Atlantic Monthly Cryptic Crosswords, The

Rating:
Summary: Great themed cryptics!
Review: As always, Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon have produced a great selection of cryptics crosswords. Their clues have just the right amount of cleverness without being too hard to figure out. This book doesn't have any "regular" ones, they each have some kind of an extra twist, so they're all interesting. These have run in the Atlantic Monthly before, but it was before I started doing them in there, so I'm glad for this collection.

Rating:
Summary: Devilishly difficult
Review: Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon create some of the most clever and fiendishly difficult cryptic crosswords around. Unless you are already skilled at solving conventional cryptic crosswords, this is not the book for you, since it does not have the several pages of solving hints usually provided as a preface to most cryptic puzzle books.

These puzzles originally appeared in The Atlantic Monthly between 1986 and 1998. Each of these puzzles has an additional "gimmick" to it that makes the solving that much more difficult, such as answers that bend around the grid, unclued words, dropped/added/shuffled letters in the clues or answers, random order clues, and so on. If you love a challenge, these puzzles are for you. You will have a real feeling of accomplishment when you complete one.

Rating:
Summary: Lacking any wit or humor.
Review: This collection of cryptics depends on its inventiveness in the unique structures that the creators have developed for each puzzle. However, this hardly makes up for the forced and unimaginative definitions offered which, after all, is what cryptics are all about. For those of us raised on Henry Hooks' cryptic puzzles, this collection falls way short in humor, wit, joy of language, and the celebration of the enigma. After solving about a half a dozen of the puzzles, I have no desire to finish the book. Go with Hook or New York Times and enjoy.