Puzzling

The Puzzle Wizard, Greg Parker, and me, Jan 2007. The Wizard is standing on a chair. Greg Parker has been a friend and colleague of mine for many years. He single-handedly produces  The Puzzle Wizard  series of crossword books, which are available in newsagencies throughout Australia and New Zealand, and on subscription. They are excellent crossword magazines, and some of the few independent crossword publications out there. I designed Greg's web site , and I also design the covers of his World of Crosswords and Crossword Magic publications . In recent times I have started writing the cryptic in his World of Crosswords mag, too.  I thought you might like to get to know Greg better, so here is my interview for your enjoyment! Puzzling: How long have you been writing crosswords? Greg: Since about six years of age — so 43 years. Puzzling:  What got you started on writing them? Greg:  I was fascinated by words (and numbers for that matte...

Did you know that English is supremely well-suited to puzzle writing? Some languages just don't have many word puzzles like crosswords (such as many Asian languages). English is so good for word play, puns, and puzzles because it has huge redundancy — there are generally lots of different ways of expressing the same general idea. For example, if you want to say you're happy , you could also say you're :  cheerful, delighted,  carefree,  cheery ,  merry ,  joyful ,  jovial , jolly, gleeful, smiling, lighthearted, pleased, contented, gratified, bouyant, radiant, sunny, blithe, sunny, joyous, chirpy, elated, over the moon, tickled pink, on a high, happy as a clam, or even jocund,  and that is only half of the synonyms for happy ! You never need be lost for words! The full English vocabulary is also massive. It is probable that English has more words in it than any other language (see  what the Oxford Dictionary bods have to say on this subject...