How to Solve Crosswords: a Handbook

Book excerpt: This handbook is the result of the authors experience in solving crosswords (almost exclusively from the New York Times) for a period of over 10 years and is designed to help puzzle solvers of all abilities. It covers such strategic subjects as themes in puzzles and what a clue is attempting to elicit, as well as such tactical subjects as what, precisely, is to be written in the squares in a puzzle. Thus, the scope of the handbook ranges from the general to the detailed. Some of the subjects covered are foreign languages (French is the most popular, by far), mythology, the Old Testament, literature (including poetry and drama), classical music, sports (baseball is the crossword favorite), entertainment (comics, movies, television, and pop music), art and architecture, geography ( Ireland wins out here), science and math, travel and transportation, computers and the internet, as well as a list of those special words that are favorites of puzzle constructors (and hardly used by anyone else). Crosswords are fun, and this handbook helps you to enjoy them. To quote from the acknowledgments, The author and his readers are in the debt of all those puzzle makers and their editors, who give us such pleasure every day. Our lives are greatly enriched by them, and they help show us what a wonderful legacy we have in the English language.