Puzzling

Today's the day!   One hundred years ago, on 21 December 1913, Arthur Wynne published the first crossword ( you can try solving it here !). He called it 'Wordcross' ... But a few weeks later, a typesetter made a mistake and wrote Crossword ... And we've called them that ever since! This puzzle has grown in that time to be one of the most popular puzzles around, worldwide. To celebrate this special occasion, Google and famous American setter Merle Reagle got together and created this interactive crossword .  And from me, here is a new cryptic clue competition for you all to enter! Rule Thingies 1) Write an anagram clue for the word CENTENNIAL . Your clue has to contain a definition for CENTENNIAL, an anagram indictor, and the anagram fodder (an exact anagram of CENTENNIAL). See below for more information. 2) Submit your clue as a comment on this post. Please sign your clue with your first name or alias (especially important for those of you posting A...

If you live in Australia, you may have noticed a bit of a media flurry in the last week about the message MURDOCH IS EVIL running backwards through a word search puzzle for kids. It appeared in the Sunday Telegraph  — a Murdoch-owned paper! Oh my! Image source: Gawker.com This caused rather a storm on Twitter  and online. So — this is the big question : is this one of those accidentally created messages, like the faux pas we saw with the Woolies word search a few months ago ? The short answer: NO. The long answer: This hidden message was put there intentionally by the setter (and personally, I'd give them a medal). Yes, it's possible for words to be accidentally created in any grid of random letters — but these are almost exclusively 3, 4, and 5 letter words (and the 5 letter words are rare, at that). This is why swear words — those infamously 'four letter words' – can easily be accidentally created in a word search grid. For a short phrase like MURDO...

A new set of cryptic clues for you to try out. Dithering about narration topics (15) Wound’s nasty to the German editor (9) Frond cut short for meadow (3) Shallots regularly stuffed with seasoning (4) One who escapes north in ripped brocades (9) Let me know if you got them!

I don't have much to write about puzzle-wise today, but I'm just back from a very enjoyable week's holiday with my husband at Huskisson, a little town in Jervis Bay . We stayed at our favourite B&B , run by our friends Kate and Steve. Shark Net Beach at Huskisson is delightful, good rock pools and a great place to swim. Fossils, too! Moona Moona Creek is one of my favourite places, wonderful padding place for kids and ridiculously timid people who don't like snorkelling in deep water (me)! The only reason I could get this photo was the crab was dead.  Zoooombieeee Crraaaaab! There were, of course, many noms. We highly recommend the Huskisson Bakery ... One day we went out on a Dolphin Watch cruise on the bay, and saw dolphins, funnily enough! This one was riding the bow wave with the boat, fabulous to see so close up. And the mangrove boardwalk at the Lady Denman Maritime Museum was a pleasant p...

My buddy Catherine over at The Clue Detective Puzzle Agency runs a weekly puzzle competition via her free weekly newsletter. The prize is an annual membership, so it's well worth your while heading over there and subscribing . No strings attached — you've got nothing to lose! The Clue Detective site is the only place in the world where you can access my latest Nixie cryptics regularly. I'm heading off on a week's holiday at the coast, so will catch you all when I get back  :)

Answers to that last lot of clues ... 1) Following Albert to the side (7) = LATERAL Following  = LATER + Albert  = AL 2) Romeo left weird herbalists’ institute (9)  = ESTABLISH Romeo = R. Remove R from herbalists, and jumble up these letters (indicated by weird). Institute , the definition, is a verb, not a noun. 3) Greek character is against red Italian wine (7) = CHIANTI Greek character = CHI + is against  = ANTI 4) Flower occurs randomly (6) = CROCUS Anagram of occurs 5) Beyond a minor role (5) = EXTRA Double definition clue, beyond what you need is extra, and an extra is someone who plays a minor role in a drama. 6) Clever and dynamic   mediator heads off (6) = ADROIT Anagram with a deletion. Take the heads off  the word mediator = DIATOR. Jumbled them up (in a dynamic ) way, to get the answer! How did you get on?

Some new clues for you to try! 1) Following Albert to the side (7) 2) Romeo left weird herbalists’ institute (9) 3) Greek character is against red Italian wine (7) 4) Flower occurs randomly (6) 5) Beyond a minor role (5) 6) Clever and dynamic mediator heads off (6) If you'd like to get my Nixie cryptics on a regular basis, I publish a new cryptic every fortnight (2 weeks) over at the Clue Detective Puzzle Agency . There's a special deal on at the moment, use the code NIXIE in checkout to get a 10% discount on membership.

Well, I gotta say guys, I'm impressed! Those were a good bunch of clue entries, and it was tricky to select the three prize winners. But with the help of my friend the Puzzle Wizard (thanks Greg!), I've settled on three winners for this clue competition. Griff's impressed too ... As you'll all recall, the competition was for an anagram clue for the word INTERCHANGE. 1st Prize: Tech grannie flipped switch (Mike Weepie) Switch is the definition in this clue, and the wordplay is an anagram (indicated by flipped ) of tech grannie. Great mental image, too! I wonder if she works as a DJ ... or an electrical engineer perhaps? 2nd Prize: Bizarre etching near confluence of highway (Norm H) Confluence of highways is the definition, the anagram indicator is bizarre,  and the anagram fodder is  etching near. I wonder if the etching is evidence of aliens?! 3rd Prize: Cloverleaf in modified gene chart (Len Elliott — who was a prize winner in my first clue comp...

My marketing and promotions department (me) told me that I should do a little plug for our CrypticGuide app . Plug plug plug ... This is an app that took us over a year to develop — my husband had to do vast amounts of tricky iOS database programming, and I had to write the vast database of info! So, what is  it? It's a handy little cryptic dictionary — so you can enter a word from a cryptic clue, and if it's in our database, CrypticGuide can tell you that there's an abbreviation arising from that word, or maybe it's an anagram indicator, or has some funny cryptic meaning, or is a homophone. So, in the example here (which shows the iPad version), if you type in the word 'about', you'll see that the word 'about', found in a cryptic clue, could lead to a few cryptic synonyms (circa, on, a fight), a range of abbreviations (A, C, CA, RE), and a bunch of cryptic indicators (anagram indicator, container indicator etc). Unlike other cryptic...

It's clue writing competition time again!  Griff is eagerly awaiting your entries! Write a cryptic clue of your very own, using an anagram, for the answer word INTERCHANGE.  Write your clue, and then post it in a comment below this post. Don't be scared, you can do it. It's even fun (honest)! Your clue can be silly, weird, funny, serious, whatever you like. It needs to read well, like a mini phrase or sentence (not just a random assortment of words stuck together). Creativity and clue accuracy are what I will be looking for. Here are some tips to help you get started.  Remember that the basic anatomy of a cryptic clue is: Wordplay + Definition = Answer or Definition + Wordplay = Answer So — (a bit of wordplay) (definition) (rest of wordplay) is  not  allowed. The definition has to sit at the start or end of the clue, and not be interrupted by the wordplay. In an anagram clue, the Wordplay = the fodder + the anagram indicator  (or i...

Certain perils lurk when constructing puzzles, especially word searches. Woolworth's 'find a word debacle'  last week was rather spectacular, with the f-word appearing in a children's activity book. And let's face it, the offensive word in question is so glaringly obvious in the grid that I doubt the puzzle was proofread at all — and I found four other rude words in the grid, when I entered the grid into my software and scanned it (and no , I'm not going to tell you what they are! You rude thing). This  has happened to others too , and no doubt will happen to others in the future. Due to the nature of grids of letters, a great deal of words are accidentally created in the grid, after the chosen words have been placed. These cause a problem if they are duplicates of words from the puzzle's word list, or if they are offensive or inappropriate terms. In even a small word search puzzle, there will typically be well over 100 3-letter words accidenta...

Here are the answers to the first set of Nixie cryptic clues: 1) Gulps down birds (8) = SWALLOWS. Double definition ( gulps down + birds ). 2) Worker has loud grievance (4) = BEEF. Charade of BEE ( worker ) + F ( loud ). A 'beef' is an informal word for 'complaint'. 3) Endless blaze leaves a tree (3) = FIR. A deletion clue; take FIRE ( blaze ) and remove its end (last letter) to get FIR, a type of tree . 4) Relation at the ABC? (6) = AUNTIE. Cryptic definition; Aunty ABC (and Aunty BBC) is the informal nickname for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 5) Mourn appropriately if making livery (7) = UNIFORM. Anagram of mourn if.  The anagram indicator here here appropriately.   Livery is a type of uniform. 6) Cable tram stuffed with unrestrained glee (8) = TELEGRAM (a cable ). Container ... TRAM with an anagram ( unrestrained ) of GLEE. 7) Émigré Patrick went after former wife (5) = EXPAT. PAT ( Patrick ) goes after EX ( former wife ). Con...