Category: Setting Puzzles

The Proof is in the Cryptic

6/26/2017

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.

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?

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Happy Cryptic To Me!

1/27/2017

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It’s my birthday!
As a special present for myself, I carved out a little time every day of the last week and put together a cryptic crossword with personalized clues.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the momentum that good puzzles have and with this one, I’ve paid close attention to the difficulty level of each clue in the hopes that solvers will be pulled along.

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Doing More With Less

4/5/2015

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I completely freaked out when I discovered that The New Yorker, my favourite magazine, at one time published cryptic crosswords edited by Fraser Simpson, my favourite cryptic crossword setter. An Amazon search had led me to the collection “101 Cryptic Crosswords: From The New Yorker”, published in 2001, and I couldn’t believe my eyes. How had it taken me so long to discover that such concentrated awesomeness exists?

I added the collection to my Christmas wish list (it was December and my mother has spent years drumming it into me that you never buy yourself anything in that month). Then, I counted down the days to the 25th, hoping someone would get it for me.

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Up Close and Cryptic

8/8/2014

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I wrote the cryptic crossword tutorial on this website because a friend was in a tough situation and there was nothing I could do.

This friend is an aid worker who has dedicated her professional life to alleviating the suffering of others, primarily through the prevention of starvation and malnutrition. She works in countries that have been wrenched apart by war and natural disaster.

She works extremely long hours under difficult conditions and she is often lonely. When she is, there is very little I can do to help and that breaks my heart.

When I am lonely, distraction helps and as you know from the contents of this website, I find cryptic crosswords to be a wonderful distraction. I could not give my friend a hug or make her dinner but perhaps I could distract her from her loneliness, I reasoned. Perhaps I could show her the hidden door that leads into the magically complex world of cryptics, and in so doing, give her some respite from the world around her. I wrote her a guide to solving cryptic crosswords. And, to make the process as engaging as possible, I wrote her a personalized puzzle, with clues and answers designed especially for her.

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Cryptic on the Orient Express

8/5/2014

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When I write, I am alone. I'm physically alone in a quiet room but I'm also alone in my thoughts. Sometimes I become so absorbed in the text that I literally do not hear anything, including the sound of my husband's voice if he walks in and asks me a question. It's a solitary exercise, writing, from the first sentence I type out on the screen to the moment I hit "send" on the email to my editor.

So I'm always a little amazed when an acquaintance calls up to say she stumbled across a piece of mine in a magazine and enjoyed it. It seems magical somehow that a piece I wrote in such solitude has made its way out into the busy, bustling world and has a life of its own, interacting with people that I have never met and probably never will.

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Learning By Doing

5/26/2014

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My first attempts at setting involved pencils and graph paper.

My father, a born engineer, has spent his entire life taking things apart in order to figure out how they work. At fourteen, he attached wheels to a push lawnmower and made his own go-cart. At nineteen, he deconstructed and rebuilt an air compressor. When I was four, he built an entire car (The Lolley Trolley) from scratch.

To my father, the world is a collection of systems whose mysteries are one careful disassembly away from being revealed.

3 Comments

The Proof is in the Cryptic

Happy Cryptic To Me!

Doing More With Less

Up Close and Cryptic

Cryptic on the Orient Express

Learning By Doing

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