Ryan and Brian Do Crosswords

Lots of books to talk about today! I’m currently spending three months in a tiny town with no cellphone service (but plenty of WiFi, thank god) — so I won’t be reviewing my nonfiction crossword books, which are still in New York. Suffice it to say that Matt Gaffney’s Gridlock is an absolute must-read.

So back to the puzzle books. Let’s start with one that doesn’t really fit into the “constructor” category…

Crasswords: Dirty Crosswords for Cunning Linguists

edited by Francis Heaney

Of course, there are constructors involved in this collection. Just about every big-time male constructor under the age of 40 contributed a puzzle or three, including Mr. Heaney, Brendan Emmett Quigley, Matt Jones, Bruce Venzke (okay, he’s older) and the pseudonymic “Eli Dunbar” and “Torpedo”, whose identities I totally guessed. You can figure out the idea here based on the title: language and themes that couldn’t be published anywhere outside of The Onion (and maybe not even there).

So 50 puzzles, ranging from 13×13 to 19×19, all top-notch. (I’m sure the one cryptic and two variety cryptics are delightful too, and I look forward to learning how to solve those things so I can find out for myself.) Except for a themeless by BEQ, they’re all standard crossword themes, but, you know, dirtier: hidden words (SEX), added words (JOB), racy quips, categories (like S&M or menstruation terms). Most fun is that many clues are written in a suggestive fashion, even when the answer is standard. To wit: [Allow to penetrate] = LET IN, [Tit's partner] = TAT, [Sticky white stuff] = GLUE. I’m urging you all to buy this if you haven’t already, because Heaney told me there would only be a second Crasswords volume if this one continues to sell well. (But don’t buy it if you don’t want to see four-letter words — and I mean all of them — both in the grids and the clues.)

Crossword Puzzle Challenges for Dummies

by Patrick Berry

Yep, a big yellow paperback with the word “Dummies” on the cover. The attraction for me was not the meat of the book, which is a detailed look at the ins and outs of crossword construction. I haven’t much interest in constructing, though I recently created my first puzzle and had fun doing so.  (UPDATE because I wrote this several weeks ago: Now I’ve got an editor interested in a theme I proposed, and the book that will help me actually construct the puzzle is in New York…)  No, I bought it because it contains 70 all-new puzzles by the brilliant Patrick Berry. (Well, new as of 2004, when the book came out.) They’re all 15×15, and arranged in increasing difficulty, 45 themed and 25 themeless. Not surprisingly, the puzzles are outstanding, with creative themes, fresh fill and clever clues.

I haven’t delved too much into the construction section yet, because the puzzles are used as examples and I haven’t finished them all. Berry covers everything from theme to layout to cluing, and it sure seems that this book is the best way for a budding constructor to learn the ropes. (Along with the accumulated knowledge on Cruciverb and its associated mailing list, of course.) Even if you’re not a constructor and never will be, the technical details of puzzle-making are interesting, and the puzzles themselves are well worth the investment.

Humorous Crosswords

by Cathy Millhauser

Aside from the Berry book, this is the cream of the crop in today’s batch. The 72 puzzles run the size gamut from 15×15 to 21×21. Millhauser’s contributions to the ACPT up to 2001 are also included, a nice coup. They’re all fun puzzles, as you’d expect from Millhauser, who’s one of Will Shortz’s favorites for good reason. But they’re not easy — there are some obscure fill entries which raised my eyebrow, and lots of funny/twisty clues, so I’d estimate about a Thursday level on average. You’ll be challenged and entertained, I laughed, I cried, buy it now.

Crosswords to Strain Your Brain

Pop Culture Crosswords

by Trip Payne

Champion solver/Wordplay star Trip Payne quickly became one of my favorite constructors based on his NYT and NYS publications. His grids seem to be totally free of iffy fill, probably because he’s been an avid solver for many years, and a professional constructor for almost as many. I’m sure everyone reading this has been to Trip’s website, where he’s posted a bunch of free puzzles of the standard, cryptic, and “Something Different” varieties. Hey, can we get a book of “Something Different”s? Trip? Peter?

Alas, most of Trip’s books are geared to kids, so I wasn’t interested in those. But I did find two volumes of adult Trippy goodness. (No, not “adult” like Crasswords.) Strain Your Brain (published in 2002) seems to be out of print, but you should seek it out from a reseller. It’s a weird hybrid with three different kinds of puzzles: medium-difficulty themed (Wed. or so); high-difficulty unthemed (Saturdayish but not Longo-level); and “Identical Twins”, where there are two 13×13 grids with two sets of clues, and you have to figure out which answer goes in which grid. The Twins are really fun, and not as hard as they sound, once you get the hang of them.

The Pop Culture Crosswords aren’t very hard either, but it helps that I know the subject pretty well. Obviously, all the themes (and lots of the clues and fill) are pop culture-based, and that extends to Broadway, books, and video games. I’m particularly enjoying the fact that two of my favorite things — musical theater and reality TV — are hobbies of Trip’s as well, and he throws in a decent amount of content from those areas. If pop culture names are a weak spot in your crossword knowledge, this is a great way to bone up. It was published in 2006, so get it before it’s too dated!

Really Clever Crosswords
Really Clever Crosswords 2

by David Levinson Wilk

Confession: I haven’t cracked the first book yet, which I just got, so I’m really just reviewing #2, which I’ve almost finished. Once again it’s 72 puzzles (the Sterling standard), all 15×15. Mr. Wilk has come up with some really clever themes, some of which are so “meta” that they wouldn’t likely be published elsewhere (that’s a good thing). Difficulty is probably about Wednesday on average. My one issue with the book is the subpar fill in some of the puzzles — too many abbreviations. One grid contains ISR, NCO, ESL, FDA, DNC, ORD, EEOC, and NTS, not to mention RTEI, FGHI, and the Spanish word ARAR. Now, there’s a lot of fresh fill in there too and some nice wide-open corners, but overall, RCC2 is not a must-buy. I’m guessing that Original Recipe RCC is better, and Orange is on record recommending it, so I’d say start with the first book.

Crosswords for a Rainy Day

by Harvey Estes

I have only one beef with this book by the prolific Mr. Estes, and it has nothing to do with the content. There’s a little logo in the corner of the cover which designates it as an Official MENSA Puzzle Book… and yet the puzzles within are remarkably easy. The other books I had with the MENSA logo were Longo’s and Hook’s, so I was hoping for more of a challenge. (Both Really Clever Crosswords books are MENSA-branded too, by the way.) My expectations aside, the puzzles are just peachy. They’re all 15×15 except for 3 17s and a 21 at the end, and pitched at a Monday/Tuesday level. The themes are mostly wordplay-based, and the grids are more wide-open than typical early-week puzzles, which is nice. I’ll probably use this book for some tournament practice, where I’ll have to be consistently under 3 minutes on the easy puzzles to hang with the big boys (and girls).

The Big Book of Crossword Puzzles: 288 Puzzles for the Crossword Fanatic

edited by Olivia Carlton, J. Baxter Newgate, Emily Cox & Henry Rathvon

Whew! That’s a mouthful. And so is this omnibus-style publication, which compiles four Sterling titles into one volume. Value! Two of the four books, I have no interest in: Crosswords to Stimulate Your Mind and Crosswords to Exercise Your Mind, which are reprints of magazine puzzles from the ’50s and ’60s. Don’t know which magazines, don’t know who constructed ‘em. Don’t much care, but I might take a look at those puzzles some time. The other two books I would have bought separately, if this first one were still in print:

Beat the Champs Crossword Puzzles has 72 15×15 grids from various constructors, including Gordon, Nosowsky, Piscop, Millhauser, Ross, et al. The twist is that ACPT champs Doug Hoylman, Jon Delfin, and friend-of-the-blog Ellen Ripstein solved the puzzles “under tournament conditions”, with their results published alongside the answers. Their average times are generally 3 to 5 minutes, pegging the difficulty range at Tuesday-Thursday, with a few that are particularly tough. And the last five are themeless stumpers, in the style of the ACPT final round. I’ve already made three errors in the eight puzzles I’ve solved so far, but my times are reasonably close to the champs’. By the way, the book was published in 2000, before Ellen won the tournament for the first time, so the title is retroactively apt.

First-Class Crosswords collects puzzles that ran in Attaché, the in-flight magazine of U.S. Airways. They alternate between 17×17s, constructed by the usual A-list suspects, and 15×15s, by editors Cox & Rathvon (known collectively as Vox. Kidding!). Again, I’ve only solved a few so far, but they don’t seem overly easy. Of course, they’re not that hard either, given where they were published. But they’re certainly high-quality. This book will also be good for speed-solving practice, because of the relatively rare 17×17 size.

…So that’s the extent of my library (so far). I hope the roundups have been somewhat helpful to newish puzzle enthusiasts like myself. Any recommendations for books I’ve missed? (All that’s left on my wish list is Rich Norris’s A-to-Z Crosswords, Henry Hook’s Two-Step Crosswords, and the two books by Martin Ashwood-Smith.) And can anyone help me find copies of Will Shortz’s Tournament Crosswords, Vols. 1 and 2? Collectively, they’re the white whale of my puzzle-book hunting. Nobody’s got them new or used!

Thanks for reading, and see you around the crossword blogosphere. Oh, and if anyone’s going to be in southern Vermont this summer, look me up!