For several months now, I’ve been solving the daily Minute Cryptic puzzles as part of my daily routine.

With hundreds of these cryptic crossword clues completed and a good idea of how they work, I wondered how I would fare at writing my own clues.

Minute Cryptic actually offers a subscription that lets members submit their own puzzles, but it costs $90/year, and unfortunately I don’t think it’s worth carving out room for in my budget. Instead of subscribing, I decided to come up with my own cryptic crossword clues and post them here!

If you don’t know how cryptic crossword clues work, here’s a brief explanation:

Every puzzle is composed of the clue itself and the number of letters in the answer. For example, today’s clue reads “Party leader backtracked, opening parts of the Strait of Hormuz? (4),” indicating a four-letter answer.

The clue can *almost* always be broken down into three parts: the definition, the fodder, and the indicator. The definition is the meaning of the answer, so the solution you’re trying to come up with is a synonym for this part of the clue. The fodder contains the letters you extract and rearrange to form the answer. The indicator is the part of the clue that tells you how to manipulate that fodder. Indicators can tell you to anagram (or scramble), remove, insert, select, or reverse certain letters, and they are pretty tricky to pick up on at first. Even trickier, you have no idea which part of the clue belongs to each category unless you use a hint.

I’m going to talk about how to solve today’s cryptic clue, so try to solve it yourself first if you want to.