Crosswordese: A Guide to the Weird and Wonderful Language of Crossword Puzzles (Bookshop|Amazon), by puzzle constructor David Bukszpan, explains the history and odd little vocabulary of crosswords. The book has a playful format, with bolded words in...
Quiz Guy John Chaneski offers a test of wits that cruciverbalists will love, especially if they’re into cryptic crosswords, those punny, perplexing clues. The classic example is the clue “First place,” which isn’t so vexing...
It’s another cryptic crossword from Quiz Guy John Chaneski! The clues involve wordplay, and if the clue includes a definite article, it’s part of the answer. For example, what Biblical name is suggested by the clue “A barrier for...
Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a puzzle of Container Clues, in which one word is inserted whole into another to create a new word. For example, if the definition is “kind of potatoes,” and the clue is “she is in mad,” what kind...
The crossword puzzle community lost an exceptional man when Merl Reagle died recently. Reagle was a gifted puzzle writer and a lovely person who gave his crosswords a sense of life outside the arcane world of word puzzles. This is part of a complete...
You walk into a used bookstore, or pull down an old volume at the library, and there it is: The smell of old books. If you detect notes of vanilla in that intoxicating scent, there’s a reason. Also, why some people think the word awesome is...
