Puzzling

We indexers are a hardy species. We are almost all self-employed, which means we're good at working alone, and are self-motivated and organised. We work long hours when an indexing job comes in, including nights and weekends, to meet publishers' and authors' deadlines. We love our work. But despite this hardiness, we do need some care. We are still human. We can't work miracles. The following list addresses frequent grievances, and ways you can look after your indexers better. 1. We need you now! Don't contact us for a quote, and then expect us to be available that week. Many of us have work booked in advance, for months. We need advance notice. An exasperated indexer (me). We're pretty low key 2. It's going to be late ... When you give us a deadline for the delivery of a manuscript, we book it in to our work calendars. We often have many projects coming in, one after the other, and we schedule them accordingly. When you run late with deliver...

The latest book I've indexed is Born Bad, by James Boyce (Black Inc. Publishing). This is a fascinating book, tracing the history and impact of the idea of original sin, from its origin from St Augustine in the late 4th century, to the modern day. I highly recommend it! There were several points to make decisions about in this index (well, every index is a constant process of decision making, to be honest). Firstly were a bunch of medieval names, how are these treated? And the names of saints and popes? With names such as Friedrich the Wise , I used direct order for the entry (ie written as is, 'Friedrich the Wise'), not inverted (Wise, Friedrich the), as 'Wise' isn't a surname. The same goes for names such as Julian of Norwich ... 'Norwich' isn't a surname, so he appears in the index under J for Julian. With popes and saints, the way I treated these names (as there were a lot of them mentioned) was under their 'holy' names, wit...

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...

My mother recently sent me the index I wrote to my extensive  Cricket magazine collection, which I created for my kids when they were little. I had completely forgotten I'd created it. I was in my 20s when I did this! All hand-written into an index book (with alphabet tags on the sides of the pages). I used symbols to indicate whether an entry was an article, recipe, activity etc. The numbers are (volume, issue) - no page number included. In 1982 I wrote an index for a microwave cookbook that didn't have one, for my future mother-in-law, when I was 18. And I didn't know indexing was a 'real profession' until a couple of years ago, just before I did my training! LOL

An index can be many things. Usually it's a helpful guide to the contents of a book, a friendly way in to the information. A helping hand... BUT ... There lurks a darker side ... the index as revenge! Détente by Index: On Earl Sprague’s Invitation to a Subheading This article by Matt Seidel is one of the most hilarious things I've read in a long long time! It is fictional, but so utterly wonderful ... Matt clearly knows a little about indexing, as he's come up with a very convincing and vengeful index!  It's not often that indexes are a source of comedy, or even mentioned in cartoons ( although this is a notable recent exception !). This article is making indexers around the world laugh immoderately and possibly pee a little too — thank you Matt! ( His other articles are very funny too, check out his website !)

My apologies for being rather invisible for a while, I've had two overseas trips in the past month! Anyway, I'm back again, and will try to heed my daughter's command to "Stay, Mummy, STAY!" for the rest of the year (although New York is beckoning). Last week I attended my first indexing conference, the biennial conference of the Australian and New Zealand Society of Indexers (ANZSI) . Wow, that sounds so exciting , I hear you mutter sarcastically. Well, let me tell you, it was awesome . I met so many fabulous, intelligent, funny, and generous people (there were around 80 of us at the conference), learnt so many interesting things, found out how to expand my indexing business and improve my skills — and all in the delightful environs of Wellington, New Zealand . Wellington is similar to Canberra — the national capital that no-one is aware of. No, Sydney's not the capital of Australia, my hometown Canberra is. And Auckland isn't capital of New Zeal...

As well as writing puzzles, I am also an editor and indexer (cos, let's face it, writing puzzles is no damn way to earn an income!). As an indexing exercise, I recently finished writing an index for the book Quirkology , by Richard Wiseman. An interesting book that suffers from the lack of an index. It's beyond me why authors of non-fiction pass up indexes for their books ... Anyway, that's a rant for another time. You are welcome to download the PDF of the index for free, and print it out. Then you can refer to it when reading your copy of the book! There are two versions of the file: A4 Quirkology Index This index is a straight forward layout, on A4 (will resize to US Letter easily), and you can print it either single or double-sided as you prefer. Staple them together. Booklet Quirkology Index This file has been designed to make a little booklet that can be slotted into the back of your copy of Quirkology . To use this file, you need to be...