Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #382608 in Books
• Published on: 2003-02-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 191 pages

Synopsis
This unique book unlocks the mysteries of cryptic crosswords, revealing step by step how clues are constructed. It clearly outlines methods of clue analysis, increasing the enthusiast's range of analytical tools for solving crosswords, and instructs by example for a clearer understanding of solution finding. Suitable for both casual enthusiasts and serious puzzlers, topics range from the basic creation of a clue to the breakdown of various cryptic devices. An invaluable tool for all enthusiasts.

Customer Reviews

Disappointing
I think this is the least successful of the currently available "how to do cryptic crosswords" books. The author undoubtedly has experience of solving puzzles, and has a pretty good grasp of how the clues work. But explaining cryptic clues to other people needs more than this.

A big problem with the book is that it invents its own language for talking about cryptic clues, using exotic terms like "nosek" and "hydration", which make a glossary essential. (Can you guess what hydration is? I'll tell you at the end of the review, and I'm pretty sure you'll guess wrong.) Many of these invented words are not used in other discussions about cryptic puzzles, either because more intelligible alternatives already exist (e.g. "container and contents" - longer than "concon" but easily understood without a glossary), or because no-one thinks the word is necessary (e.g. "geograph" = a clue requiring geographical knowledge).

Some of the descriptions using this language are pretty impenetrable, in a way that other books manage to avoid. For example, to explain "Poet writes note held by disheartened singer" = SPENSER, all we need is something like:

Clue type: container and contents
Definition: Poet = (Edmund) Spenser.
Wordplay: Writes note = PENS E, all inside: disheartened SingeR = SR, giving S(PENS E)R.

Instead, this clue is a "condix" rather than just a "concon", and is explained thus:
"Both dixes remain once a central dix is removed from singer. This is not a simple one step disheartenment that leaves the answer standing in the form of a partword. The addix is required to construct the answer. Thus we see that the addix is a two step construction (undix, then addix) as all the earlier examples show. One, remove dix from clue. Two, put dix in answer."

Special formatting, to show the structure of clues, is used throughout the book. You never get any unformatted clues to look at, to see whether the book has taught you to analyse the structure of the unformatted clues that appear in real puzzles. Nor do you get any sample puzzles to try, or much advice about where to find puzzles to cut your teeth on. It's a bit like a driving course that never puts you behind the wheel of a car.

There are also several pages of material that contribute very little to the purpose of the book. The table of "differences and similarities in the nomenclature of segments or word parts" could be deleted, and information about topics like the potential palindromic properties of numbers below 196, and the introduction of zero to Western maths, belongs in some other book.

Here's that definition of Hydration: "Insertion of a letter at the head of a word; opposite of beheadment."
(Presumably from the mythical Hydra, which had many heads - but absolutely nothing to do with the normal meaning of "hydration").

Code breaking
This is a novel book. Which is not to say its a novel.

However what Mr Greef achieves in explaining the workings of cryptic crosswords is actually epic, if not quite revolutionary.

Believe me I've tried these damned things for many years, mostly spent in abject failure. I've even tried the brand of cheating that involves using books similar to Mr Greef's.

Similar but not the same. For here is a book that is more than a few worked examples and several blind leaps of faith. Here is a book that goes to the principles, that delves into the murky minds of the setters and shows that there is logic and substance trapped within. Above all it is a book that attempts (mostly successfully) to show not so much what to do, but rather, how to do it.

Having read and tried Mr Greef's methods, you come away from the experience with the white light of a Damascene conversion, rather than the rather sordid feeling that in some way you might have been cheating.

The Daily Mail - Books on Friday, 4 April 2003
If you are totally baffled by cryptic crosswords, and irritated that other people can whizz through them, here at last is a book that cracks open the code. With clever use of underlining and italics, this book unscrambles and demystifies hundreds, if not thousands of fiendish clues. It also explains many of the tricks of the trade; for example there are reams of words like chewed, drunken and rebuilt which indicate you've got to mix up the letters you are given and make an anagram. Love usually means 0 (like in tennis), five usually means you need a V (like the Roman numeral) while Loud often indicates ff (from the musical notation for forte). Very clear and authorative for beginners or old crossword hands.

Georgia Metcalfe