MONDAY PUZZLE — One thing that beginning solvers might find difficult to grasp at first is the cluing trick of making a word look like a noun when it’s really a verb, or vice versa. This trick can really mess up an otherwise easy solve, but it’s worth learning about it so you can recognize when the constructors and editors are trying to pull a fast one on you.

Specifically, I’d like you to take a closer look at 13D, which is clued as “Judges to be.” On the surface, the clue sounds like we are looking for people who are about to take the oath of office as judges, right?

Wrong. In this clue, “judges” is not a noun. It’s a verb, and the clue really means that someone is evaluating something, or DEEMing it to be whatever one judges things to be (the entry is DEEMS).

I told you it could mess you up. But not if you remember the trick. When nothing comes to mind upon reading a clue, get out your mental power tools and take the clue apart. Think about whether the words in the clue could have other meanings, or even be other parts of speech. Yes, it’s only Monday, but these tricky clues have a way of sneaking in there anyway.