ŌTOROHANGA resident Paul Woodd says there are codes in everything – and he’s written them into a book. PHOTO BRIANNA STEWART
All words can be broken into a code.
When Ōtorohanga plumber and chimney sweep Paul Woodd thinks of a word, he imagines what that code could be.
The 71-year-old completes a cryptic crossword every morning. He likes them so much that he’s even written down all the codes he can think of and produced a book, to share his passion with others.
Paul likes the crosswords from English newspapers like The Guardian. The Kiwi papers, King Country News included, don’t publish ones that are challenging enough to stretch his brain.
“It’s important to keep your mind sharp,” he said.
But Paul recognised the ability to complete a cryptic crossword was a learned skill.
He said someone sitting down today and deciding to complete a cryptic crossword would be like trying to be a heart surgeon tomorrow.
“There’s nobody born knowing how to do cryptic crosswords – and you have to put in the hard yards. There’s no other way to do it.
“You can’t magically start doing them. It would be impossible.”
Learning how to do a cryptic crossword took a lot of hard work analysing answers and learning how the codes were generated, Paul said, and there was no “eureka moment” where you suddenly knew how to complete one.
“I’ve been asked, believe me, hundreds of times how to do them. But as I said, cryptic crosswords are like welding; the more you weld, the better you get.
“It’s as simple as that.”
With a cryptic crossword, the clues are not as straightforward as they appear.
The trick to finding the answer to a clue usually lies at the beginning or the end of the sentence.
Take “former conservative employer becoming lenient type”, for example.
‘Former’ is ex, as in ex-boyfriend, your former boyfriend.
‘Conservative’ is a common code for the letter C.
‘Employer’ is a user.
Put together ‘ex,’ ‘C,’ and ‘user’ and you get ‘excuser.’
“And a lenient type is an excuser,” Paul said.
He suggested when it came to learning, the best idea wasn’t to start at what appeared to be the beginning, the clue.
Instead, he said, look at solved crosswords and figure out how the codes work.
“Otherwise, you’re bamboozled.”
It was the job of the setters – the ones creating the crosswords – to make it as difficult as possible to solve the clue, Paul said.
“In a good cryptic, there is nothing superfluous in the clue. There’s no word in there that is not required for the clue.
“When you get into The Times one, they’re really brief. They’re really trimmed right down and they’re a real brain tease.”
Paul started doing cryptic crosswords “many, many” years ago.
“Remember, in those times, there were no cell phones, no computers, no apps, none of that.
“We were pretty much in the caves compared to now,” he said.
“Now you’ve got anagram apps, you’ve got synonym apps, you can Google stuff, there’s really good dictionaries online.”
Paul used an online tool called One Across, which suggested answers based on the parts of a clue that he has solved, even if what he’s got is only the second and fourth letter of a 10-letter word.
But he didn’t consider it cheating.
“As I say in the book, there’s no cheating – whatever it takes.
“Any apps, any word finders, anything like that, use them, because these are pretty difficult.
“Don’t think ‘oh well, I shouldn’t be doing that,’ because everybody does, believe me.”
The main inspiration behind creating the book was to produce the codes – 440 of them.
But since it has been printed, Paul has found another dozen.
He keeps up to date with those who have purchased the book, letting them know of any new codes and offering help with solving the clues.
“I just get fun out of it.
“And when you retire, you’ve got to keep busy, you have to do something.”
