A crossword is a word puzzle that usually takes the form of a square or a rectangular grid of white- and black-shaded squares. The goal is to fill the white squares with letters, forming words or phrases that cross each other, by solving clues which lead to the answers. In languages that are written left-to-right, the answer words and phrases are placed in the grid from left to right ("across") and from top to bottom ("down"). The shaded squares are used to separate the words or phrases.
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, Ireland, Israel, 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.
The Reverend John Galbraith Graham MBE was a British crossword compiler, best known as Araucaria of The Guardian. He was also, like his father Eric Graham, a Church of England priest.
William F. Shortz is an American puzzle creator and editor who is the crossword puzzle editor for The New York Times. He graduated from Indiana University with a degree in the invented field of "enigmatology". After starting his career at Penny Press and Games magazine, he was hired by The New York Times in 1993. Shortz's American Crossword Puzzle Tournament is the country's oldest and largest crossword tournament.
The $1,000,000 Chance of a Lifetime is an American game show which offered a $1 million (annuitized) grand prize to winning contestants. The show aired in syndication from January 6, 1986, until May 22, 1987. The show was hosted by Jim Lange, and he was joined by Karen Thomas as co-host during the second season. Mark Summers was the show's announcer for the first few weeks and Johnny Gilbert announced the remainder of the series. The show was produced by XPTLA, Inc., and distributed by Lorimar-Telepictures.
Games World of Puzzles is an American games and puzzle magazine. Originally the merger of two other puzzle magazines spun off from its parent publication Games magazine in the early 1990s, Games World of Puzzles was reunited with Games in October 2014.
An acrostic is a type of word puzzle, related somewhat to crossword puzzles, that uses an acrostic form. It typically consists of two parts. The first part is a set of lettered clues, each of which has numbered blanks representing the letters of the answer. The second part is a long series of numbered blanks and spaces, representing a quotation or other text, into which the answers for the clues fit. In some forms of the puzzle, the first letters of each correct clue answer, read in order from clue A on down the list, will spell out the author of the quote and the title of the work it is taken from; this can be used as an additional solving aid.
The New York Times crossword puzzle is a daily American-style crossword puzzle published in The New York Times, online on the newspaper's website, syndicated to more than 300 other newspapers and journals, and on mobile apps.
Jonathan Crowther is a British crossword compiler who has for over 50 years composed the Azed cryptic crossword in The Observer Sunday newspaper. He was voted "best British crossword setter" in a poll of crossword setters conducted by The Sunday Times in 1991 and in the same year was chosen as "the crossword compilers' crossword compiler" in The Observer Magazine "Experts' Expert" feature.
Azed is a crossword which appears every Sunday in The Observer newspaper. Since it first appeared in March 1972, every puzzle has been composed by Jonathan Crowther who also judges the monthly clue-writing competition. The pseudonym Azed is a reversal of Deza, a Spanish inquisitor general. This combines the inquisitorial tradition of Torquemada and Ximenes with the wordplay element of a British cryptic crossword.
A cross-figure is a puzzle similar to a crossword in structure, but with entries that consist of numbers rather than words, where individual digits are entered in the blank cells. Clues may be mathematical, use general knowledge or refer to other clues.
Derrick Somerset Macnutt (1902–1971) was a British crossword compiler who provided crosswords for The Observer newspaper under the pseudonym Ximenes. His main oeuvre was blocked-grid and "specialty" puzzles. Even though he only provided conventional blocked puzzles once a week for the Observer Everyman series for about two years his strong views on clueing, expressed in his 1966 book, have been a source of debate in the cryptic crossword world ever since.
John Derek Crozier, under the pseudonym "Crosaire", was the compiler of the cryptic crossword in The Irish Times from its inception in 1943 until the year after his death. It was formally named "The Irish Times Crossword", as opposed to the non-cryptic "Simplex crossword" which was published alongside it from 1951. As Crozier was the sole cryptic compiler for 68 years, the crossword itself became known as "the Crosaire" by metonymy. The pseudonym "Crosaire" is a play on his own surname and crosaire, the Irish for "crossroad". After Crozier's death, The Irish Times formally renamed its cryptic crossword in his honour.
Sir Christopher Jeremy Morse KCMG was an English banker, cruciverbalist and chess composer who was Chancellor of the University of Bristol from 1989 to 2003, and was chairman of Lloyds Bank.
David Astle is an Australian TV personality and radio host, and writer of non-fiction, fiction and plays. He also co-hosted the SBS Television (SBS) show Letters and Numbers, as the dictionary expert, in company with Richard Morecroft and Lily Serna, a role to which he returned for Celebrity Letters and Numbers in 2021.
Alistair Ferguson Ritchie (1890–1954) was a crossword compiler, under the pseudonym Afrit. The son of a post office clerk, he was born in 1890 and brought up in King’s Lynn. He was head boy at King Edward VII Grammar School there and graduated from Queens' College, Cambridge in 1911.
Sarah Hayes, usually known as Arachne, is a British cryptic crossword setter. She sets puzzles for The Guardian, The Independent, the Financial Times, the New Statesman, and The Times, and advanced cryptics for The Listener crossword, Enigmatic Variations and the Inquisitor. Hayes's clues are often smutty or political and make frequent use of the generic she.
"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.
Dropquote or quotefall is a puzzle type where a quotation has been written over several lines, and the solver must recreate it from only a list of letters as they should appear in each column. When correctly completed, the words read from left to right to form a quotation, proverb or saying.
People Puzzler is an American television game show hosted by Leah Remini and broadcast by Game Show Network. It premiered on January 18, 2021. The show is inspired by the celebrity and pop-culture themed crosswords in People magazine.
