Archive

National Puzzle Day

24th Jan 2022

National Puzzle Day falls on 29 January. And what’s not to love about puzzles? They enhance alertness and focus, can provide social interaction, and once successfully completed bestow a warming sense of achievement. A recent book was even subtitled Life Lessons from Jigsaw Puzzles. But where the word… Read More

Crossword Puzzle Day: a tribute to Anne Bradford

17th Dec 2021

December 21st is Crossword Puzzle Day, and there could not be a more fitting occasion to celebrate the life of Anne R Bradford, cruciverbalist extraordinaire and author of the inimitable Bradford’s Crossword Solver’s Dictionary, who died in October at the age of 90. It is not an overstatement that crosswords… Read More

Top 10 Crossword Tips

22nd Oct 2019

Bamboozled by crosswords? Here are our top ten tips to help you hone your puzzle-solving skills! Crossword Tip #1: Quick crosswords Crossword puzzles tend to be basically ‘quick’ or ‘cryptic’. A quick crossword usually relies on a one- or two-word clue which is a simple definition of the answer required. Read More

Crosswords – 7 Facts You Didn’t Have a Cryptic Clue About

24th Jul 2014

From simple black and white word exercises to the most masterful, multi-layered of cryptic constructs, crosswords entertain, educate, comfort, and compel. Here are seven things you might not have known about this recent centenarian of the puzzle world. 1. Crosswords initially appeared in… Read More

Cryptic Crossword Success: 5 Ways to Crack Those Crafty Clues

22nd Jul 2014

A good cryptic clue contains three elements: ● a precise definition ● a fair subsidiary indication (wordplay) ● nothing else The beauty of cryptic crosswords is that solvers can immediately be certain that their solutions are correct. This is because there… Read More