It is gentle, and the indicator hidden is almost a confession. Most published hiddens are more careful than that, using an indicator like some or a bit of that reads naturally as part of the sentence, and those are the ones that slip past me on the train.
2Why a moving train makes them harder
Most of my solving happens standing up, with the paper folded into a quarter and held close. At that distance and with the carriage swaying, I read in short bursts of two or three words, and each burst gets processed as a phrase rather than as letters. That is almost the ideal condition for missing a hidden. I have looked at a clue four times between two stations, failed on each pass, and then seen the answer instantly once I sat down and could take in the whole line at once.
The fix I settled on is crude. When a clue has a short enumeration, four to seven letters, and the definition does not suggest anything obvious, I copy the middle of the clue into the margin in capitals with the spaces removed. Written as SHIPORTEACHEST, the answer is hard to miss, and the copying takes less time than a third fruitless reading. My Thursday partner says this is an admission of defeat. She also catches a later train, and gets a seat.
The copying habit pays off even more with the tougher version of the clue, the reversed hidden, where the answer runs backwards through the letters and the indicator adds a word such as back, returning, reflected or, in a down clue, up. Celebrity found going back among fine rats (4) gives STAR, read backwards from the end of fine through rats. On a moving train I have never once seen a reversed hidden without writing the letters out, and I no longer pretend I will.
3Indicators that look like ordinary English
Hidden indicators are harder to learn than anagram indicators because many of them are the smallest words in the language. In, of, some and within appear in almost every clue for innocent reasons. The more distinctive ones, such as partly, in part, a bit of, essentially, features and houses, are easier to catch, and I keep a short list of them beside the anagram indicators in the notebook. Houses in particular fooled me for months, because I kept reading it as a noun.
The useful shift was to stop trying to recognise the indicator first and start with a simpler question: could the answer be written out somewhere in this clue? With a short enumeration and a clue that seems unusually long or oddly specific in its wording, the answer to that question is often yes. A setter padding a sentence with a strange phrase, a cabin of fir or a gin can deliver, is frequently hiding something inside it, and the oddness is the tell.
The other tell is a definition that nothing else in the clue can be matched to. If the definition sits at one end and the remaining words will not break into an anagram, a charade or a container, and no letter count makes sense, a hidden is the obvious thing left to try. It is the last check I run before giving up, and it rescues more clues than it ought to, precisely because I keep forgetting to run it first.
Worked through at the table
- Distinctive: partly, in part, a bit of, essentially, features, houses
- Easy to miss: in, of, some, within, among
- Reversed: back, returning, going west in an across clue, rising in a down clue
- Usually paired with a short enumeration, four to seven letters
4A route through the grid, not just through the day
The commute has shaped how I approach a whole grid. I have about eighteen minutes between Highbury and the office, and on a good morning that is enough for half a weekday cryptic. I no longer start at one across. I skim the clues for the quick kills first, meaning short hiddens, obvious anagrams and anything with a definition I can guess, so that by the time I start on the harder clues I have crossing letters in each corner.
Hiddens are ideal for that first sweep because they need no translation. If I can find one in each quarter of the grid, the rest of the puzzle opens considerably, and the letters they give me are certain in a way that a guessed definition is not. A confirmed letter at the start of a long answer is worth more than almost anything else in a grid, since it cuts down the possibilities for every clue that crosses it.
Whatever is left at the end of the journey comes home in the coat pocket, gets looked at over the evening and is usually finished before bed. If it is not, it goes to the Thursday table with a note in the corner saying which clues are stuck. Over the years that corner has filled with the same kind of note again and again, and a good number of those clues turned out, when we finally cracked them, to have been hiddens all along.
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 7 Mar 2026.