How training your brain in literal vs. lateral wordplay can break your reliance on scripts and master on-the-fly metaphors.
I often write about how relying on pre-written scripts, especially scripts written by somebody else, can limit your progress as a hypnotherapist. What I do not always explain is how to train yourself to create metaphors and language patterns on the fly. This post offers one unusual way to do that: using cryptic crossword clues to train your thinking.
Table of Contents
A very quick explanation of cryptic crossword puzzles
If you already understand what cryptic crossword clues are, skip ahead to So how will a cryptic crossword clue help me with my clients?, but for others here is a very quick introduction. This is just the absolute basics so you understand what is being discussed. There are loads of great, in-depth, write-ups and videos out there on the topic, even full books on this, so don’t expect this to cover everything.
The anatomy of a cryptic clue
There are some rare exceptions (that I’m not going to cover here), but the vast majority of cryptic clues have four parts, The Definition, which is like the normal crossword clue that defines what the answer is. This is normally either the first or second to last part of the clue. The Fodder, the words that are used in one way or another to get the answer. The Indicators, words that hint at what to do to the fodder to manipulate them into the answer. And the Letter Count, always right at the end within parentheses that gives the number of letters in the answer if only one number is given, or the number of letters per word if the answer has more than one word. For example (8) is a single eight letter word, and (3,4) is a three letter word followed by a four letter word to give the full answer.
Surface vs wordplay
The surface reading is how the clue reads as a sentence, or as a newspaper headline which it is often likened to. The wordplay is the fodder and indicator parts interacting to give the answer. Sometimes the surface read can point towards the answer, but the vast majority of the time it is used to misdirect you and get you thinking along the wrong lines.
Some types of indicator
There are several possible indicators, again to save time and space I’m not going to list them all, or how they work. But they can include anagram indicators (where the letters are rearranged), reversal indicators (where the letters are reversed to give the answer), Hidden Word Indicators (where the answer is hidden within other words in the clue), and Homophone Indicators (where a word is used how it sounds rather than how it’s written) to name but a few.
Solving the title of this piece
There are a couple of caveats here, first normally the surface reading of the clue will attempt to steer you down a blind alley rather than point the actual direction of the answer. As this ‘clue’ needs to work as a title rather than be a normal clue there is less of that here. Second, the definition in ‘normal’ clues are just a single word or two. To work as the title that leads into the full text, I couldn’t really do that here. Technically the “puzzling element to new hypnotherapy training” is the definition, but really every word on the page in front of you is. For a more standard clue reducing it to “Ancient tomb? “I see”, we say, is puzzling (7)” would work much better.
For the wordplay we have: “Ancient tomb? ‘I see’, we say”. Starting with ‘Ancient tomb’ as the answer we are looking for has seven letters, as we can see from the “(7)” part, and ‘Ancient tomb’ has more letters than that, we can’t use it directly. So we either need to use that and take letters out or find an alternative word that also means the same thing. There are no deletion indicators, so alternative word is much more likely. A crypt is an ancient tomb, but has fewer letters than needed, which means the rest of the clue can fill the gap.
The next part of the clue is ‘“I see”, we say’ and it’s the second half of that that tells us what we need to do. It’s a homophone indicator. So instead of ‘I see’ we say it out loud and write down how it sounds. In this case the phrase sounds like ‘I C’ so we replace the words with those letters and add that to the end of what we already have.
So ‘CRYPT’ + ‘IC’ = ‘CRYPTIC’ the solution to the clue and cryptic crossword clues are exactly what this whole article is about.
So how will a cryptic crossword clue help me with my clients?
There are many studies and research papers out there looking into using cryptic crosswords to reduce cognitive decline, fight the effects of Alzheimer’s, and various other things like that. This is all really interesting stuff and great to read about, but it’s not what I want to talk about here.
My interest, and the thesis of this piece is getting your brain used to working with the potential duality of meanings. The surface read of a good cryptic clue will steer you down one route, while in reality the actual answer tends to be something quite different. Here is a wonderful example from MinuteCryptic (I’ll talk more about them in a little bit) that was posted on the 14 June 2026:
Romans blasted stern of enemy craft with a variety of mortars (7)
The surface read is clearly talking about a naval battle, but the answer is quite removed from this. The answer is MASONRY. We get this from anagramming the word ‘Romans’ (blasted suggests we do this as that’s breaking things up), then follow that up with the stern of enemy, which is the letter ‘y’ (stern meaning the rear, and the rear of the word enemy is the letter y). That is the wordplay, and the definition is ‘craft with a variety of mortars‘ which doesn’t mean boats with guns, but rather craft as in something you do, and mortars as in bindings to hold stone blocks or bricks in place.
Both meanings make sense but are quite different. And this is just what we need to do, to a much less extreme degree, when we use metaphor with our clients. I’m not asking people to work out something like that on the fly, but if you are used to working that type of thing out with contemplation, simpler stuff, like using a driving metaphor to move on through troubles, for example, becomes much easier to do in the moment when in session.
The always fantastic Rory Sutherland also mentions cryptic crosswords in his book Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don’t Make Sense, where he says:
My assertion is that large parts of human behaviour are like a cryptic crossword clue: there is always a plausible surface meaning, but there is also a deeper answer hidden beneath the surface.
Of course he is talking about predicting behaviour rather than training yourself in the possibility of duality of thought and definition. But I thought it worth mentioning as an aside due to the crossover and to let you know where to go to read more about Rory’s ideas. Here is another quote from the book:
This insight is only possible once you know not to take the clue literally, and human behaviour is often cryptic in a similar sense; there is an ostensible, rational, self-declared reason why we do things, and there is also a cryptic or hidden purpose. Learning how to disentangle the literal from the lateral meaning is essential to solving cryptic crosswords, and it is also essential to understanding human behaviour.
Again, not really the same thing I am writing about, but an interesting aside you may also want to look into. Now, if Rory is talking about something different to myself, you may be thinking, why mention him at all? And that’s exactly the point of bringing him up. It’s important to understand this article isn’t suggesting that you should view your clients as cryptic puzzles to solve. My thesis here is purely about expanding your own language flexibility, metaphor construction, and your ability to utilise two different meanings at the same time.
All roads lead to Rome
The great thing about both metaphor and cryptic crossword clues are there are many ways to skin a cat. You can get to where you want to go by numerous different routes. We aren’t talking about Sudoku puzzles here where there is only one single solution, with cryptic clues and metaphors you can think of several different ideas then pick the best.
For example, the wordplay part of the title of this article is “Ancient tomb? ‘I see’, we say” but another version I came up with is: “Weeping papa before tailless bloody parasite” which also resolves to the word CRYPTIC. The wordplay for this breaks down as CRY is a synonym for weep. Papa in the NATO alphabet signifies the letter P. A bloody parasite is a tick. And if that tick is ‘tailless’ (i.e. we remove the last letter) we get TIC. Put all that together and we have another route to CRYPTIC.
A third option may be that the word ‘pricy’ along with the letters ‘t’ and ‘c’ is an anagram of CRYPTIC, something that crosses my mind right away to get the TC part is the cartoon character Top Cat. He wears a hat on his head and head can be used in cryptic crossword clues to mean the first letter of something. Perhaps his hat is rather expensive?
Another possibility is the word ‘tripy’ with the letters ‘c’ and ‘c’ can also be anagrammed into CRYPTIC, perhaps here ‘cc’ could reference an engine size, or perhaps a carbon copy when sending an email?
I have deliberately avoided giving full clues for the last two and just suggestions of how they could go so that you can have a play yourself, or even come up with something totally different if you want. That’s the point, it’s a fun activity, and if you are enjoying what you are doing, it changes work into play.
To solve, create, or both?
To quote the maxim that was rather popular a decade or two ago: I’m not the boss of you! I’m just making a suggestion here, if you do one, both, or neither, is totally up to you. I solve many more than I create, but I do enjoy the process of doing both, and I think they activate the brain differently. If you are completely new to cryptic, I’d suggest just sticking to doing solves for a while. That will give you a grounding in how they work, but it’s well worth trying both once you do get the idea, and it is great fun too.
Where to find clues to solve
There are plenty of places to source cryptic clues to solve, you could buy a daily newspaper that has cryptic crosswords (or use their websites if the crosswords are also shown there), various puzzle groups (both online and in-person options exist), and one of my own favourites, as mentioned above, MinuteCryptic (who have a free and a paid option) who provide a new clue each day to solve. And they are fantastic for beginners too as there are hints available if you need a little help.
I have no financial connection to MinuteCryptic nor was I asked to promote them; I use the free version myself and just mention it here because I genuinely find it useful.
Final thoughts
So, over to you. I’m not saying you MUST do this to be a good hypnotherapist. The aim is not to turn hypnotherapists into crossword setters. It is to practise the kind of flexible, layered thinking that lets us respond more cleanly when a client’s own language offers more than one useful route forward. I really do believe the more things we can do to keep our minds sharp and active the better. Better for both us, as people, but also better for our clients and resolving their issues too.