Puzzling

I don't quite know where the last seven weeks disappeared to, seem to have lost my blogging mojo for a bit there. Anyway ... I thought it would be fun to share with you some of the very silly definitions from my friend Troy Simpson's book, The Funny Dictionary . These definitions have come from student essays, which Troy heroically trawled through. I did these few illustrations for the book. A la carte : When you can have all the desserts that's on the trolley Ampersand : A special kind of sand used in electricity Ave Domine : 'Lord, I am a bird.' [my favourite] Barber : The opposite of heiress Botulism : A close study of plants Caterer : Someone who minds your cat Circular Argument : Presiding at a board meeting Coup de Grâce : A lawn mower Cynic : Someone who refuses to believe in fairy tales Decimal : A fraction with a point Democracy : Government by demons Diabolic : Having diabetes Banter:  a small rooster Dogma : The mother of...

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...

Time for another Gemini analysis. This is for the Gemini cryptic #7043, which was published in The Canberra Times  on 15 July 2014. A usual, the definition part of the clue is underlined, except for double definition and cryptic definition clues. ACROSS Photo By  Great British Chefs Team  via  http://imagefinder.co/ 1. Eggs it's nice to scramble (7) = INCITES The definition is a nice confusion here — it's a verb, as in egging on someone, not a noun! Anagram indicated by scramble  of it's nice. Ignore that apostrophe. 4. It's mean to the players (5) = MEZZO Cryptic definition. MEZZO is a musical term meaning 'middle'. Mean is an average, or the middle. So MEZZO is a term that means 'middle' to musicians ( players ). 7. A stake in a buoyant economy (4) = ANTE Hidden word clue, indicated by in. You can see it in buoy ant e conomy. 8. On the edge and somewhat alarming (8) = MARGINAL Anagram, indicated by somewhat , of alarming. ...

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 ...

On 4th June this year, Chester Nez (93) died . He was the last of the Navaho code talkers. In all the reading I've done on cryptography, codes, and ciphers, the story of the American Indian code talkers is my favourite. Before we delve into their fascinating story, I need to be explain the difference between a code and a cipher. Codes A code is a mapping of a word, a short phrase, or even a whole sentence, to a single collection of symbols (words, numbers, or other symbols). They are almost impossible to break through analysis. However, unless it's a very brief code (which can be memorised), a code requires a codebook. There is simply no way to remember all of the substitutions accurately (unless you have a photographic memory!). The existence of this codebook is a security hazard, though. If the enemy gets a copy, you've had it. Some examples of codes are: @! = the contract has been signed pancake = come at once, bring syrup 169 = the plan is proceeding ...