A crossword is a word game consisting of a grid of black and white squares, into which solvers enter words or phrases ("entries") crossing each other horizontally ("across") and vertically ("down") according to a set of clues. Each white square is typically filled with one letter, while the black squares are used to separate entries. The first white square in each entry is typically numbered to correspond to its clue.
A cryptic crossword is a crossword puzzle in which each clue is a word puzzle. Cryptic crosswords are particularly popular in the United Kingdom, where they originated, as well as Ireland, the Netherlands, and in several Commonwealth nations, including Australia, Canada, India, Kenya, Malta, New Zealand, and South Africa. Compilers of cryptic crosswords are commonly called setters in the UK and constructors in the US. Particularly in the UK, a distinction may be made between cryptics and quick crosswords, and sometimes two sets of clues are given for a single puzzle grid.
Ena Sharples is a fictional character from the British ITV soap opera Coronation Street, played by Violet Carson. She appeared in the first episode, broadcast on 9 December 1960, and stayed with the show until 2 April 1980.
Vera Drake is a 2004 British period drama film written and directed by Mike Leigh and starring Imelda Staunton, Phil Davis, Daniel Mays and Eddie Marsan. It tells the story of a working-class woman in London in 1950 who performs illegal abortions. It won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and it was nominated for three Academy Awards and won three BAFTAs.
My Night at Maud's, also known as My Night with Maud (UK), is a 1969 French New Wave drama film by Éric Rohmer. It is the third film in his series of Six Moral Tales.
The Luck of Ginger Coffey is a 1964 Canadian film directed by Irvin Kershner. It is based on the Governor General's Award-winning novel by Northern Irish-Canadian writer Brian Moore, published in 1960.
Diary of the Dead is a 1976 neo-noir film directed by Arvin Brown, based on the 1971 novel One Across, Two Down by Ruth Rendell. It was produced by Charles B. Moss. Robert L. Fish, author of Mute Witness, the basis of Bullitt, contributed to the screenplay.
William John Burley was a Cornish crime writer, best known for his books featuring the detective Charles Wycliffe, which became the basis of the popular television series Wycliffe, shown from 1994 to 1998.
Dolores Claiborne is a 1995 American psychological thriller drama film directed by Taylor Hackford and starring Kathy Bates, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Christopher Plummer, and David Strathairn. The screenplay by Tony Gilroy is based on the 1992 novel of the same name by Stephen King. The plot focuses on the strained relationship between a mother and her daughter, largely told through flashbacks, after her daughter arrives to her remote hometown on a Maine island where her mother has been accused of murdering the elderly woman for whom she had long been a care-provider and companion.
Bella at Midnight is a fantasy novel for children by Diane Stanley. The story is based on the fairy tale Cinderella. It was first published in 2006.
Car of Dreams is a 1935 British romantic comedy film directed by Graham Cutts and Austin Melford and starring Grete Mosheim, John Mills, Norah Howard and Robertson Hare. A tycoon's son falls in love with a woman who works at his father's factory. It was based on the 1934 Hungarian film The Dream Car.
Maud Gage Baum was the wife of American children's publisher L. Frank Baum. Her mother was the suffragist Matilda Joslyn Gage. In her early life, she attended a boys' high school.
Arthur John Maude was an English actor, screenwriter, and film director.
Maud Younger was an American suffragist, feminist, and labor activist.
The Mistress of the World is an eight-part 1919 silent film made in the Weimar Republic starring Mia May in the lead role. The film, under the creative control of director Joe May, is noted for bringing together talent from across German cinema, including many who would work behind the camera during the emergence of German Expressionist cinema.
All Clues Lead to Berlin is a 1952 West German thriller film directed by František Čáp and starring Gordon Howard, Irina Garden and Kurt Meisel. It is also known by the alternative titles Adventure in Berlin and International Counterfeiters.
"The Riddle of the Sphinx" is the third episode of the third series of the British dark comedy anthology television programme Inside No. 9. It first aired, on BBC Two, on 28 February 2017. The episode was written by the programme's creators, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith, and directed by Guillem Morales. "The Riddle of the Sphinx", which is set in Cambridge, stars Alexandra Roach as Nina, a young woman seeking answers to the Varsity cryptic crossword, Pemberton as Professor Nigel Squires, who pseudonymously sets the crossword using the name Sphinx, and Shearsmith as Dr Jacob Tyler, another Cambridge academic. The story begins with Nina surreptitiously entering Squires's rooms on a stormy night and being discovered; this leads to Squires teaching her how to decipher clues in cryptic crosswords.
