You’re consuming this ale pint at a party (10): a chat with Minute Cryptic founders Angas Tiernan and Liam Runnalls

By Joseph O’Keeffe

As Palatinate’s Puzzle Editor, I am often trying, with little success, to make people understand the magnetic appeal of cryptic crosswords. When I came across Minute Cryptic’s Instagram, reels, where founder Angas Tiernan explains solutions to an audience of over 300k, I was therefore curious at such roaring success. 

Minute Cryptic is an app and website which hosts free daily cryptic clues, aimed at getting people into cryptic crosswords. There are further paid membership features, such as community clues and a mini crossword. Their key marketing strategy is their viral videos.

I sat down with the page’s two creators, Angas Tiernan and Liam Runnalls, to discuss everything Minute Cryptic. Upon learning that their app and website had a free daily clue and paid community features, I needed to know more about this success. 

Joining the meeting, Angas, the face of the project’s social media, was situated in his iconic clue-solving room, or, as he called it, his “office”. Surprisingly, he told me he was a largely private person, being off most social media since 2017, and the “iconic” nature of his videos was thus more of a happy coincidence. Liam, an avid newspaper crossword writer who plays a major, if more behind the scenes role, in clue construction and the website’s community technology, was also at his home work space. The vibe was a friendly one – I was keen to share my own clues, favourite setters, and puzzles. However, I pressed them first on my biggest question – how did Minute Cryptic take such a seemingly niche interest to the mainstream?

The duo gave me a rundown on their success. I learnt that Angas, an ardent entrepreneur, was behind the original idea. With a background in tech start-ups, he was driven by his passion for the “idea of technology” as much as his love of cryptics. Angas came to realise that in his long past in businesses, he had been focusing too much on the ‘product’, rather than the distribution. A crucial moment of realisation was seeing puzzle channels, such as YouTube’s Cracking the Cryptic, get mass exposure even for something as, to him, relatively unexciting as sudoku solutions. Knowing the contemporary digital landscape, he wanted to push this even further, and make such explainers short form content. 

Angas came to realise that in his long past in business, he had been focusing too much on the product, rather than the distribution

And why cryptics? Angas loved them, and was keen to put clues that “[he] would want to solve [him]self” out into the world. Thus, the idea and distribution of Minute Cryptic was birthed – Angas turned to the opportunities provided by online exposure.

He began the project part-time, making “snappy” explainer MC videos on YouTube every other day, slowly growing and hooking people into the content. Pressing him on the ‘moment’ of virality, Angas highlighted an incident on TikTok which caused his views and followers to suddenly spike. The video behind this burgeoning virality? One where the answer, clued by wise men, was trio, something that is *technically* not confirmed and which animated many aggrieved comments. Both Angas and Liam laughed thinking back on what they saw as classic cryptic pedantry. Even to this day, Angas says, it is always the controversial clues that do numbers.

Around this time, Angas got in touch with Liam, who had written cryptics professionally, as a clue-writing expert. Angas highlighted how Liam’s “entrepreneurial website” sold him as the professional contact. Indeed, being such an innovation-loving puzzler, Liam instantly signed on. When asked why this particular business concept appealed, Liam highlighted its short form nature, which put it far above other “worse” ideas which he had rejected.

When asked how audience numbers translated to product success, Angas explained that their social media popularity gave them a solid pre-existing customer base to which to distribute and scale their actual website / app product. According to Angas, they kept customers engaged through the deliberate creation of a “social community” around the puzzles, both in the community features of the website (such as community-contributed daily clues) and Angas’ inspiration of many online creators reacting to their daily clue. 

Angas saw the broader network of online puzzle-solving creators as a missed opportunity for those such as the New York Times puzzlers. The lack of community elements on their app meant that the non “native” comment feature had to be relocated to other apps, such as TikTok. Minute Cryptic, contrastingly, provided “value” with its “built in” community. This, in the end, successfully led to book deals and well-subscribed paid memberships. This made the duo full-time. As Angas says, his online-first method of launching the company had great “side effects”, helping him to discover the value of the community element to the project. This ensured it was successfully “built for growth”.  

The “online first” method also helped Angas get helpful, real-time feedback on the product. Unlike most start-ups, YouTube comment sections gave Angas “free feedback” on his content. Comparing this to newspaper feedback, Liam lamented that he had got “less than twenty comments over ten years”, making Minute Cryptica far better device for clue feedback. 

I asked the duo how this affected their current Minute Cryptic clues. Both highlighted how the constant feedback helpfully allowed them to refine the quality of their wordplay, with Angus laughing that there was really “nowhere to hide”. Liam also spoke on how the singular clue, in contrast to the usual 30 in the paper, forced him to further perfect each one.

I then turned to Angas’ and Liam’s cryptic origin stories. Liam is the more typical one; his family taught him to enjoy cryptics from a young age, and he enjoyed solving them with his uncle and grandpa. The puzzles’ “social” nature was a key element of his enjoyment. Cryptics remained a big part of his adolescent life; he taught many classmates how to solve them. He then began to write crosswords professionally for Australian newspapers such as The Age and The Saturday Paper from 2012. 

Angas, in keeping with the ethos of the project, developed an interest in cryptics far later in life. He had always been aware of them in the paper, but viewed the interest as somewhat outmoded and impenetrable. He only learnt how to solve cryptics by “brute force”, spending an entire holiday sitting down with a crossword and its solutions until he understood how it worked. This birthed his love of cryptics, but, as he rightly acknowledges, is also testament to the medium’s relative inaccessibility to newcomers – especially those not raised on such puzzles. In part, Angas and Liam see Minute Cryptic as a solution to this accessibility issue, facilitating many more newcomers to the genre. The explainers for different types of clues available on the webpage show this in action – both see it as a key “gateway” to the broader cryptic world. 

I then quizzed Angas and Liam on how they would explain the unique appeal of cryptic clues. They agreed that their social element was a huge draw, beyond just the satisfaction of a well-crafted clue. Both said that someone’s cryptic clues uniquely reflect their background and way of thinking. This was reflected in the success of the community’s clues – the diversity from peoples’ different “cultural touchstones” made for more interesting and varied puzzles. Liam has even written crosswords for peoples’ proposals and relationships. They also saw AI as incapable of replacing such a personal medium – indeed, Liam said, people have favourite “setters” (crossword authors), several of whom we recommended each other.

Someone’s cryptic clues uniquely reflect their background and way of thinking

In fact, when I quizzed them on other puzzles they enjoyed, both maintained a unique affection for cryptics, as a singular vehicle for wit, creativity, and self-expression in the medium. Sudoku was dull to Angas, although some of the New York Time’s puzzles, such as Wordle, appealed to him, especially as a similarly social venture. But, ultimately, they saw cryptics as ‘perfect’, with them having a true charm in allowing the solver to knowing the setters’ brain and personality. Still, I threw in a few similarly-minded puzzle recommendations of my own.

Rounding out the interview, I tentatively asked if they could provide a Palatinate-themed clue. Instantly, as Angas joked, Liam went into his “own head”, thinking of the many possible ideas, and musing that ‘Latin being in the middle’ of the word immediately jumped out to him. Ultimately, the title of this very article was the result. Party serves as an indirect anagram indicator, which, as Liam says, commonly suggests “mingling, [and] excitement”. Anagrammise ale pint at a and you get Palatinate – precisely what you are “consuming” right now. Another media-based clue to hook a reader into the joy of Minute Cryptic and the medium.

Image: Barbara (WVS) via wikimedia commons