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!

My latest order from “Hippo Books” arrived yesterday. In the package was:

• Stanley Newman’s Cranium Crackers — a collection of 100 Newsday Saturday Stumpers, in a little book that will be perfect for subway solving.
• Random House Ultrahard Crosswords, Volume 3 — from a mid-’90s series that’s mostly Saturday Stumpers, plus reprints from something called Tough Puzzles magazine.
• Echoes of Issel: Book Two of the Saga Of The Unified Worlds, by Diane Thornley — yeah, not what I ordered. I wonder how they got this confused with Martin Ashwood-Smith’s 10-Minute Crosswords.

So today I’ll run down the hardest books in my library (excluding the two above, which are pretty self-explanatory, and I haven’t looked at them anway). And when you think “hard puzzles”, whose name comes to mind? Frank Longo.

I had thought Mr. Longo would look like Santa Claus – old, rotund, crazy-genius beard. But at the ACPT I saw a handsome, well-built man in his 30s walking around with a “Frank Longo” nametag. Wha? Brian was similarly surprised when I pointed Longo out to him. So the good news is, Frank has many decades ahead of him to construct awesome puzzles. The bad news is, he’s been spending his time lately writing Sudoku books and serving on Will Shortz’s crack team of grid doctors and fact-checkers. Longo hasn’t even been published in the NYT since 2005, though he’s had a handful of NYS stumpers in that time, and contributes to GAMES Magazine too.

Wait, more good news: his eagerly anticipated Vowelless Crosswords comes out next year. A little birdie told me these puzzles are so hard that even genius editor Peter Gordon was having trouble with them, and might have to simplify them a bit so they can be solved by people not named Tyler or Orange.

Cranium-Crushing Crosswords
Mensa Crosswords for the Super Smart: 72 Cranium-Crushing Challenges

These two books each contain 72 wide-open 15×15 grids, which increase in difficulty from “hard” to “way hard”. The second book (”Super Smart”) has an additional twist: half the puzzles are asymmetrical. This is a brilliant idea, because it allows Longo to do things like putting a quadruple stack of 15-letter answers at the top without needing a similar stack at the bottom. (Hey, experts: has there ever been a quadruple stack in a regular published puzzle?)

The secret to Longo’s cranium-crushitude is his word database, which is described in Matt Gaffney’s Gridlock as “the biggest database in crosswords”, with 720,000 words as of that book’s publication in 2006. Every place name in the atlas, every actor in IMDB, Longo’s computer can serve them up to fill a thick corner. This leads to the only downside: obscure entries that wouldn’t pass the Shortz test. City northeast of Taranto? OSTUNI. National god of the Philistines? DAGON.

Still, these puzzles are solvable, at least so far — I’m up to #60 in the second book, which I bought first, and haven’t cracked the first one yet. They sometimes take multiple sessions, but I can finish them eventually (sometimes with wrong letters, I’m not ashamed to admit). Here’s my favorite triple-stack from the book. Spoiler alert! ANGELSINAMERICA over BOOLEANOPERATOR over REGISTERSTOVOTE. And check out my favorite grid design: six 15s across, six down. Click here to see the empty grid. How cool is that?

The World’s Longest Crossword Puzzle
The 25-Foot-Long Crossword Puzzle

These two books might be the most impressive crossword-construction achievement of all time. They come in little hardbound squares which fold out accordion-style, with the answer key on the back. Each individual page has the associated clues underneath. It’s hard to describe. Brian’s talked about the 25-footer on the blog and the podcast — have you been working on it, Brian? That puzzle’s gimmick is that Hamlet’s famous soliloquy runs through it from left to right in one ginormous entry. (Actually two shorter entries and one ginormous one, because it must not have fit otherwise.)

I haven’t started that one yet, but I did solve the “World’s Longest”, which at almost 22 feet, is no longer the world’s longest since the publication of “25-Foot-Long”. The gimmick here is JFK’s inaugural address, running through the whole puzzle. Because I’m trained for speed now, I timed myself, and it took 5 hours and 35 minutes, broken up into hour-long chunks over about a week. (By way of comparison, the great Trip Payne solved it in 3:10:20, in one sitting, with four errors – I had nine letters wrong.)

Many other notable things about these puzzles. They get harder from left to right. They’re symmetrical like regular puzzles, not that you’d notice. There are no duplicated entries — an amazing feat considering the shorter one has 2,439 answers. (Then again, there are variations on the crosswordese: SST and SSTS both appear, but I ain’t complaining.) The puzzle’s sheer size from left to right allows for more extra-long entries, like KNIGHTSOFTHEROUNDTABLE and PEOPLESREPUBLICOFCHINA. And because the grid is 9 letters high, there are hundreds of 9-letter entries going from top to bottom. That Frank loves his wide-open grids! Anyway, I can’t recommend these enough. I almost don’t want to solve “25-Foot-Long” because then I won’t have it to look forward to anymore. But when I do, I’ll see how close I can come to Trip’s time of 4:16:37.

Twisted Crosswords
Terribly Twisted Crosswords

These two books are by the legendary constructor Henry Hook. I haven’t even started on them yet, but I might as well include them with the other Brain-Busters. The 72 puzzles in each pretty spiral-bound Sterling volume aren’t standard crosswords, but variants with crazy shapes and tricks. For a rundown of some of the varieties, read Orange’s review on Amazon. I’m taking these to Vermont with me this summer, along with Cranium-Crushing Crosswords, my new Saturday Stumper collection, and the book of old NYT Saturday puzzles… those should keep me busy enough for the three months I’m away from my library. I’ll see you next week with a roundup of books by Trip Payne, Cathy Millhauser, Patrick Berry, and other superstars!

First of all, in my debut post I meant to acknowledge the Holiday Shopping Guide put together by Rex and Orange last year. It was a great help when I was starting my ongoing shopping spree.

Speaking of Orange: if anyone reading this does not own her book, what are you waiting for?

How to Conquer the New York Times Crossword Puzzle: Tips, Tricks and Techniques to Master America’s Favorite Puzzle

By Amy Reynaldo, Introduction by Will Shortz

I confess that by the time I bought this book, I already knew how to conquer the NYT crossword. But I wanted to support my favorite blogstress, even though she apparently doesn’t get royalties. Fortunately, there’s some useful stuff in there even for a Winner of the C Division.

The meat of the book is 68 of Amy’s favorite NYT puzzles, divided into five sections: Easy, Medium, Thursday, Hard, and Sunday. In each section, Amy walks the reader through her solving of a representative puzzle. Interspersed throughout are helpful sidebars, plus lists of the 100 and 300 most common fill words, the “Top Ten Ways Constructors Try To Trick You”, and in the back, “Hints and Tips” for all the puzzles. These Hints are more like liner notes, with useful asides like a rundown of all the famous ARIs, common hip-hop slang, and state mottos that get referenced most often. Without that, I’d never remember that North Carolina = ESSE, Massachusetts = ENSE, and Idaho = ESTO. Just kidding, I still never remember.

The book is a gold mine for anyone looking to improve their speed or just their skills with the NYT crossword. Get it!

The New York Sun Crosswords #15: 72 Puzzles from the Daily Paper (New York Sun Crosswords)

Edited by Peter Gordon

I accidentally left this compilation out of my first post — because unlike the others, it’s finished and on a different bookshelf. The New York Sun crosswords are simply awesome. I often enjoy them more than the Times, maybe because Gordon has freer rein than Shortz to break crossword convention. The Sun publishes some insanely creative themes/gimmicks, uses more colloquial (and saltier) fill, and often expands the grid to 15×16 when the theme answers require it. Gordon is also notorious for creative (some say convoluted) cluing, preferring to dig up a trivia tidbit instead of re-using a clue. I’ve learned so much about OREOs from him!

If you’re not familiar with the Sun puzzle, it’s considered to be slightly harder than the Times on a daily basis. The paper only publishes from Monday through Friday, so there are no Sunday-sized puzzles. Themeless entries generally run once a week, either on Thursday (”Themeless Thursday”) or Friday (”Weekend Warrior”). Book-wise, the numbered compilations comprise the entire archive since the Sun puzzle began in 2002, running the puzzles in order, 72 per book, with the day of the week indicated by asterisks (one star for Monday, five for Friday). There are also Sun collections based on the days they appeared, with names like Easy Monday Crosswords and Killer Thursday Crosswords. All those puzzles also appear in the numbered volumes (and vice versa), so go for those if you only want easier (or harder) puzzles.

Peter Gordon is also the Big Cheese at Sterling Publishing’s Games and Puzzles department, and in that position he’s revolutionized the world of puzzle books. Maybe that’s an exaggeration, but I’ll take a moment here to talk about why Sterling’s style is head and shoulders above their competitors at St. Martin’s (which publishes the NYT compilations) and Random House (which handles most of the rest).

• Spiral binding. So much easier to fold over!
• Quality paper. Thicker than everyone else’s, smooth and eraser-friendly!
• Scrambled answer keys. Most books have the back-of-the-book answer grids in order, so when you’re checking one puzzle, you might see some answers from the next one if you’re not careful. No more! Each Sterling puzzle has a note at the bottom saying ANSWER, PAGE 88, so you can find it – and the answers on that page are from different places in the book. So if you accidentally spot a word in an upcoming puzzle, you’ll have forgotten it by the time you get there.
• Pretty fonts. Pretty!

In summation, Peter Gordon rules. Word to the wise: Sterling is owned by Barnes & Noble, so you can find most of their lovely books at your local B&N if you don’t want to click through to Amazon and send a few pennies to Ryan and Brian. On the other hand, the Borders I usually visit, at Manhattan’s Time Warner Center, doesn’t have any Sterling books.

The New York Times Super Saturday Crosswords: The Hardest Crossword of the Week

Edited by Will Shortz

Remember how in my last post, I said I wouldn’t be buying any more NY Times compilations because they’re all online? I lied. The other day I ran across this little volume, which contains 75 Saturday crosswords from 1993-1995 — meaning they’re not in the online archive, which starts in late 1996. (Always check the copyright page if you’re wondering whether the puzzles have been previously published, and when.) Since I can always use practice on those fiendish Saturdays, I couldn’t help myself. Another $6.95 down the drain. See you next time!

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!

The New York Times Will Shortz’s Greatest Hits: 150 Crossword Puzzles Personally Picked by the Puzzlemaster

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.)