Prelude to Crosswords (Paperback) | Released: 04 Jan 2021

This book contains word puzzles that build up basic pattern recognition skills used in crosswords.Something for every fan of word gamesIf you want easy word puzzles to tide you through a rainy day or a long journey or a waiting period in a queue, this book is the answer; every chapter has at least one or two entry-level puzzles that will give you a much needed morale boost. If you are looking for challenges, and for the frustrating feeling of being both very close to and very far from a solution, every chapter has at least one anagram puzzle that will leave you chewing at your pencil (which is very bad, and you should never do it) for minutes on end. Finally, if you are a wordgame speedrunner, looking to solve every set of puzzles in record time, this book gives you 32 chapters to try your skills on - you can actually measure your progress and the time taken.Easy to understand, intuitive formatAnagram puzzles can sometimes be so complex that you have to fight a battle to understand how the format works before ever trying the real puzzle at hand. Fortunately, this book has no such convoluted monstrosities. Each puzzle gives you a couple of words; you have to use all the letters in those words just as many times as they appear in total, and no more, and rearrange the order of those letters to create a new, valid, longer word. It's almost like being given a hat with a set of letter tiles in it, and shaking it (metaphorically, with your brain) to come up with the answer, and feeling like a million dollars in the process. You won't need instructions, or a long period of preparation.Ranged difficulty level - from trivially easy questions to the World's Toughest AnagramsThis book should ideally be solved in multiple passes. The first time you go through a chapter, you could do it as part of a casual solving session - spending a few minutes, and trying mental solutions rather than using pen and paper, or even a doodling app. When you come back to it to solve those anagram puzzles that you couldn't in the casual read through, you might want to reduce the two words that you're trying to anagram together into their constituent letters, so that your mind is better able to twist them into new, longer words. You have to make their initial structure dissolve. Finally, there will be a few puzzles out of the hundreds in this book that are truly fiendish in their impenetrability. To solve those, you will need hours with a pen and paper; you might even need to look up a few possible answer candidates to check whether they are valid words or not. This ranged difficulty system means that this book is almost like a game with replay value: you will keep coming back to it!Improve your cognitive skills and knowledge of English in an easy, fun wayEvery time you solve an English word game, like the anagram puzzles in this book, you are sharpening your problem solving skills. This will have a positive effect on your ability to solve problems in seemingly unrelated areas of your daily life, as well. Manipulating letters and creating words can only be done effectively if you remember word lists, so you also exercise your memory!