"OUP Oxford; Rev Ed edition (2005), , ""The Art of the Crossword Setter"" – essay in ""Chambers Crossword Dictionary"" (2nd edition, Chambers 2006), ""Chambers Concise Crossword Dictionary"" (2nd edition, Chambers 2005), and ""Chambers Crossword Companion"" (Chambers 2007) ""A to Z of Crosswords"", Collins (2006) , Jonathan Crowther Jonathan Crowther is a British crossword compiler who has for over 45 years composed the Azed cryptic crossword in ""The Observer"" Sunday newspaper. He was voted ""best British crossword setter"" in a poll of crossword setters conducted by ""The Sunday Times"" in 1991 and in the same year was chosen as ""the crossword"
"and deaths of long-standing competitors. The slip may be obtained in printed form by subscription or viewed freely at ""The Guardian"" website's crossword page or the ""& lit."" website, which contains every Azed slip published. Described in ""Chambers Crossword Manual"" as ""Azed's Clue-writing School "", the slip has had a great influence on standards of cluemanship. It also builds a sense of community among Azed solvers. Every 250 puzzles, a celebratory lunch or dinner is held in Oxford, where Azed lives. Some solvers travel considerable distances to attend, even flying in from Scotland and Ireland. The most recent, in July"
"in a modern blocked puzzle, thus providing an extra aspect of difficulty for the seasoned cryptic solver. The 2000th Azed puzzle was published on 26 September 2010. The 500th competition puzzle was published on 1 August 2010. The puzzle's barred grid signals a more extensive vocabulary than that of the usual cryptic crossword. Up to half of the answers may be ""dictionary words"" and its standard reference, ""The Chambers Dictionary"", is an essential aid for most solvers. However, a much lower percentage of unchecked letters – those that appear in only one answer – helps to alleviate this, as does"
"after leaving university he started submitting to ""The Listener"". They published sixteen Gong puzzles between June 1965 and February 1972. He continued to be a Ximenes competitor until Ximenes' death in 1971. Appointed as Ximenes' successor, he cast around for a new pseudonym. His two predecessors had taken theirs from Spanish inquisitors-general but none of the names remaining seemed suitably impressive. However, reversing the last name of one, Diego de Deza, gives (to British ears at least) the first and last letters of the alphabet. Letter manipulation and word reversal are integral parts of a cryptic crossword: thus Azed was"
"major evening dailies (""Aftonbladet"" and ""Expressen"") publish a weekly crossword supplement, named ""Kryss & Quiz"" and ""Korsord"" respectively. Both are available as paid supplements on Mondays and Tuesdays, as part of the ongoing competition between the two newspapers. In typical themed American-style crosswords, the theme is created first, as a set of symmetric long Across answers will be needed around which the grid can be created. Since the grid will typically have 180-degree rotational symmetry, the answers will need to be also: thus a typical 15×15 square American puzzle might have two 15-letter entries and two 13-letter entries that could"
"puzzles are alike in construction, and the intent of the puzzle authors is to entertain with novelty, not to establish new variations of the crossword genre. In the United Kingdom, the ""Sunday Express"" was the first newspaper to publish a crossword on November 2, 1924, a Wynne puzzle adapted for the UK. The first crossword in Britain, according to Tony Augarde in his ""Oxford Guide to Word Games"" (1984), was in ""Pearson's Magazine"" for February 1922. In 1944, Allied security officers were disturbed by the appearance, in a series of crosswords in ""The Daily Telegraph"", of words that were secret"
"1930, a correspondent noted that ""Together with ""The Times"" of London, yours is the only journal of prominence that has never succumbed to the lure of the cross-word puzzle"" and said that ""The craze—the fad—stage has passed, but there are still people numbering it to the millions who look for their daily cross-word puzzle as regularly as for the weather predictions."" ""The New York Times"", however, was not to publish a crossword puzzle until 1942; today, the ""Times"" puzzle is one of the most popular in the country. The term ""crossword"" first appeared in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1933."
"was the first setter to use cryptic clues exclusively and is often credited as the inventor of the cryptic crossword. The first newspaper crosswords appeared in the ""Sunday"" and ""Daily Express"" from about 1924. Crosswords were gradually taken up by other newspapers, appearing in the ""Daily Telegraph"" from 1925, ""The Manchester Guardian"" from 1929 and ""The Times"" from 1930. These newspaper puzzles were almost entirely non-cryptic at first and gradually used more cryptic clues, until the fully cryptic puzzle as known today became widespread. In some papers this took until about 1960. Puzzles appeared in ""The Listener"" from 1930, but"
"in every issue. The puzzle in ""The Guardian"" is well loved for its humour and quirkiness, and quite often includes puzzles with themes, which are extremely rare in ""The Times"". ""The Independent"" puzzle also includes themes quite often. However, with its larger circulation, ""The Telegraph"" version is probably the most attempted. Many Canadian newspapers, including the ""Ottawa Citizen"", ""Toronto Star"" and ""The Globe and Mail"", carry cryptic crosswords. Cryptic crosswords do not commonly appear in U.S. publications, although they can be found in magazines such as ""GAMES Magazine"", ""The Nation"", ""Harper's"", and occasionally in the Sunday ""New York Times"". The"
"The New York Times crossword puzzle ""The New York Times"" crossword puzzle is a daily puzzle published in ""The New York Times"", online at the newspaper's website, syndicated to more than 300 other newspapers and journals, and available as mobile apps. The puzzle is created by various freelance constructors and has been edited by Will Shortz since 1993. The puzzle becomes increasingly difficult throughout the week, with the easiest puzzle on Monday and the most difficult puzzle on Saturday. The larger Sunday crossword, which appears in ""The New York Times Magazine"", is an icon in American culture; it is typically"
"crossword in its Sunday edition. The first puzzle ran on Sunday, February 15, 1942. The motivating impulse for the ""Times"" to finally run the puzzle (which took over 20 years even though its publisher, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, was a longtime crossword fan) appears to have been the bombing of Pearl Harbor; in a memo dated December 18, 1941, an editor conceded that the puzzle deserved space in the paper, considering what was happening elsewhere in the world and that readers might need something to occupy themselves during blackouts. The puzzle proved popular, and Sulzberger himself would author a ""Times"" puzzle"
"born. Azed No. 1 appeared in ""The Observer"" in March 1972 and monthly clue-writing competitions à la Ximenes resumed. These still continue and in the monthly ""slip"", he gives details of each competition and discusses points of technique and more general interest relating to his puzzles. He relishes the dialogue the competitions generate and many regular solvers have become his friends. Among the technical comments can sometimes be found glimpses into his private life – he is very interested in cricket and less so in football … he took part in a performance of Haydn's ""Nelson Mass"" at Radley College"
"first crossword puzzle in ancient Greek appeared in April 2015 as an annex to the 9th issue of Hebdomada Aenigmatum. It developed into a separate magazine with the name of Ὀνόματα Kεχιασμένα (""Onomata Kechiasmena"") with crosswords, word puzzles, join-the-dots where the dots are sequentially marked with Greek letters, a strip of Asterix in ancient Greek, two pages of recent news in ancient Greek in collaboration with Akropolis World News . Launched in June 2014, Hebdomada Aenigmatum is published monthly and is available free of charge upon registration on the website . The editor-in-chief is Lucas Cupidus in collaboration with Herimannus"
"Ditloid A ditloid is a type of word puzzle, in which a phrase, quotation, date, or fact must be deduced from the numbers and abbreviated letters in the clue. Common words such as 'the', 'in', 'a', 'an', 'of', 'to', etc. are not normally abbreviated. The name 'ditloid' was given by the ""Daily Express"" newspaper, originating from the clue: 1 = DitLoID ≡ ""1 Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich"". Will Shortz originated the current form of this puzzle and first published it in the May–June 1981 issue of ""Games"" magazine, calling it the Equation Analysis Test. In its annual"
"unthemed Friday or Saturday puzzle is 72; Sunday puzzles must contain 140 words or fewer. Given the ""Times's"" reputation as a paper for a literate, well-read, and somewhat arty audience, puzzles frequently reference works of literature, art, or classical music, as well as modern TV, movies, or other touchstones of popular culture. The puzzle follows a number of conventions, both for tradition's sake and to aid solvers in completing the crossword: In addition to the primary crossword, the ""Times"" publishes a second Sunday puzzle each week, of varying types, something that the first crossword editor, Margaret Farrar, saw as a"
"Abdul hit"", was WILL YOU MARRY ME. She said yes. The puzzle attracted attention in the AP, an article in the ""Times"" itself, and elsewhere. On May 7, 2007, former U.S. president Bill Clinton, a self-professed long-time fan of the ""Times"" crossword, collaborated with noted crossword constructor Cathy Millhauser on an online-only crossword in which Millhauser constructed the grid and Clinton wrote the clues. Shortz described the President's work as ""laugh out loud"" and noted that he as editor changed very little of Clinton's clues, which featured more wordplay than found in a standard puzzle. Clinton made his print constructing"
"Eastbourne Gazette The Eastbourne Gazette, commonly known as just The Gazette, is a weekly tabloid newspaper, printed on Wednesdays and published since 1859 in Eastbourne, England. The Gazette was the town's first newspaper. Nowadays, the paper is edited and created by Beckett Newspapers, based in Eastbourne, and printed by Johnston Press at their headquarters in Hilsea, Portsmouth. Aleister Crowley once edited a chess column for the paper. The Gazette was the newspaper that the fictional ""Private Cheeseman"" from ""Dad's Army"" was a correspondent for. The Gazette also has a sister newspaper, owned by Beckett Newspapers, called the ""Eastbourne Herald"". The"
"Al-Bilad (Saudi newspaper) Al-Bilad () is a Saudi Arabian daily newspaper located in Jeddah. It is one of the oldest newspapers in Saudi Arabia, having been established in April 1932. In 1960, after Israel captured German Nazi and SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann, the newspaper ran a headline entitled: ""Capture of Eichmann, who had the honor of killing five million Jews"". In 1978, the newspaper reported a story that was subsequently picked up by the Associated Press concerning a father who mistakenly gave away his two veiled daughters to the wrong bridegrooms in a double wedding. The couples were happy with the"
"Merriam-Webster, publishers of the leading American dictionaries, first heard of this puzzle in a letter dated March 17, 1975, from Patricia Lasker of Brooklyn, New York. Lasker says her plant manager heard the question on an unnamed quiz show. Since that time Merriam-Webster has received about four letters each year asking the question. The puzzle first appears in print in Anita Richterman's ""Problem Line"" column in ""Newsday"" on April 29, 1975. One ""M.Z."" from Wantagh, New York states that the problem was asked on a TV quiz program. Richterman states that she asked a learned professor of English for help"
"Zebra Puzzle The zebra puzzle is a well-known logic puzzle. Many versions of the puzzle exist, including a version published in ""Life International"" magazine on December 17, 1962. The March 25, 1963, issue of ""Life"" contained the solution and the names of several hundred solvers from around the world. The puzzle is often called Einstein's Puzzle or Einstein's Riddle because it is said to have been invented by Albert Einstein as a boy; it is also sometimes attributed to Lewis Carroll. However, there is no known evidence for Einstein's or Carroll's authorship and the ""Life International"" version of the puzzle"
"Newspaper riddle The newspaper riddle is a riddle joke or conundrum that begins with the question: The traditional answer, which relies upon the identical pronunciation of the words ""red"" and ""read"", is: Barrick believes this riddle to be ""perhaps the most common example of a folk riddle collected in the United States in the twentieth century"", pointing out that between 1917 and 1939 it appeared in 15 collections of folk riddles, and in a further six between 1939 and 1974. Alternative answers to the riddle exist, where red is used as a color, parodying the canonical form of the riddle."
"including those below. (All puzzles published from October 23, 1996, on are available to online subscribers to the ""Times"" crossword.) A few crosswords have achieved recognition beyond the community of crossword solvers. Perhaps the most famous is the November 5, 1996 puzzle by Jeremiah Farrell, published on the day of the U.S. presidential election, which has been featured in the movie ""Wordplay"" and the book ""The Crossword Obsession"" by Coral Amende, as well as discussed by Peter Jennings on ABC News, featured on CNN, and elsewhere. The two leading candidates that year were Bill Clinton and Bob Dole; in Farrell's"
"""New York Post"" reprints cryptic crosswords from ""The Times"". In April 2018, The New Yorker published the first of a new weekly series of cryptic puzzles. Other sources of cryptic crosswords in the U.S. (at various difficulty levels) are puzzle books, as well as UK and Canadian newspapers distributed in the U.S. Other venues include the ""Enigma"", the magazine of the National Puzzlers' League, and formerly, ""The Atlantic Monthly"". The latter puzzle, after a long and distinguished run, appeared solely on ""The Atlantic""s website for several years, and ended with the October 2009 issue. A similar puzzle by the same"
"the supplement until his death in 2010. On Saturdays, a Weekend section is published, with news features, arts profiles, television and radio columns, and book reviews of mainly literary and biographical works, with occasional reviews in the technology sector. The Saturday edition also includes the Magazine with consumer and lifestyle features on food, wine, gardening, and there are travel and sports supplements. Three Sudoku puzzles and two crosswords are published daily including a cryptic crossword, formerly compiled by ""Crosaire"", and a ""Simplex"" crossword. There is also a letters page. J.J. Walsh has contributed a chess puzzle to the paper since"
"genre as we know it. This puzzle is frequently cited as the first crossword puzzle, and Wynne as the inventor. Later, the name of the puzzle was changed to ""crossword"". Although Eugene T. Maleska is usually credited with the first crossword phrase (as opposed to a single word) in ""The New York Times"", an 1862 puzzle in the Lady's Book had phrases that are considered modern, such as the expression ""I did it"". Crossword puzzles became a regular weekly feature in the ""World,"" and spread to other newspapers; the ""Pittsburgh Press,"" for example, was publishing them at least as early"
"the rigour with which the clues are constructed. Azed is a strict Ximenean, a stickler for grammatical and syntactical soundness in clues. This precision assists both the discovery of the right answer and the solver's confidence that it is correct. Dialect and obsolete words are signalled in the clues and if a particularly obscure answer is not in ""Chambers"", the fact is noted below the clues. As is common with barred puzzles, when the solution is published it is accompanied by short notes to explain how the more difficult answers were derived from their clues. At approximately six-weekly intervals, the"
"and ""I'll take ""New York Times"" crossword for $200, __"" = ALEX. What made the puzzle notable is that the prior night's episode of the US television show ""Jeopardy!"" featured video clues of Will Shortz for five of the theme answers (all but GARY GYGAX and GENERATION X) which the contestants attempted to answer during the course of the show. The New York Times crossword puzzle ""The New York Times"" crossword puzzle is a daily puzzle published in ""The New York Times"", online at the newspaper's website, syndicated to more than 300 other newspapers and journals, and available as mobile"
"called the most popular word puzzle in many European countries, and is often called the Scandinavian crossword, as it is believed to have originated in Sweden. The title for the world's first crossword puzzle is disputed. Some such puzzles were included in ""The Stockton Bee"" (1793–1795), an ephemeral publication. The phrase ""cross word puzzle"" was first written in 1862 by Our Young Folks in the United States. Crossword-like puzzles, for example Double Diamond Puzzles, appeared in the magazine ""St. Nicholas"", published since 1873. Another crossword puzzle appeared on September 14, 1890, in the Italian magazine ""Il Secolo Illustrato della Domenica""."
"see their world's future and what actually transpires. For example, during the 1920s ""The New York Times"" repeatedly scorned crossword puzzles. In 1924, it lamented ""the sinful waste in the utterly futile finding of words the letters of which will fit into a prearranged pattern."" In 1925 it said ""the question of whether the puzzles are beneficial or harmful is in no urgent need of an answer. The craze evidently is dying out fast."" Today, no U.S. newspaper is more closely identified with the crossword than ""The New York Times."" In a more tragic example of historical irony, what people"
"of ""AB"" might look thus: OKHKBGVF… This process greatly increases the security of the encryption system. When done with computers, the speed of the processing of the encryption is not significantly hindered. Advanced thematic cryptic crosswords like ""The Listener"" Crossword (published in the Saturday edition of the British newspaper ""The Times"") occasionally incorporate Playfair ciphers. Normally between 4 and 6 answers have to be entered into the grid in code, and the Playfair keyphrase is thematically significant to the final solution. The cipher lends itself well to crossword puzzles, because the plaintext is found by solving one set of clues,"
"intended to be as difficult as a Thursday puzzle. The standard daily crossword is 15 squares × 15 squares, while the Sunday crossword measures 21 squares × 21 squares (previously, 23 × 23 square Sunday puzzles were also accepted; in addition a special set of 25 × 25 Sunday puzzles, with two sets of clues—easy and hard—was published in 1999 to commemorate the upcoming millennium). While crosswords became popular in the early 1920s, it was not until 1942 that ""The New York Times"" (which initially regarded crosswords as frivolous, calling them ""a primitive form of mental exercise"") began running a"
"Hebdomada Aenigmatum Hebdomada Aenigmatum is the first magazine of crosswords in Latin . The magazine features several crosswords and word puzzles in Latin, a variation of Sudoku with Roman numerals, a section with global news, a comic strip of Incredibilis Snupius (English: Snoopy) and a section on miscellaneous subjects (including films, recipes and sport). Special editions included two Christmas editions (“Editio Natalicia”) in December 2014 and December 2015 and the “Ego sum Carolus” (Je suis Charlie) edition in January 2015 to support freedom of speech after the terrorist attack at the French satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris. The"
"result and decided not to divorce. Hamza Kashgari worked for the newspaper as a columnist. On 7 February 2012, ""Al-Bilad"" issued a statement saying that they had fired Kashgari five weeks earlier ""because of the inadequacy of his general views for the approach of the newspaper."" List of newspapers in Saudi Arabia Al-Bilad (Saudi newspaper) Al-Bilad () is a Saudi Arabian daily newspaper located in Jeddah. It is one of the oldest newspapers in Saudi Arabia, having been established in April 1932. In 1960, after Israel captured German Nazi and SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann, the newspaper ran a headline entitled: ""Capture"