4. good crossword puzzle book

April 4, 2008 11:31 AM

Looking for good crossword puzzle books. I enjoy the Boston Globe puzzles online (alas, no Sundays unless I subscribe) and usually get a kick out of the themed puzzles in the print edition of The Onion.

I tend to find puzzles from both of these fun, witty, clever and pretty fast paced. FWIW, I also enjoy the NYT puzzles but they just don't have that same feel as the previous sources. Dell books and the like are usually too easy and too repetitive within a given book (they drive me crazy.) Spiral bound or a spine that allows it to lie flat is a plus. I am willing to entertain the idea of puzzle to print from the internet provided it consistently comes close to the description I gave. Also, all crosswords, no other puzzles, no filler. I have read other MeFi/Ask MeFi crosswords posts and see nothing that stands out to me.

posted by horseblind to writing & language (10 comments total)

I'm currently enjoying Will Shortz's Favorite Crossword Puzzles from the Pages of The New York Times. I haven't done the Globe or Onion ones, so I don't know how it compares, but the puzzles are quirkier than the average Times ones. It isn't spiral-bound (grrr) but the margins are wide enough that I can fold it back.
posted by The corpse in the library at 11:52 AM on April 4, 2008

Take a look at these blogs: "Rex Parker does The New York Times Crossword" and "Diary of a Crosswork Addict." Both have extensive lists of online crossword sources in their sidebars and both blogs make great reading for a crossword fan.

There are many, many puzzles available on-line.

Apologies to the other excellent blogs I'm not mentioning here; they're linked in the above blogs' sidebars too.

The Onion puzzle is available by e-mail for example.

I do the NY Times puzzles and a few others. The NYSun puzzles are excellent, and available both on-line and in an excellent series of books published by Sterling. They progress in difficulty Mon-Fri like the Times puzzle, and there are specific one-day-only books available if you want. They're probably quirkier than the NY Times if that's what you're looking for.

If you want a challenge, also check out the Saturday Newsday puzzle, also available on-line.

Jim in NYC
posted by JimN2TAW at 12:17 PM on April 4, 2008

This is going to be a sideways recommendation that's not quite what you're looking for, but I thought I'd call attention to it anyway, just in case--The New York Times Crosswords for the Nintendo DS has somewhere around 1,000 crosswords that were previously published in the paper. Answers are keyed in with the touch screen. It's brilliant.
posted by Prospero at 12:18 PM on April 4, 2008

All of my friends know I enjoy crosswords and for my birthday I received a book entitled "Crasswords - Dirty Crosswords for Cunning Linguists"
It is edited by Francis Heaney and contains 50 puzzles of varying difficulties some written by Heaney and the rest written by well known constructors.
It is spiral bound.
from the intro:
"Incidentally, just because these crosswords are foul-mouthed, that doesn't mean they've been dumbed down. Far from it! Since the clues are packed with double entendres, these puzzles will provide a challenge to even the savviest solvers..." Its lewd, rude and cleverly clued...
Something different that my boyfriend and I have been enjoying lately.
posted by fogonlittlecatfeet at 12:36 PM on April 4, 2008

Quirky definitely describes what I'm looking for in a puzzle. A challenge always makes me happy. I am also hoping that these will be fun to solve with another person (witty, quirky, fast paced, clever, etc. go a long way here.) Great answers so far. I bought the DS NYT Puzzles for my daughter. Maybe I should poke around on hers.
posted by horseblind at 12:37 PM on April 4, 2008

I second Will Shortz's Favorite Crossword Puzzles from the Pages of The New York Times. Fantastic collection, including the famous/infamous presidential election puzzle that includes a clue asking for the winner of the election despite the fact that the puzzle was written before the results were announced. I got about halfway through it and then lost it in LAX. I've been very sad ever since then.
posted by ErWenn at 1:30 PM on April 4, 2008

Just a couple of observations:
You know about the progression from day to day, yes? Because I find Thursdays are usually the ones that have the highest quirk value, in terms of departing from expected crossword pattern -- that is, they tend to be the ones where certain spaces will be filled with a "star" symbol and those words have "star" in them, and that sort of thing.

NYT puzzles edited by Shortz are usually funnier and with more emphasis on wordplay in the clues etc. Beware of books of old NYT puzzles, from before Shortz's tenure, such as those edited by Maleska. Those don't have so much wordplay, and have a lot more hopeless trivia (clues like "second-biggest river in Estonia").
posted by LobsterMitten at 1:40 PM on April 4, 2008

My favortie crosswords are Merle Reagle's. Clever, quirky, every puzzle has a twist, and not too difficult or too easy. I think the only place you can get the books is his website, but there are some crossword puzzle playing programs that get his regular Sunday puzzle from the LATimes. (or if you are a big computer geek like me they can be found at http://picayune.uclick.com/comics/lamag/data/lamagYYMMDD-data.xml (080330-data.xml is the most recent)).
posted by aspo at 8:38 AM on April 5, 2008

And I just discovered that if you are a bit less of a geek and don't want to write your own crossword player there's always
this flash version.
posted by aspo at 8:40 AM on April 5, 2008

I think you'd also like the puzzles in Time Out magazine, written by Brendan Emmett Quigley, who also has a book of some of his puzzles from the New York Times. He's younger than most puzzle writers, and tends to use trickier and more contemporary clues.
posted by lauranesson at 2:19 PM on May 25, 2008