Every year I look forward to Christmas, not primarily for the food, or the time off work, or the presents, or even the getting-together with family, but because it means another of Gordon Gray's Christmas puzzles will be available.
Sad huh? Well, maybe, but I'm not alone because it is an excellent puzzle. It seems like just the kind of thing MAIers would like, so I thought I'd point it out to you.
You can find it here:
The puzzle itself will not be available until Dec 6th, but I will be away on holiday by then - in the windy wilds of the woolly North - with no access to a PC, so this is my only chance to tell you about it. It is written for charity - if you want to you can send a donation of you choice to the organiser (Gordon Gray).
The basic puzzle consists of an apparently meaningful essay which usually is in fact complete nonsense, but is grammatical. This is split into 40 lines. Each line contains clues to 3 words. The start and end points of the clueing are not specified. Spaces for the letters of each of the clued words are shown above the line. In all cases, three consecutive letters from somewhere in the middle of the word are given.
Some of the clues are easy to spot, others can be trickier. Some of the words are commonplace while others would challenge even the most erudite among us.
The nice thing about it is that there is always some kind of theme which relates to words spelled out by the first letters of the answers. So, once you have enough of the answers, and you know the theme, you can guess what the rest of the first letters are. This then gives you a boost to continue after you have otherwise gone as far as you can.
If you like a nice easy life, then feel free to jump straight in and check out answers on the internet right from the beginning. However, if you are like me and prefer more of a challenge, you might like to adopt my approach. I usually try to get as many answers as I can without any aids at all (I normally aim to get at least 100 that way), then I restrict myself to just a dictionary and add as many more as I can. I then allow myself use of any other reference books at home. If I can't finish it with the help of those items, I then finally resort to Google, but I try to avoid doing so until I have a very small handful of unsolved words. This whole process can sometimes involve coming back to the puzzle time and again over a period of weeks. I find it thoroughly engaging and quite delightful.
Anyway, happy puzzling and good luck!
Tony
Sad huh? Well, maybe, but I'm not alone because it is an excellent puzzle. It seems like just the kind of thing MAIers would like, so I thought I'd point it out to you.
You can find it here:
The puzzle itself will not be available until Dec 6th, but I will be away on holiday by then - in the windy wilds of the woolly North - with no access to a PC, so this is my only chance to tell you about it. It is written for charity - if you want to you can send a donation of you choice to the organiser (Gordon Gray).
The basic puzzle consists of an apparently meaningful essay which usually is in fact complete nonsense, but is grammatical. This is split into 40 lines. Each line contains clues to 3 words. The start and end points of the clueing are not specified. Spaces for the letters of each of the clued words are shown above the line. In all cases, three consecutive letters from somewhere in the middle of the word are given.
Some of the clues are easy to spot, others can be trickier. Some of the words are commonplace while others would challenge even the most erudite among us.
The nice thing about it is that there is always some kind of theme which relates to words spelled out by the first letters of the answers. So, once you have enough of the answers, and you know the theme, you can guess what the rest of the first letters are. This then gives you a boost to continue after you have otherwise gone as far as you can.
If you like a nice easy life, then feel free to jump straight in and check out answers on the internet right from the beginning. However, if you are like me and prefer more of a challenge, you might like to adopt my approach. I usually try to get as many answers as I can without any aids at all (I normally aim to get at least 100 that way), then I restrict myself to just a dictionary and add as many more as I can. I then allow myself use of any other reference books at home. If I can't finish it with the help of those items, I then finally resort to Google, but I try to avoid doing so until I have a very small handful of unsolved words. This whole process can sometimes involve coming back to the puzzle time and again over a period of weeks. I find it thoroughly engaging and quite delightful.
Anyway, happy puzzling and good luck!
Tony
