Small secret becomes online puzzle phenomenon (6,7)

Before April this year Angas Tiernan barely used social media. “I think my last personal social media post was in 2019,” he says with a laugh.

Now he posts every day to more than 250,000 followers on Instagram alone, with numbers growing every day. Why? A shared love of cryptic crossword clues.

Setter Liam Runnalls and founder Angas Tiernan who work together on Minute Cryptic.Credit: Chris Hopkins

Tiernan, who works as a product manager at tech start-up Amber Electric, is the founder of Minute Cryptic, which does what it promises on the tin. Over the course of roughly a minute he puts a clue on the screen, then explains how it works.

At first Tiernan stuck to YouTube, posting a video every two days. “After a few weeks I think I had 20 subscribers,” he says. “In fact, 20 is probably generous.”

So he tried TikTok. After a few weeks the follower count grew to 1500 in a day, then 22,000 in a fortnight. Then he started uploading videos to Instagram, and that’s where everything really took off. In less than a month 100,000 people were tuning in, and a community had formed, offering opinions, feedback and suggestions.

Once momentum started building, Tiernan, along with developer Madi Freeman, began work on a daily game tied to the videos and realised Minute Cryptic would need original clues. “So thankfully he reached out to me,” says setter Liam Runnalls (who readers may recognise as LR from Tuesday’s puzzle page and who, incidentally, taught the writer of this article how to solve cryptics).

“I really enjoy Liam’s clues,” says Tiernan. “He’s able to find that space of really satisfying, not too devious and just fun.”

In addition to setting for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, Runnalls also writes crosswords for The Saturday Paper, for Golden Plains music festival, “and I also do the RSL Victoria magazine. I very much write clues with the audience in mind,” Runnalls says. “This project has been even more challenging because I’m writing for international audiences – I have to keep the clues universal.”

Australians are only the fourth-biggest audience of Minute Cryptic, Tiernan explains. Ahead of them are the US, UK and India – so highly localised abbreviations and terms are off the table (both Tiernan and Runnalls point to “Drano” as among their most controversial solutions).

But controversy is nothing to fear; it sparks conversation, Runnalls says. “I always say: when I make a mistake in the cryptic, I make friends.”

Any money made comes through YouTube, but Tiernan has outlined plans for a subscription model on top of the existing structure, which will remain free. “That will probably be available in a few months.”

At the core, however, is the joy of solving clues and opening up the world of cryptics to a wider audience. “From the first video it wasn’t, hey, let me explain how cryptic crosswords work. It was just: we’re straight into it. You don’t need to know any of this … but maybe along the way you’ll have picked something up.”

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