Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Cruciverbalism by Stanley Newman

The full title of this book is Cruciverbalism: A crossword fanatic's guide to life in the grid. (FYI: a cruciverbalist is a designer or aficionado of crossword puzzles.) It was a quick, breezy read and I enjoyed skimming through it. I learned a couple of interesting tips on solving crossword puzzles (such as the old chestnut "if the clue contains an abbreviation, the answer is probably abbreviated as well").
 
The book also contains a list of 100 essential words for crossworders to know, such as ALAR (meaning winglike) and URAL (Caspian sea feeder, I always get that wrong.)
 
It got me excited and made me want to go out and do crosswords, which I guess is a good thing... except then I stayed up too late doing crosswords and I had to go to work the next day. Oh well.

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