Description

This article is from the Crosswords FAQ, by James A. Lundon (jlundon@xstacy.enet.dec.com) with numerous contributions by others.

10) Crosswords: What's an indirect anagram and why are they frownedupon in the newsgroups clue writing competitions?

Thanks to Ilana Stern for this description.

Indirect anagrams are clues where the actual word to be anagrammed
doesn't appear in the clue; rather a synonym or pointer does. This
type of clue is frowned upon by most (not all; but those who don't
like it generally consider it completely unfair) because it's quite
hard.

Example: Train part of a swirling snowflake, for example (7)

Solution: FLATCAR = train part, swirling = anag. indicator,
snowflake, for example = fractal (which anagrams to flatcar).

This is an incredibly bad and difficult clue! The general rule is
that any letters to be anagrammed must be actually present in the clue.

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