Choose Your Own Cryptic

Did you ever read “Choose Your Own Adventure” books? The ones where you, the reader, get to decide what the main character does at various junctions? As a child of the 1980s, I have fond memories of using my fingers as placeholders in the pages of these books, trying to keep track of each decision branch so that I could go back and choose differently the next time.

Choose Your Own Adventure fiction, or interactive fiction, as it’s known, is experiencing a renaissance thanks to the ubiquity of e-readers. The open-source software Twine lets you write your own interactive stories, and companies like Inkle Studios (which produced the gorgeous, award-winning game 80 Days), Choice of Games, and Delight Games are bringing them to the world.

Because I tend to filter everything through the lens of cryptic crosswords, I took one look at these platforms and thought: “why not have an interactive cryptic crossword tutorial?”   

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