The Guardian Quick Crosswords 1: A collection of more than 200 entertaining puzzles (Guardian Puzzle Books)

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With a wide variety of clues from a vast range of subjects, these crosswords will provide a stern examination of your lexical knowledge, but are concise enough to be solved in bite-sized chunks.

but I feel a connection to it through the Listener’s occasional use of Playfair codes, which continued through that puzzle’s relocation to the Saturday Times and to this day. With a wide variety of clues from a vast range of subjects, these crosswords will provide a stern test while still being concise enough to be solved in bite-sized chunks.

Incredibly, Sayers tells us in a footnote that she has omitted a part of the conversation about whether RBEXMG might represent a date in a certain format “for brevity’s sake”.

Photograph: Farooq Khan/EPA-EFE View image in fullscreen Navigating the waters … a boatman on the Dal Lake in Srinagar. So also are Mr Stimpson’s Crossword Puzzles, the clues to which the reader is advised not to be beguiled into attempting to solve. Finance is provided by PayPal Credit (a trading name of PayPal UK Ltd, Whittaker House, Whittaker Avenue, Richmond-Upon-Thames, Surrey, United Kingdom, TW9 1EH).I can’t sit down with a blank sheet of paper and know that in two or three hours I’ll have a puzzle, and I won’t start one until I know that I have at least three or four ideas for clues that will establish a theme.

The most rewarding themes have the tightest focus: early on, I started a list of ideas based on fruit and veg, but quickly found that I had enough vegetable clues, so I put the fruit on one side. A solicitor, he worked at Lincoln’s Inn and enjoyed writing amid the “hustle and bustle” of his commute. You’ll discover something of my working methods and the lively relationship between setter and editor, you’ll have another chance to solve extra teaser clues and you’ll hear from the solvers who took the time to comment on the puzzles when they were first published. Hugh Stephenson is the Guardian's crossword editor and has compiled all of the paper's previous crossword books. I’m sure that the symmetries and patterns in the best grids are part of the appeal of crosswords and add to the solver’s motivation to complete a puzzle.

More fool the adapters: the conversation could only have been more delightful if our heroes had digressed into discussing Playfair’s creator, Charles Wheatstone, who also found time to invent the English concertina and an electronic device that went on to be a key aspect of Scientology. Michael Gilbert himself, and Close Quarters in particular, belong to neither the “cosy crime” nor the “hard-boiled” camp. You seem to treat the various Guardian grids like physical spaces, like your metaphor of the Cluedo secret passageway. This book celebrates the world's favourite word puzzle by recounting the history of it, alongside examples of puzzles and words of wisdom from puzzle setters, crossword editors and members of the public who have racked their brains to find the solution to that elusive clue.

In this book, you’ll find my first 50 puzzles from the Guardian, with an additional bonus puzzle first published in the online Genius slot.Once I have enough, I colour-code the ideas to make sure I have a variety of types of clue and ways of using the theme. In the meantime, our next book is The Twelve Quizzes of Christmas by Frank Paul, which we’ll discuss in November. When Have His Carcase was published, the crossword was a novelty; the Guardian had had a puzzle for just three years. Since these providers may collect personal data like your IP address we allow you to block them here.