I'm a USA solver but have a tolerable knowledge of UK culture for a yank, and I really enjoyed learning to do cryptics via Lovatts... but whenever I try to move up to any more difficult crosswords I feel as if I can't get any clues, or solve even a single answer! I'll sometimes reveal the answers and read about how they worked, and once I have that I can see how the answer matches the clue, but going from clue to answer still feels impossible. I'm overwhelmed by how many possible ways there are to approach everything! Lovatts is too easy for me, because they make it so obvious what's the definition/synonym, what's the wordplay, and what's the filler.

But then I try any other cryptic and it just seems like there's no way to spot which is which! Nobody seems to use any of the obvious indicator words like "back" or "sound" or "mixed" that I learned to use to understand what sort of wordplay to use, and without knowing what the definition part is, I'm stuck trying to come up with huge lists of possible synonyms for every possible meaning of every single word in the clue!

Any advice at all on resources for improving/learning? Any possible cryptic collections that are a step above Lovatt's but easier than the Everyman and such? Please help, I've been stuck for ages!

easy but sure

New to these, let me know if I could have made the surface better

day 275 of an experiment in which i press the "random word" button on onelook and make a cryptic clue out of it.

day 274

day 273, day 272, day 271, day 270, day 269, day 268, day 267

day 266, day 265, day 264, day 263, day 262, day 261, day 260

day 259, day 258, day 257, day 256, day 255, day 254, day 253

weeks 33 to 36 (days 225 to 252)

weeks 29 to 32 (days 197 to 224)

weeks 25 to 28 (days 169 to 196)

weeks 21 to 24 (days 141 to 168)

weeks 17 to 20 (days 113 to 140)

weeks 13 to 16 (days 85 to 112)

weeks 9 to 12 (days 57 to 84)

weeks 5 to 8 (days 29 to 56)

weeks 1 to 4 (days 1 to 28)

This is almost certainly an old chestnut, but it was new to me so I thought I’d share it anyway :)