How to solve crosswords

Please read this overlong first sentence very carefully: "Unanimous estimation rates the 'hiddens' easiest to spot, and unsurprisingly so: letters are all appearing in their natural order under our noses." Now, please note that, quite apart from short, simple words to be found within individual words - eg "nan", "mat", "rat" in just the first three words of that sentence - there are many and more interesting words to be found there, where the last letter(s) of one word join up with the first letter(s) of the following word, with just a space-bar gap in between. Thus, we find "mouse", "uses", "test", "dense", "seas", "gin", "lord", "urn" (have I missed any?). In addition, we find "lysol", which spans three separate words ("unsurprisingly so letters"). Such words are normally very easy to fit in: "urn" eg in "under our noses" could well have been "verse" in "under the solver's eyes".

The same basic crossword rules apply to "hiddens": we need a definition of the answer, and we need a key indicator such as "in", "among", "some", "a feature of", "part of", "to some extent", etc, which tell the solver where to look for the required sequence of letters. We shall not be too happy with any setter who adds a few bonus (bogus!) words. They may make the sense that bit better, but they make the solver's job that bit harder - although we shall gladly allow the definite or the indefinite article, and we shall feel free to treat titles, such as the Daily Mirror, as one item.

Try (I know you will succeed!) the following clues: "Some of the Arctic Eskimos? They're frozen (4)"; "Issuing from Etna's hole? (3)"; "Take something from Thatcher? I can't (Heath) (5)"; "Part of mosaic in potentate's seraglio (7)"; "Taking part in its cantos? Callas, perhaps (5)". Note that there are no superfluous words (well, perhaps "perhaps"), and that any punctuation marks may be blithely ignored, including all those question marks. There are other refinements, -including letters cropping up backwards in across clues, and upwards in down clues.

But let me end this column by focusing on two very clever variants on that telltale key indicator. First (forgive me!), a clue the Observer setter Azed recently wrote involving myself: "Last part of book, perhaps, penned by Colin Dexter (5)", where "penned" = a) written, b) confined.

Finally, one of the great hidden clues from Ximenes: "Remember ether masks what is usually felt (5)", where "masks" = hides, cloaks. Why "felt"? Just think of the definition, and concentrate on those first two words.