Coral Amende

Approximately 90% of this book is selections from interviews with leading puzzle constructors, editors, and solvers. It's all divided by topic---e.g., how do you come up with themes? What makes a good clue? etc. There are bits of history and advice about constructing and solving puzzles. Probably only of interest to a hardcore crossword fan who at least recognizes a lot of the "big names." Otherwise, it's just a lot of names that are hard to keep straight saying similar things in different ways. For me about 10% of the book was interesting, the other 90% was a waste of time… (meer)

In my opinion this book suffers from having been written by someone who is involved in the crossword business but is not a professional writer. It's a topic I'm very interested in, as a crossword fan, and there's a lot of good info here about the crossword biz; the history of crosswords; the various people who are or have been important in the evolution of the crossword; how crosswords are constructed; and so forth. But the interesting stuff is pretty badly padded with boring, repetitive insider stuff that isn't of much interest to the average crossword fan.

Example: It's interesting to know that there are a variety of people constructing crosswords for the major markets in the US nowadays, and that some people specialize in this or that area of crossword constructing and so forth. But do I really need to see a long list of constructors' names followed by who their favorite constructors are? Not really.

For a lot of this book, it looks like the author sent a questionnaire to a large group of crossword-biz VIPs, and compiled their responses together. So a typical section might consist of twenty or more people's responses to the question "What's your favorite part of creating a puzzle?" or "What's the hardest part?" or "How long does it take you to construct a puzzle?" The result is pages and pages of one-paragraph responses that all read sort of the same ("Four to five hours." "About three hours." "About half a day." "Anywhere from an hour to four hours." etc.) and it gets mind-numbing after a while. I wish the author had included a bit more substance and a bit less of what seems like ego-stroking for the industry VIPs. The above example could have been easily summed up with a bit of prose, e.g. "The time it takes for the average constructor to make a puzzle varies between one and twelve hours" and then maybe a FEW of the more interesting/wordy responses -- rather than just listing out all the responses with no accompanying text to tie it all together.

Overall, a lot of interesting stuff here but the publishers should really have hired a professional writer to write it, at least to collaborate with the author. If you're like me -- a pretty serious crossword fan but with no real interest in learning how to construct crosswords -- you'll enjoy a lot of the tidbits, but you can also do a lot of skimming.… (meer)