Puzzling

I have decided to close my 'Twitface' accounts (Twitter and author's page on Facebook) in the interests of less stress, and more simplicity in my life. I will still be posting cryptic clues that you can solve here, and will be updating this blog more frequently too. I look forward to continuing conversations with my friends from those other social networks – welcome! Here's the first batch. Let me know how you get on in the Comments, and I'm happy to provide hints if anyone needs them. I will post answers in a few days  :) ______________________________________________________________________ 1) Gulps down birds (8) 2) Worker has loud grievance (4) 3) Endless blaze leaves a tree (3) 4) Relation at the ABC? (6) 5) Mourn appropriately if making livery (7) 6) Cable tram stuffed with unrestrained glee (8) 7) Émigré Patrick went after former wife (5) ________________________________________________________________________

All too often it just seems impossible to find a way into a cryptic crossword. To help you make a start, and maybe even solve it all, here are my ...  Top Ten  Eleven Tips for Solvers Use a pencil and eraser, rather than pen. Read through all the clues before trying to solve any. You don't have to start with 1 Across! Mark in any multiple words or hyphenated words on the grid, with a dividing line drawn onto the grid (see the photo below). These are the clues where the letter number is something like (3-4) or (2,4,3). See if you can spot some anagram clues. Most cryptics will have at least a couple, and possibly many more. Read my blog post on anagrams to learn how to spot them. The longest words in the grid are often clued with anagrams, so check these clues carefully. Look for possible 'hidden word' clues, while some cryptics have none, there's usually 1 or 2 of these in an average grid. Here's my blog post on how to find and solve hidden word clu...

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

I'm very happy to announce that I am now the regular cryptic setter for the Australian Clue Detective Puzzle Agency . They will be publishing one of my Nixie cryptic crosswords every fortnight, and I will be writing for their blog now and then. This is currently the only way to get my very latest cryptic crosswords on a regular basis. Membership to The Clue Detective Puzzle Agency is by annual subscription. There is a special deal on at the moment , until the end of August, if you're interested in signing up. They have a range of other sorts of puzzles, including clueless crosswords. Under The Sea II by Sir Joseph Noel Patton Why am I writing under the cryptic setter name Nixie? Firstly, a nixie is a bit of a bad and naughty fairy , liable to trick humans (What?!) ... and is female (women cryptic setters are rare) ... and Nixie is also close to my family nickname. So it seems apt to me! Hope to see you over there  :)

One of the things I like about cryptics is how — although I write them — I still find cryptics by other setters challenging and enjoyable to solve. I don't do 'quick' crosswords any more, solving one is too much like the work I do in writing them ... another bloody definition? No thanks ... But cryptics are still a fascinating challenge to me, and are still fun for me to solve. I don't classify myself as an expert solver , I can't solve The Times cryptic in record time or anything like that. I don't solve enough cryptics often enough to get the necessary daily practice in. But being a setter does give me a certain advantage! So, I thought you might find it interesting to see the mental process I go through when solving clues by other setters. Here are a few clues by a variety of setters, and my thoughts as I solve them ... Wife given a kiss then getting yen for pasty (4) Hmmm, what are possible abbreviations in this clue? Wife = W, kis...

This year marks the centenary of the crossword! It was invented by Arthur Wynne , a British journalist working in New York at the time, on the New York World . Part of his job was to put together a page of puzzles for the Sunday edition of the paper. On 21 December 1913, he put in a new puzzle of his own invention — a Word-Cross Puzzle . A few weeks later a typesetter at the paper made a mistake, and set 'Cross Word Puzzle' instead of its original name, and then another mistake led to the hyphen being dropped — giving us Crossword. I will go into the further history of the crossword in later posts, but for now, I thought you'd like to see what this first crossword puzzle looked like! Later on Wynne added more black squares to separate words, and changed the numbering and the shape. But this diamond design was the very first one! Have a go at solving it, if you like  :) Answers are below (select them to view them). I've given links to more information on the...