Generations of Van Doorns had tried to ignore that cryptic passage, avoiding the question of who the boy's mother could have been.

A commentary on Flavius Josephus provides a cryptic passage: 'Jewish tradition claims that Josephus escaped by night from Makor.'

In the third year they summoned a sailor from Ptolemais to discuss the cryptic passage of the Mishna, "Tying and untying knots is for- bidden on Shabbat."

As to the "meaning" of this and many another cryptic passage in "The Seasons," there are, of course, many possibilities, and nobody has the exclusivity of them.

The story begins with a cryptic passage:

This cryptic passage might serve as a bare-bones synopsis of the book.

When Mr. Amburn was editing "Vanity of Duluoz," he said, "Kerouac would call me up and read me these cryptic passages.

"Let's talk directly," Chief Moose continued, not explaining cryptic passages to his listeners.

He refers, in a terse, cryptic passage, to his own unhappy experience as a litigant.

Ideas are undeveloped, cryptic passages are chanted, mixed metaphors created, references left unclear.