Crosswords
Each puzzle is a PDF file for access with Adobe Acrobat Reader. This makes pagination control easier (for me and for you) than on HTML web pages. It means that I can be sure that you can easily print each puzzle onto a sheet of A4 paper to work on with a pencil.
001 through 006 appeared in the 1980s or 1990s in newsletters for members of Opera Omnibus. They have quite a few musical, indeed (chiefly) operatic, references. Also, some have a few answers that comprise several words and yet that are not actually well-known phrases, which makes them both non-standard in cruciverbal terms, and a bit harder to solve. I try not to do that any more, in puzzles that I set nowadays; still, you should be able to work out the answers from the clues with a bit of thought. 001 is 11 × 11; 002 to 006 are 15 × 15.
 IPH001 |
IPH002 |
IPH003 |
IPH004 |
IPH005 |
IPH006 |
IPH007 and IPH008 date from summer 2005 and have never appeared elsewhere. They are a bit trickier than the usual standard used in SEMantics (the Mensa south east England newsletter), so I decided to put them here as occasional extras for crossword addicts among my fellow Mensans and others. IPH009 and upwards were written for my own amusement and to please fans of very difficult crossword puzzles. IPH007, IPH008, IPH010, IPH012, and IPH013 are 13 × 13. IPH009, IPH011 are 15 × 15.
| IPH007 |
IPH008 |
IPH009 |
IPH010 |
IPH011 |
IPH012 |
|
| IPH013 |
IPH014 |
The following are the crosswords that I compiled for the British Mensa South East England regional newsletter SEMantics. All are 13 × 13 puzzles.
| 160 |
170 |
180 |
190 |
199 |
210 |
|
| 161 |
172 |
182 |
192 |
202 |
212 |
|
| 163 |
184 |
194 |
204 |
|||
| 166 |
176 |
186 |
195 |
206 |
||
| 168 |
178 |
188 |
197 |
208 |
My crossword setting history
In the 1970s I compiled one or two crosswords for the newsletter of the Manchester Opera Company (with which I sang, see story), and in the 1980s I set the above half-dozen for the newsletter of Opera Omnibus, to entertain company members and friends. Then, while I was Editor (from April 2000 to April 2005) of SEMantics, the south east England regional newsletter for British Mensa, the retirement of one regular & prolific setter of puzzles led me to set some puzzles myself for the readers. After I retired as Editor there (after the issue for June 2005), I continued to run the crossword page and, for a while, to set about half of the puzzles myself.