David Astle

Most readers enjoy word games, and few are more challenging than a crossword. Cluetopia celebrates the 100 years since the puzzle first appeared in the New York World as a column filler on a slow news day in 1913.

This is a book for crossword fans and trivia buffs, broken down into short chapters shaped by, "a landmark crossword for every year", from Arthur Wynne's small kite shaped diagram printed in 1913,to the first crossword puzzle book published in 1924, to the crossword that unwittingly shared national secrets during wartime and the first home-grown crosswords compiled by a Brisbane mum of seven.

The facts are fascinating and the writing is surprisingly accessible. Astle has a fine sense of humour and the tone of the text is almost conversational. Cryptic crossword fans will enjoy the unusual chapter headings titled with clues like, "Mad poet mugged by banjo player sees red while eating pickles (3,4)"

Astle also provides historical context to each chapter with snippets of world events and words added to our lexicon during the period. I would have preferred these had been placed at either the beginning or the end of each chapter rather than at the bottom of the first page, which I found distracting.

Interesting and entertaining I really enjoyed Cluetopia, though I do rather wish Astle had included a few crosswords in the book, just as an added bonus.… (meer)

An entertaining enough introduction to cryptic crosswords by a master setter and wordplay-oholic. The book starts with a sample crossword for readers to have a go at, followed by chapters themed around each of the different major clue types, explaining the structure of each and giving examples, all interspersed with lightly humorous autobiographical anecdotes. It's a sort of halfway house between the rambling solver’s journey of Sandy Balfour’s Pretty Girl in Crimson Rose (8) and Don Manley’s analytical Crossword Manual.
I solved the sample crossword before heading off into the main text, so perhaps I'm a little further up the solving ladder than the target audience for this book, but it was well written and informative nonetheless.… (meer)