No comments about Chambers Crossword Completer (Crossword).

No comments about The Crosswords Club: The First Year.

No comments about New Cryptic Crosswords (Crossword).

No comments about The Times Jumbo Cryptic Crossword Book 6 (Crossword).

5 comments about Henry Hook's Cryptic Crosswords, Volume 5 (Other).

1. Henry Hook has finally released Volume 4 in his series of maddeningly difficulty cryptic puzzles. Like previous volumes in the series, the book consists of 45 variety styles crosswords and acrostics including repeated varities from past volumes (Crypto-Cipher, All Even, 7s and 9s).

   One notable point is the use of some adult-oriented slang in a few points throughout the book. Being like-minded, I actually enjoyed this and felt it made the puzzles a little more contemporary. But as it says on the back, it's not for the squeamish.




2. These cryptics are excellent for the solver who does not dwell in the abstruse depths of the English language. The structural ingenuity is very good, and the "tricks" are usually quite fair. The whole series of Henry Hook' cryptics is to be recommended -- but not for beginners.



3. The most varied and interesting of cryptic puzzlers, Hook surpasses himself in this last edition. But when will we see a new one?



4. I just discovered Henry Hook after many years of doing the Harper's Puzzle by Richard Maltby, Jr. These are excellent cryptics, and great fun to do. If you like the Harper's puzzle you will love these. Very very hard.



5. Henry Hook is one of the most devious and creative cryptic constructors in the world, and these collections show that he can be among the most prolific, too. Although there are some puzzles here that are pleasantly solvable, there are some that will challenge even the most jaded cryptic aficionado. And Hook's trickery depends on forcing solvers to look at words and letters in new ways, but his clues always play fair -- no mismatch of tense or parts of speech, no extraneous words, and no words used twice (once in the definition and once in the wordplay) -- errors that some other constructors, even very well-regarded ones, allow themselves with regularity.

No comments about The 2nd New Pencil Pastimes: Book of Crosswords (New Pencil Pastimes).

No comments about Crossword Puzzles for the Connoisseur Omnibus 8 (Crossword Series , No 8).

2 comments about The Chambers Crossword Dictionary.

1. The Chambers Crossword Dictionary certainly is a fine book, a solid hard-back the same height as the familiar dictionary but only 800 pages long. It promises 290,000 solutions for cryptic and quick crosswords and will, I am sure, be popular and a safe Christmas present for any crossword fan.

   This is a thesaurus with 15,000 definitions as headwords. Each of the entries in the dictionary leads to a list of words with of similar meanings sorted alphabetically by length. For example looking for a horse of seven letters, I quickly picked out bronco, centaur, charger, hackney and mustang. However,this work also has extensive reference lists and I went on to the list of horse and pony breeds and discovered Comtois, Criollo, Finnish, Furioso,Hackney, Hispano, Jutland, Masuren etc. It is the reference listings that are the strong point of this book; for example the entry for city is followed by a section on ancient cities, capital cities and almost four pages of towns and cities. This is the place to find the names of famous people, kings, criminals, authors, actors, astronauts - they are all listed. Moreover because all of the entries are listed according to their length it is easy to find the correct answer. Project consultants for the Chambers Crossword Dictionary were Don Manley and Jonathan Crowther and short essays by both are included in the introduction. Azed writes lucidly on the art of the crossword setter and gives an interesting insight into his methods. One comment which bemused me was that he used Chambers Words to search for words of a suitable length to fit his puzzles. I too have a copy that I bought 20 years ago. I have tried to buy one recently to replace my tattered paperback but to no avail. Don has written a superb and individualistic piece on Crossword English, explaining how to read a crossword clue. He lists 20 clues and explains each one. This essay would make an excellent introduction to the cryptic clue for a beginner to the art. There is also a section on anagram indicators.

   The Chambers Crossword Dictionary is a lovely book and would be a great help in solving cryptics such as one finds in The Times and would make definition-only puzzles a piece of cake. Its reference sections, garnered from other Chambers databases such as their Book of Facts, will certainly be a help for me, if only to check the name of a protein or a physicist.




2. I was very disappointed. As I use the Chambers Dictionary a lot I expected more from this book. It is just a thesaurus and not a very good one at that.

No comments about Bible Lessons For Crossword Puzzle Solvers.

No comments about Webster's English to Portuguese Brazilian Crossword Puzzles: Level 2.