Best Crostic Puzzles
(Traditional crostic quotes have less than 200 letters.).
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"I wouldn't say these are trivial, but they are certainly easier than the New York Times puzzles, and not to be compared to those of the immortal Charles A, Duerr. With a book of 50 Charles A Duerr puzzles, I feel proud of myself if I manage to do them all, even if two or three of them took me several days. One howler I remember had, for the name of the strait at the southern entrance to New York Bay, the answer "Verrazano Narrows.""
"I can't say enough good things about these crostics and I hope there are more volumes to follow."
"I like acrostic puzzles' They re excellent for keeping my brain active."
"The longer potential answers provide for a more challenging environment."
"Good double acrostic puzzles."
"Bought copies for myself and my sister-- both enjoying it immensely!"
"I never use reference works when I do puzzles, and I hate the ones that have quotes from Ovid or the obscurer parts of Shakespeare’s history plays."
"Terrific and challenging!"
50 Quotation puzzles from the pages of The New York Times Edited by Emily Cox and Harry Rathvon. He is also the puzzlemaster on NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday and is founder and director of the annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"It's hard, but doable."
"Looking for an easy puzzle and this was not it."
"Fine."
"I have worked the NYTimes acrostics in the Sunday paper and in books previously and am enjoying this book as well."
"I suppose if I was a pro at New York Times Sunday puzzles I wouldn't be so frustrated with these puzzles."
This mega-collection of 185 crostics is culled from out-of-print books in the popular Simon & Schuster crostics series.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"This is my second super crostics book and I love working the puzzles out and learning the answers to the various questions."
"So far, I have found numerous errors."
"Some of the best, toughest acrostics yet."
"Numbers like 6 and 8 aren't clear, and letters like Q and O are hard to distinguish--so I have to be extra careful when doing the puzzles."
"Crostics are my favorite puzzles and the variety puzzle books never have enough of them."
"I enjoy all my acrostic books.When I was very sick many years ago, they saved my sanity."
"Numerous pages are blurry and the font is way too small."
"The pages were not scored (as stated in the book), and they cannot be torn off as the puzzles are finished, without ripping them out."
Best Cryptic Puzzles
"A collection of 400 witty or humorous quotations along with their authors' names...have been enciphered into simple substitution ciphers with retained word divisions.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"PROS. -lots of them. -hints; two letter hints even. CONS. -too small (a common problem in these books, oddly). -hint errors, seriously?"
"I like a larger format puzzle book and not on newsprint sort of paper...cryptograms themselves are fun intriguing, glad I have it."
"I am not smart enough to use do these but my gentleman friend loves these."
"It needs editing."
"They love to do the cryptogram in the newspaper each day making a copy of it and then competing to see who gets it first."
"great way to spend my time."
Best Puzzle Dictionaries
From Jim Carrey to Sister Carrie, Homer Simpson to Homer’s Iliad, the wide-ranging entries include 500,000+ synonyms, 3,000+ literary works, 3,000+ films, 20,000+ famous people from all fields, and more than 50,000 fill-in-the-blank clues so popular in today’s crosswords. “The largest, most up-to-date, and most useful crossword dictionary available.” (from the Introduction by Will Shortz, New York Times Crossword Editor). A must for the crossword aficionado.” (Rich Norris, Los Angeles Times crossword editor). “...this remarkable book is destined to be not just another crossword dictionary, but the crossword dictionary.” (Wayne Robert Williams, Chicago Tribune crossword editor).
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Frequent usage demands a durable binding and the paperback just does not fit the bill and quickly wears out."
"When I first downloaded this book and tried to use it on the Samsung Kindle app I got very frustrated. However I wanted to install it on my Kindle Paperwhite so I purchased it again. This time I find that I can use it on the Samsung Kindle app. I haven't managed to download this to my Kindle, but for the moment, I am well pleased with the tablet app performance."
"The version now shipping has about 1500 entries updated to 2016 at the end, after the XYZ section, which includes sports, movies, politicians (i.e. foreign leaders)."
"Was in great condition for used book and good price with quick shipping."
"I will re-order this 2nd edition because it is so helpful, but it does need an update on content and a hard cover for those of us who work crossword puzzles daily and Saturday and Sunday."
"I originally bought this fro my mother in law who has a stack of crossword dictionaries a mile high."
"It contains everything from every kind of Oscar winner, scads of foreign country info, first and last name entries, phrases with missing words, singers with lists of their hits, movies with complete cast listings and foreign words."
"I've bought it for others as a gift, and the recipients are thrilled with the book. January 2010 update: Having purchased a Kindle, I was excited to get this dictionary on the Kindle, so I wouldn't have to lug out that huge book all the time."