Puzzling

I'm very excited to announce my interview with Alan Connor, from The Guardian 's Crossword blog. You may recall that I indexed Alan's book, Two Girls, One on Each Knee , last year .  Alan raised the idea of interviewing me about my CrypticGuide app when I was writing his index — and it has finally come to fruition. CrypticGuide is an app that my husband and I developed over a year — it is a 'slender' cryptic dictionary, with around 7,000 cryptic definitions, abbreviations, indicator words, and homophones. It also includes an anagram solver and wildcard search. It is very much a work in progress, with new cryptic definitions being added to the app over time. If you come across any cryptic terms in your puzzle solving, which aren't in the app, please let me know, so we can include them in future releases! CrypticGuide is available on the App Store . It works on iPhones, iPods, and iPads. Unfortunately, at the moment it is only available for iOS, as ...

I've just finished a once-in-a-lifetime index, for a book on the history of the crossword! I doubt such a perfect job will ever come along for me again (indexers usually index books on subjects they're familiar with). And I was asked to put cryptic clues and jokes into the index! This is  very rare, and was a huge amount of fun! I am mentioned in the text as a cryptic setter, so had the unusual situation (again, very  rare) of indexing my own name. A few of the sillier entries, to whet your appetite: sloppy teaching, see cheating [a 'sloppy' version (or anagram) of teaching is cheating] torturers, see setters victims, see solvers The book, Two Girls, One on Each Knee: The Puzzling Past of the Cryptic Crossword is by Alan Connor (who writes frequently for The Guardian  crossword blog ), and is being published by Penguin. It will be out in a few months' time, so keep an eye out for it. The book is very interesting and well-written, and actua...