Why murder mysteries and cryptic crosswords go hand in hand

From Agatha Christie to a new generation of crime writers, cryptic crosswords have long held a place in murder-mystery fiction. Debut novelist and Guardian crossword setter Alys Cummings explains why the two make such natural companions

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A cryptic crossword and a murder mystery are each bound by an unspoken agreement between the creator and reader: I will give you enough information to solve this, but you must put the pieces together yourself.

So it’s no wonder that crime writers, from Agatha Christie to Dorothy L Sayers, and TV shows, from Inspector Morse to Inside No 9, have been drawn to the puzzles in their stories. The latest writer to enter the cruciverbalist crime arena is Alys Cummings, whose debut novel, Murder Most Cryptic, was published in October.

“In the same way as when a setter is setting a puzzle for a solver, there are rules you should abide by,” says Cummings. “There’s that Afrit quote [about cryptic cluing]: ‘I need not mean what I say, but I must say what I mean’. It’s the same for a murder mystery.”

She continues: “Red herrings are the same as a surface reading [of a clue] … where you know something isn’t quite what it appears to be at first. The setter is putting red herrings in their clues in the same way that a writer of murder mysteries is putting red herrings into their book. It still has to be fair and it has to be there … in plain sight, so that once you get to the end you can see the clues that were laid.”

Cummings began writing Murder Most Cryptic after she broke her leg and had to wear a cast for two months. “I wasn’t particularly thinking, I’m going to get published one day,” she tells me. “I was writing it for me and for my own pleasure. I love murder mysteries and I love crosswords, and it seemed to me that those two things go pretty closely hand in hand. So I started with an idea about a man found dead with a crossword clue in his pocket to which the answer is MURDER – then I wrote the book to find out what happened.”

Each of the 74 chapters is preceded by a cryptic clue, the solution to which is hidden somewhere in that chapter. The clues also appear in full crosswords in the appendix of the book, which readers can then solve. Which is Cummings’ favourite? She suggests the following (you’ll find the answer further down):

Cummings had never set a full crossword when she started writing the book but after doing a masterclass with Boatman, she has now set crosswords for the Guardian as Garson, and for the Independent as Penelope.

“Obviously I love solving, but I equally love setting now,” she says. “And I think they’re quite different things, in the same way that being a writer or a reader are different things. So I’m very grateful that I had that impetus to start doing it because now it’s grown and blossomed into something that’s quite an important part of my life.”

Cummings chose the pen name Penelope “because she was a weaver and so smart in Greek myths, so the idea of weaving and creating things seemed a good analogy to me”. She also wanted to have a woman’s name: “There are not as many female setters as there are males. And there are other good Penelopes, like Lady Penelope in Thunderbirds and Penelope Pit Stop. Garson was my dad’s name, and he died quite a long time ago, so that was a way of celebrating him.”

Cummings is working on her second book, which will feature some of the same characters and more crosswords, and will also introduce other types of puzzles.

“They’re having a little bit of a resurgence, puzzles and murder mysteries,” she says. “Especially when the world can be quite a difficult place, having something with an answer that you can solve and get a satisfactory conclusion to is pleasing.”

* The solution to Cummings’ clue is STRESSED. “Cakes” indicates the word “desserts”, which when reversed – or “upside-down” – becomes “stressed”, and which could also be described as “on the rack”.

Murder Most Cryptic, written by Alys Cummings, is out now

Last week, we asked you to set a clue for the word UMBRELLA. This week’s runners-up are Tony Kelly, using the “all-encompassing” sense of the word with “Mare and bull entwined in blanket (8)”, and Alasdair MacKinnon, with an elegant surface reading making use of the word UMBRA: “In blacked out area, phone lacks constant mobile cover (8)”.

Record, EP and lyrics initially included in reissued album cover (8)

This week, the word we’d like you to come up with a clue for is MURDER. Please send entries to cluesletter@theguardian.com.

My favourite clue I’ve come across this week is from Julius in the FT Weekend:

Here’s a tip: stick with your revised version (4,3,6)

It’s a double definition – both halves of the clue are reworded potential meanings of the phrase KEEP THE CHANGE.