Puzzling

At the suggestion of dear Chris Coleman (my radio host on ABC Statewide Afternoons), I now have a Twitter account. My handle is @PuzzlingDenise . I'm posting one cryptic clue a day. Plus occasional random content about indexing, funny things, and noms. Please follow me and tweet your solutions, if you're interested, and retweet my clues to your network  :) You can blame Chris.

Even Griff is amazed ... yesterday I was called by a lovely ABC radio producer, to ask if I would be the new weekly 'captive cruciverbalist' on Statewide Afternoons with Chris Coleman! I quickly said yes, and started immediately — you can now hear me on your local ABC radio throughout regional NSW (so not Canberra or Sydney, but everywhere else), on Wednesday afternoons, just after 2:30 pm. Each week I'll pose one cryptic clue in the session and chat with listeners about their answers, and pose a harder cryptic clue to ponder over the week. The harder clue gets discussed the week after. And so on! I also reveal secrets to solving cryptics, and generally chat about the mad world of crosswords with Chris. The harder clue is posted on the ABC NSW Facebook Page , and my sessions are available to listen to again on the ABC's blog , too.

Here's the full cover for Cryptic Crosswords For Dummies ! The book went to print yesterday, huzzah! If you click on the image above, you can see it at a better size ... This book is a companion volume to Solving Cryptic Crosswords For Dummies , which is the in-depth how-to guide. This book has a little basic info on cryptics, but is mainly a collection of 56 new cryptic crosswords, for you to have a go at. There are 25 Easy cryptics, 18 Medium ones, and 13 Hard crosswords. I was all set to do my weekly analysis of The Canberra Times Gemini Cryptic last weekend, using the Saturday paper. But then I noticed that the paper runs a competition about the Saturday crossword (you can tell I'm not a regular reader!), and I'm sure they would not have been impressed if I'd done a 'full reveal' on all the clues, before the closing date for the competition, LOL! So I decided on discretion over valour, and let it slide. In some rather exciting news, I am going to ...