A Cryptle is our name for each day's puzzle — one cryptic crossword clue, published once a day, the same way a Wordle is one five-letter word a day. Solve it, and you get a fresh Cryptle tomorrow. Cryptic clues have been around for over a century; a Cryptle is just today's one, on this site.

Every cryptic clue is really two clues in one, pointing at the same answer from two different directions: a straight definition, just like a normal crossword, and a piece of wordplay that builds the answer letter by letter. Solve either one and you can use it to check the other — that's what makes cryptics satisfying rather than just hard.

The three hints, and what they point at

Definition — every clue has a definition hiding somewhere in it, usually at the very start or the very end. It's a normal synonym for the answer, written as if it belonged in an ordinary crossword. This hint tells you which part of the clue to trust as a plain meaning.

Indicator — a word or short phrase that signals what kind of wordplay is happening. Different tricks have different tell-tale words: "confused," "drunk," or "broken" often signal an anagram; "returning" or "back" often signal a reversal; "some of" or "hidden in" often signal a word hidden inside another. Spotting the indicator tells you which technique to apply.

Fodder — the actual letters or words the wordplay works on. If the indicator says "anagram," the fodder is the specific word or phrase whose letters get rearranged. If it's a hidden word, the fodder is the longer phrase you need to search inside. This hint points at exactly which part of the clue to manipulate.

A worked example

A crazy person loses his way (6)

Definition — "A crazy person": you need to find a word that can be used to refer to this description. Here it turns out to be the answer itself, PSYCHO.

Indicator — "Loses" (remove something). Different indicators mean different things; working out which indicator is in play, and then figuring out what it actually means here, is the fun part of a cryptic.

Fodder — "A crazy person" (again). The fodder isn't always sitting there directly in the clue's words — sometimes it's the meaning of a phrase, which you have to convert into another word yourself (here, PSYCHOPATH) before applying the action the indicator suggests.

The answer is PSYCHO. PSYCHOPATH is another word for "a crazy person" — a longer word meaning the same thing. "Loses" tells you to remove something, and "his way" is PATH. Take PSYCHOPATH, lose PATH, and you're left with PSYCHO.

General tips

• Read the clue as a normal sentence first — cryptic clues are always grammatically valid, even though they mean something different once you see the trick.
• The enumeration (the number in brackets) tells you exactly how many letters the answer has, and whether it's more than one word.
• If you're stuck, try assuming the definition is at the start, solve the wordplay for the rest, then check; if that fails, try assuming it's at the end instead.
• It's fine to guess and check — every guess against the letter boxes is useful information, even a wrong one.