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 Great Escape

12/25/2017

3 Comments

 
Picture
As kids, we were taught that the best Christmas gifts are made rather than bought, and although my lack of artistic ability should have put pain to that lesson long ago, I’ve never been able to shake it.

​In past years, I’ve given homemade vanilla extract and ten-packs of soup and certificates for babysitting services. More recently, I’ve made
personalized cryptic crosswords. (You can get my 2017 Christmas Cryptic here.)

But this year, fascinated by the concept, I decided to try my hand at something considerably more involved: a personalized escape room.

Read More
3 Comments

Partners in Cryptic

9/10/2015

10 Comments

 
Picture
One of the things I love most about practicing yoga is the absence of comparison. When I attend a class, there may be twenty or thirty other people there, but we're all working at our own pace. We have to: our bodies are all different. We are different ages and weights. We have different flexibilities and different amounts of muscle. Different things have happened to us over the course of our lives, and that changes how we move.

When my sister, my parents, my husband and I do the cryptic crossword on weekend reunions at my parents place, we all retreat to our separate spaces to dive into the puzzle. We work at our own paces and (unless someone accidentally cries out an answer in a fit of enthusiasm) respect one another's individual puzzle solving. In that respect, it’s a bit like being in a yoga class: we’re all working towards the answers in our own way.

Having someone call out "You don't have 17 Across yet? But it's so EASY!" would be akin to someone in a yoga class calling out "What do you MEAN you can't do full lotus position? It's SO EASY!” 


It would be judging someone else’s practice by the standards of one’s own experience. 
And what’s the point of that?

Read More
10 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.