Dan’s Puzzle Book Roundup — Part 1
[Ryan here. Want to give a warm welcome to Dan Feyer, winner of the C division at the last ACPT. He'll be contributing puzzle book reviews to our site. Thanks Dan and congrats again on the win.]
I met Ryan and Brian at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, and after I won the “C” divison title, Ryan invited me to contribute to the blog, probably thinking I had some fascinating insights into competitive solving. Well, I don’t. If it’s insight you seek, Orange, Rex, Jim, Linda, and of course Ryan and Brian should have you covered.
But I do have a whole slew of crossword puzzle books. Before last October, when Wordplay aired on PBS, I was a casual solver, with a few New York Times collections that I’d solve on the subway and in pit orchestras. After seeing the movie, and discovering that the tournament was moving to Brooklyn, I started practicing like a madman, downloading hundreds of old puzzles and buying up a bunch of books. Even after my glorious triumph, I’m still expanding my library. So I thought I’d do a little roundup/review in case anyone out there, like me, entered the keyword “crosswords” into Amazon.com and was faced with several thousand options. How are you to know (besides the few reader reviews) which books are worth your time and money? Maybe I can help, after the jump…
In this, my first blog post ever, I’ll talk about some collections – compilations from a specific publication. Part 2 will have specialty books by a single author, and Part 3 will deal with the non-fiction books about the world of crosswords. Let’s get started!
This is my favorite of the NY Times collections I have. The first 45 daily puzzles in the book are annotated by the “Puzzlemaster” and include famous or notable puzzles from Shortz’s tenure: Election Day 1996, the marriage proposal, record-setters for fewest black squares and fewest words, crazy rebuses. There are 25 Sunday puzzles, also annotated, with legendary constructions like “Night Lights,” “Dropping the Ball,” “Eland,” and my favorite, “Positional Play”.
The rest of the book is an assortment of daily puzzles, mostly from Monday-Thursday, without notes from Shortz. (But with titles, which they didn’t have when they ran in the paper.) If you’re only buying one NYT compilation, it should be this one. Good value too: there are 150 puzzles, twice as many as usual.
This is the only New York Times book I’ll discuss, because the other ones I have are just collections of dailies and Sundays. And I stopped buying NYT reprints when I signed up for Premium Puzzles on the Times website – I’m not gonna buy something I’m already getting free for my $40 a year.
One caveat: If you’re buying a book of dailies, make sure it includes the day of the week the puzzle ran. Before I got really into solving and learned the Monday-Saturday progression, I was working on this book. When I got to the end, I went back to look at the ones I couldn’t finish: #12, #30, #36, #54, #60, #66. It took me a while to realize why: those were the Saturdays. The puzzles were printed in order of publication, not (like in this one) in order of difficulty.
Challenging 30-Minute Crosswords
If you’re reading this, you’ve probably heard of CrosSynergy, the puzzlemaking syndicate that works without an editor, using a peer review system instead. This volume, with its lame title and hilariously bad cover art, collects 72 “Sunday Challenge” puzzles by ten different constructors.
The Sunday Challenges are 15×15 themelesses that fall somewhere around “Friday” on the NY Times difficulty scale. Some are a bit harder (especially those by Bob Klahn), some easier, but if you’re trying to get better at those late-week Times stumpers, this is a perfect book to practice with. I’m enjoying it a lot – just got it last week and have solved a third of the book already. Too bad there isn’t another volume of these. Get on it, Sterling Publishing!
There are two books of daily CrosSynergy puzzles out there, but I haven’t bought them because they tend to be on the easy side. Maybe when I finish the rest of these books…
New York Magazine Crossword Puzzle Omnibus, Volume 1 (NY Magazine)
This collection has “200 Beguiling Sunday-Size Puzzles” by the legendary Maura Jacobson, originally published from 1999-2002. I bought it after learning that Ms. Jacobson has a puzzle in the Tournament every year. Never having seen one of her puzzles, I was a little surprised with the cluing style – much drier than in the Times and elsewhere. The only question-marked clues are in the themes, so all the fill is clued straightforwardly with a definition, synonym, or fill-in-the-blank.
Even so, I’m enjoying these. There’s a little more obscurity and crosswordese than in the “A-list” outlets, but not enough to be bothersome. I’ve only done about 25 of the 200 puzzles, and the famous Jacobson wit is evident in the punny themes.
The Boston Globe Sunday Crossword Omnibus, Volume 3 (Boston Globe)
As you probably know, the Globe’s Sunday puzzle is constructed in alternate weeks by Henry Hook and the team of Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon. This volume covers 2000-2003, with Hook on the left pages and “Rox” on the right. If you solve the BG puzzle online, you know what to expect – high quality, medium difficulty, with occasional flashes of evil from Mr. Hook.
I do love the omnibuses (omnibi?). Why pay $9.95 for 50 puzzles when you can get 200 for $12.95? (Insert Jewish joke here.) The drawback, of course, is I’m not going to solve these books on the subway. One other minus of the NYM and BG omnibuseses is the ugly design from the folks at Random House – the puzzle pages are really drab, especially compared with the output of Sterling Publishing (more on that in Part 2…).
Simon & Schuster Mega Crossword Puzzle Book #1 (Mega Crossword Puzzle Books)
OMG, such value! 300 puzzles for $11 and change on Amazon! The best thing about this monster is the perforated pages – you can tear one out, solve both sides, and chuck it into the recycling bin. Second-best thing is the variety in grid sizes: 75 15×15s, 75 17×17s, 50 19×19s, and 100 21×21s.
But how are the puzzles? They’re OK. Editor John M. Samson must have the craziest job in CrossWorld, publishing 900 puzzles a year, and because he probably doesn’t pay as much as the daily papers, he doesn’t get the best submissions. Still, a number of constructing luminaries are represented here: Piscop, Gorski, Estes, Silvestri, Fleming, Hamel, Venzke/Daily… as well as a bunch of people I’ve never heard of.
I’ve only solved a few dozen of these, so I’m sure there are some diamonds in the rough – especially in the 17s and 19s, because those sizes aren’t regularly published elsewhere. Samson’s own puzzles are a little heavy on the obscurities for my liking (he was a friend and colleague of Eugene Maleska), and there seem to be an inordinate number of “quip” puzzles. I’ll probably stick to the constructors I know… there’s no way I’ll finish this book, especially since I have thousands of other puzzles yet to solve – and the Mega Book #2 comes out in a couple of months.
One other quibble: the answer grids in the back of the book are ridiculously tiny!
Random House Masterpiece Crosswords Collection (RH Crosswords)
“For those who seek the best of everything,” reads the tagline on the cover. What is this, a Glenlivet commercial? It’s a hardcover reissue of Volumes 1, 2, and 3 of the Stanley Newman-edited series from the mid-’90s. I wasn’t expecting much, since it cost me $0.01 from an Amazon-linked used-book dealer, but it’s actually pretty awesome. Stan invited top constructors to contribute a few puzzles each, and the book includes pictures, bios, mini-essays by the constructors, and “liner notes” on each puzzle.
Most of the A-listers are represented: Reagle, Hook, Klahn, Nosowsky, Payne, Millhauser, Estes, Norris, Gaffney, Longo, Ross, Cox/Rathvon, et al. Even Will Shortz contributed a variety puzzle to each volume. All sizes from 15×15 to 21×21 are represented in roughly equal amounts, with a good sprinkling of themelesses and some great themed puzzles. There are two Trip Payne “Something Different” puzzles, which I love. (See this Friday’s NY Sun “Wacky Weekend Warrior” if you’re wondering what that is.) And each volume’s #50 is a 27×27 themeless!
Only negative is that the puzzles are a dozen years old, so a few clues are dated. And of course it’s out of print. But if you happen upon this book, pick it up. (Especially the version with 4 volumes instead of 3 – if I’d realized there was a bigger version I would have sought it out. Of course.)
