The Guardian Quick Crosswords 1: A collection of more than 200 entertaining puzzles (Guardian Puzzle Books)

Product Information

The most rewarding themes have the tightest focus: early on, I started a list of ideas based on fruit and veg, but quickly found that I had enough vegetable clues, so I put the fruit on one side. I’ve kept notes for unrelated clue ideas in an old Filofax – the oldest date back more than 20 years – but I move to my laptop as soon as I have an idea for a theme. It’s a quick-crossword version of Victor Meldrew’s attempt to solve a baffling cryptic, which we have looked at here. Boatman’s puzzles are witty and ingenious – and he never forgets that his job is to delight the solver. I'd like to get a crossword puzzle book for my boyfriend for Christmas: he often does the guardian crossword/ enjoys word puzzles in general.

My delight in this attention to detail was shared by the pioneering crossword setter Afrit, who first wrote down the golden rule of cryptics: “I need not mean what I say, but I must say what I mean. I have a lot of admiration for the more prolific setters like Paul and (in their day) Araucaria and Rufus. The Guardian is an award-winning British newspaper that consistently rates as the most-trusted newspaper in the country. Change country: -Select- Albania Algeria American Samoa Andorra Angola Anguilla Antigua and Barbuda Argentina Armenia Aruba Azerbaijan Republic Bahamas Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belgium Belize Benin Bermuda Bhutan Bolivia Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana Brazil British Virgin Islands Brunei Darussalam Bulgaria Burkina Faso Burundi Cambodia Cameroon Canada Cape Verde Islands Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad Chile China Colombia Comoros Cook Islands Costa Rica Cyprus Czech Republic Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) Democratic Republic of the Congo Denmark Djibouti Dominica Dominican Republic Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Estonia Ethiopia Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas) Fiji Finland France French Guiana French Polynesia Gabon Republic Gambia Georgia Ghana Gibraltar Greece Greenland Grenada Guadeloupe Guam Guatemala Guernsey Guinea Guinea-Bissau Guyana Haiti Honduras Hong Kong Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Iraq Ireland Israel Italy Jamaica Japan Jersey Jordan Kazakhstan Kenya Kiribati Kuwait Kyrgyzstan Laos Latvia Lebanon Lesotho Liberia Liechtenstein Lithuania Luxembourg Macau Macedonia Madagascar Malawi Malaysia Maldives Mali Malta Marshall Islands Martinique Mauritania Mauritius Mayotte Mexico Micronesia Moldova Monaco Mongolia Montenegro Montserrat Morocco Mozambique Namibia Nepal Netherlands Netherlands Antilles New Caledonia New Zealand Nicaragua Niger Nigeria Niue Norway Oman Pakistan Palau Panama Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru Philippines Poland Portugal Puerto Rico Qatar Republic of Croatia Republic of the Congo Reunion Romania Rwanda Saint Helena Saint Kitts-Nevis Saint Lucia Saint Pierre and Miquelon Saint Vincent and the Grenadines San Marino Saudi Arabia Senegal Serbia Seychelles Sierra Leone Singapore Slovakia Slovenia Solomon Islands South Africa South Korea Spain Sri Lanka Suriname Swaziland Sweden Taiwan Tajikistan Tanzania Thailand Togo Tonga Trinidad and Tobago Tunisia Turkey Turkmenistan Turks and Caicos Islands Tuvalu Uganda United Arab Emirates United Kingdom Uruguay Uzbekistan Vanuatu Vatican City State Venezuela Vietnam Virgin Islands (U. So the reader gets a pleasingly lengthy description of how a Playfair code encodes letters in pairs, which means that an E, for example, might be represented by a different letter each time, which means that someone trying to decode the message can’t look for the letter which appears most often and work on the basis that it’s probably an E … and so on.He aimed for 500 words a day on the train, devoting the rest of his working day to law (including Raymond Chandler’s will) and evenings and weekends to his family. When Have His Carcase was published, the crossword was a novelty; the Guardian had had a puzzle for just three years. Now is your chance to entertain yourself with these quick crosswords from the Guardian's extensive archives, with the first book in the new Guardian puzzle book series. But everyone should, of course, read The Giant Jam Sandwich, along with John’s other books, including his illustrations to the works of Edward Lear and James Joyce.

Photograph: Farooq Khan/EPA-EFE View image in fullscreen Navigating the waters … a boatman on the Dal Lake in Srinagar. In his 1938 play Gas Light, Jack Manningham tampers with the lights and employs various other tricks to convince his wife, Bella, that she is imagining things and, by implication, losing her mind. A crossword hidden by one of the characters unlocks the identity of the murderer responsible for a strikingly ruthless body count, including a chorister. Hugh Stephenson is the Guardian's crossword editor and has compiled all of the paper's previous crossword books.Happily for us, Playfair codes are not uncrackable, which means that we later get an entire chapter in which Harriet and Lord Peter pore over sections of a Playfair grid. I just want to avoid anything trivially easy, but not ridiculously hard either (and certainly not cryptic! And that makes them ideal for decoding that message, since it has been created using a Playfair code. With a wide variety of clues from a vast range of subjects, these crosswords will provide a stern examination of your lexical knowledge, but are concise enough to be solved in bite-sized chunks.