Sarah Lolley
  • Mailbox Missions
  • NDG Walks
  • What's New
  • Intro to Cryptic Crosswords
  • CBC/QWF Writer-in-Residence
  • Contact Me
  • Puzzle Tutorial
  • Practice Puzzles

The Proof is in the Cryptic

6/26/2017

6 Comments

 
In just ten days, I'll have my first cryptic crossword in print and I couldn't be more excited. It's being published by Montreal Review of Books, which you can get all over Canada (see here for a list of places that carry it). I'm especially honoured given that this is the first time they've published a cryptic crossword before.
Picture
I hadn't really thought of it until my editor called to double-check a word in one of my clues, but proofreading a cryptic crossword puzzle must be really tricky. Clues can sound really weird even when they're right and even a perfectly symmetrical grid can have a structural error (which happened with The Globe and Mail a few months back).

​If you don't happen to solve cryptic crosswords, which my editor doesn't (yet), how do you proceed?


Read More
6 Comments

Cryptic Coincidences

3/25/2017

1 Comment

 
Picture
Tell me if this sounds familiar.
​
Every once in a while, when I'm solving a puzzle, the strangest feeling comes over me of being simultaneously in the driver’s seat of my thinking as I tackle a cryptic crossword and a powerless passenger as my brain conjures a word from goodness only knows where.
 
Take the clue 17 Down on this Saturday’s Globe and Mail cryptic crossword:


Read More
1 Comment

The Unbearable Lightness of Cryptics

2/23/2016

2 Comments

 
Picture
About a month ago, the Sunday New York Time’s crossword puzzle blew the mind of a man named Shane Ryan and he wrote a fantastic article for Paste Magazine explaining why.

​The theme of the puzzle was Coriolis force (the inertial effect that causes storms to spin in different directions depending on their hemispheric position) and it is applied with such elegance, you really have to see it to appreciate it. 

​“Look, it’s entirely possible that I’m just a hopeless nerd,” he writes. “Maybe this doesn’t seem as impressive to you as it does to me. But:” 
the amount of pleasure this act of brilliance gives me is difficult to describe. It’s just so perfect, so virtuosic, and yet so playful. It’s the Platonic ideal of a crossword puzzle. And the amount of creativity and brainpower it takes to actually conceive of and create it is astounding to me.

Read More
2 Comments

Gridlocked

3/14/2015

12 Comments

 
Picture
It's rare but every now and again the Globe and Mail messes up the Saturday cryptic crossword puzzle and mismatches the clues and the grid. We love Fraser Simpson's Saturday morning cryptic over here, as I've said previously, so it's a bummer when we're forced to miss out.

This morning was one of those mornings: the grid started with 1 Across but the clues started with 7 Across. We mourned the lack of puzzle, then moved on to other things. Until my husband said: "I wonder if we could figure it out for ourselves."


Read More
12 Comments
    Picture

    About Sarah

    I'm a writer, adventurer, amateur setter of cryptic crosswords, lover of "ah-ha!" moments, and exhausted mom.

    Archives

    November 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    April 2019
    May 2018
    April 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    March 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    February 2016
    December 2015
    September 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    December 2013

    Categories

    All
    Accents
    Acrostics
    Amazement
    Bob Dylan
    Books
    Brain
    Certainty
    Choose Your Own Adventure
    Chris Hadfield
    Christmas
    Coincidence
    Creativity
    Cryptic Crossword Tutorial
    Editing Puzzles
    ELLE Magazine
    Epiphany
    Escape Room
    Family
    Finding Your Way
    Fraser Simpson
    Globe And Mail
    Group Solving
    Hero
    Hidden Messages
    Homophone Clues
    Horcrux
    Leonard Cohen
    Love
    Making Mistakes
    Maps
    Marriage
    Memory
    #MeToo
    Momentum
    Montreal Review Of Books
    Motherhood
    Music
    Mystery
    Nabokov
    Natural Phenomena
    Oliver Sacks
    Personal Essay
    Personalized Cryptics
    Politics
    Puzzles In Print
    Renovation
    Secrets
    Setting Puzzles
    The Committee Of Sleep
    The Coriolis Effect
    Travel
    Wes Anderson
    Wordplay
    Writer-in-Residence
    Writing
    Yoga

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.