Jolly Mixtures

Jolly Mixtures takes the form of a crossword, but each answer is an anagram of the clue. Several words might be formed from the letters of a clue, so part of the challenge is to identify the correct one.

One tip is to begin with the shorter clues. Cross-referencing with the letters that could appear in intersecting cells will eliminate possibilities. Alternatively, start with the longest clues, as these are less likely to have multiple anagrams.

Another angle is to look for clues that contain less frequently used letters. For example, DEIFY contains F and Y and its only anagram is EDIFY. Compare this with LEAST, which has at least five anagrams – SLATE, STALE, STEAL, TALES and TEALS. There are other strategies that require an in-depth knowledge of the language. For example, awareness of likely letter combinations (eg, common prefixes and suffixes) and the likely positioning of letters (duplicate letters often appear together in the middle of a word; eg, solvers might put together the two Fs in FRETFUL and quickly hit on the anagram TRUFFLE).