are you good at crosswords?

I wish I knew what you meant by the numbers. More instructions would be extremely helpful, thanks.

sorry jespah, the answer to crossword clue no.1 is four words

1st word 5 letters 2nd word 2letters 3rd word 4 letters 4th word 4 letters


clue no. 2 two words 9 letters and 4 letters.

Ah, that's better, thank you.

I thought you would have solved these easy, oh well: "LISTEN" it's a sexual perversion: 5, 2,4, 4, Prick up your ears. Geddit

GSGE make an anagram out of this, EGGS perhaps, so what do we have:

"scrambled eggs"

That's not how crossword puzzles work in the U.S.--we have a different style, so people here would be at a loss until they got the hang of the puns and anagrams thing which obtains in your puzzles.

Sorry Setanta,

I assumed, wrongly it seems, that cryptic crosswords were the same everywhere.

cryptics, crostics, double crostics - they all exist, but when you ask about crossword puzzles, that's a different category.

A typical cryptic crossword clue in the US would be something like this: Meg Ryan transformed Teutonic land. (7)

Here's how you figure out the answer:

The (7) refers to the number of letters in the answer.
The word transformed means the answer is an anagram.
There are always 2 embedded clues, and the straightforward one is always at one end of the overall clue.
Given the above information, count the number of letters in "Meg Ryan" and the number in "land" or "Teutonic land". Since only the "Meg Ryan" combination has 7 letters, it must be the anagrammed piece.
Given the above, "Teutonic land" must be the straightforward clue.
So, what's a 7-letter word for Teutonic land that's also an anagram for Meg Ryan?
Germany

I thought i ought to come back and respond to Kev--yes, cryptic crosswords are the same everywhere in our language, they are just uncommon over here. If you say crossword to an American, the great majority think of the "open plan" crosswords one typically finds in our newspapers. My experience of English and Irish newspapers, is that their crosswords puzzles were always cryptic crosswords. Those are usually only found over here in the monthly puzzle magazines for the the "puzzle addict." I enjoy that style, although i'd have to admit that i'm not very good at them. I do very well with the "standard" American style, of which i think the Saturday New York Times puzzle is the most challenging.

I love cryptic crosswords. Not enough of them in the US.

"Listen" it's a sexual perversion (5,2,4,4)

The word 'perversion' probably is a clue that an anagram is involved using some or all of the preceding words.

AND/OR

'listen' means that the answer sounds like 'it's a sexual perversion'