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Printer's Devilry
A Printer's Devilry is a form of cryptic crossword puzzle, first invented by Afrit (Alistair Ferguson Ritchie) in 1937. A Printer's Devilry puzzle does not follow the standard Ximenean rules of crossword setting, since the clues do not define the answers. Instead, each clue consists of a sentence from which a string of letters has been removed and, where necessary, the punctuation and word breaks in the clue rearranged to form a new more-or-less grammatical sentence. The challenge to the solver is to find the missing letters, which will spell out a word or phrase that should be entered into the grid. History Afrit's first Printer's Devilry puzzle appeared in '' The Listener'' on 2 June, 1937 in puzzle 377. Its original preamble, setting out the rules, read as follows: Other later crossword setters have picked up the form, including XimenesPuzzle: ; Slip: and Azed, and it has also found use in mixed puzzles that combine several different clue types on a single grid. Ximenes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cryptic Crossword
A cryptic crossword is a crossword puzzle in which each clue is a word puzzle. Cryptic crosswords are particularly popular in the United Kingdom, where they originated, Ireland, Israel, the Netherlands, and in several Commonwealth nations, including Australia, Canada, India, Kenya, Malta, New Zealand, and South Africa. Compilers of cryptic crosswords are commonly called "setters" in the UK and "constructors" in the US. Cryptic crossword puzzles come in two main types: the basic cryptic in which each clue answer is entered into the diagram normally, and "themed" or "variety" cryptics, in which some or all of the answers must be altered before entering, usually in accordance with a hidden pattern or rule which must be discovered by the solver. History and development Cryptic crosswords originated in the UK. The first British crossword puzzles appeared around 1923 and were purely definitional, but from the mid-1920s they began to include cryptic material: not cryptic clues in the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alistair Ferguson Ritchie
Alistair Ferguson Ritchie (1890–1954) was a crossword compiler, under the pseudonym Afrit. The son of a post office clerk, he was born in 1890 and brought up in King’s Lynn. He was head boy at King Edward VII Grammar School there and graduated from Queens' College, Cambridge in 1911. He trained for Holy Orders at Bishop’s Hostel, Liverpool and was ordained deacon in 1912, and priest in 1913 . From 1912 to 1918 he was curate at St Paul’s church, Southport and from 1918 to 1924 he was St Mary’s church, Waterloo and also an assistant master at Merchant Taylors' School, Crosby. From there he went to Wells as Head of the Cathedral School and also as a priest vicar at the cathedral. He resigned as Priest Vicar in 1935 as the growing school needed his full attention. In 1946 he was made a prebendary (honorary canon) of Wells Cathedral in recognition of his service to Wells and the diocese. In 1920 he married, Violet Minett who also taught at Merchant Taylor’s, Crosby, and t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Derrick Somerset Macnutt
Derrick Somerset Macnutt (1902–1971) was a British crossword compiler who provided crosswords for ''The Observer'' newspaper under the pseudonym Ximenes. His main oeuvre was blocked-grid and "specialty" puzzles. Even though he only provided conventional blocked puzzles once a week for the ''Observer'' Everyman series for about two years his strong views on clueing, expressed in his 1966 book, have been a source of debate in the cryptic crossword world ever since. Career Macnutt was born at Eastbourne in Sussex and was educated at Marlborough College before achieving a Double First in classics at Jesus College, Cambridge. Between 1928 and 1963 he held the position of Head of Classics at Christ's Hospital near Horsham, West Sussex, as well as being a housemaster. The historian Norman Longmate wrote that he was the "James Boyer of his day, a notable teacher of the classics, respected, even liked, by his older pupils, dreaded by the younger boys, a bully and a brute". At the sc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Punctuation
Punctuation (or sometimes interpunction) is the use of spacing, conventional signs (called punctuation marks), and certain typographical devices as aids to the understanding and correct reading of written text, whether read silently or aloud. Another description is, "It is the practice, action, or system of inserting points or other small marks into texts in order to aid interpretation; division of text into sentences, clauses, etc., by means of such marks." In written English, punctuation is vital to disambiguate the meaning of sentences. For example: "woman, without her man, is nothing" (emphasizing the importance of men to women), and "woman: without her, man is nothing" (emphasizing the importance of women to men) have very different meanings; as do "eats shoots and leaves" (which means the subject consumes plant growths) and "eats, shoots, and leaves" (which means the subject eats first, then fires a weapon, and then leaves the scene). Truss, Lynne (2003). '' Eats, Shoots & ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Word Break
In punctuation, a word divider is a glyph that separates written words. In languages which use the Latin, Cyrillic, and Arabic alphabets, as well as other scripts of Europe and West Asia, the word divider is a blank space, or ''whitespace''. This convention is spreading, along with other aspects of European punctuation, to Asia and Africa, where words are usually written without word separation. In computing, the word delimiter is used to refer to a character that separates two words. In character encoding, word segmentation depends on which characters are defined as word dividers. History In Ancient Egyptian, determinatives may have been used as much to demarcate word boundaries as to disambiguate the semantics of words. Rarely in Assyrian cuneiform, but commonly in the later cuneiform Ugaritic alphabet, a vertical stroke 𒑰 was used to separate words. In Old Persian cuneiform, a diagonally sloping wedge 𐏐 was used. As the alphabet spread throughout the ancient world ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Listener (magazine)
''The Listener'' was a weekly magazine established by the BBC in January 1929 which ceased publication in 1991. The entire digitised archive was made available for purchase online to libraries, educational and research institutions in 2011. It was first published on 16 January 1929, under the editorship of Richard S. Lambert, and was developed as a medium of record for the reproduction of broadcast talks. It also previewed major literary and musical broadcasts, reviewed new books, and printed a selected list of the more intellectual broadcasts for the coming week. Its published aim was to be "a medium for intelligent reception of broadcast programmes by way of amplification and explanation of those features which cannot now be dealt with in the editorial columns of the ''Radio Times''". The title reflected the fact that at the time the BBC broadcast via radio only. (The BBC version of ''The Listener'' was preceded by another magazine with the same title which was the ''Journ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Azed
Azed is a crossword which appears every Sunday in ''The Observer'' newspaper. Since it first appeared in March 1972, every puzzle has been composed by Jonathan Crowther who also judges the monthly clue-writing competition.Jonathan Crowther (2006) ''A-Z of Crosswords'' p. 44, Collins , The pseudonym Azed is a reversal of (Fray Diego de) Diego Deza, Deza, a Spanish inquisitor general. This combines the inquisitorial tradition of Edward Powys Mathers, Torquemada and Derrick Somerset Macnutt, Ximenes (the two previous composers of the "advanced" ''Observer ''crossword) with the wordplay element of a British cryptic crossword. It challenges its followers with a much higher proportion of obscure and archaic words and allusions to the Classics than would normally be found in a modern blocked puzzle, thus providing an extra aspect of difficulty for the seasoned cryptic solver. The 2000th Azed puzzle was published on 26 September 2010. The 500th competition puzzle was published on 1 A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Printer's Devil
A printer's devil was a young apprentice in a printing establishment who performed a number of tasks, such as mixing tubs of ink and fetching type. Notable writers including Ambrose Bierce, Benjamin Franklin, Walt Whitman, and Mark Twain served as printer's devils in their youth. Origins The term "printer's devil" been ascribed to the apprentices' hands and skin getting stained black with ink when removing sheets of paper from the tympan. In 1683, English printer Joseph Moxon wrote that "devil" was a humorous term for boys who were covered in ink: "whence the Workmen do Jocosely call them Devils; and sometimes Spirits, and sometimes Flies." Once cast metal type was used, worn, or broken, it was thrown into a "hellbox", after which it was the printer's devil's job to either put it back in the job case, or take it to the furnace to be melted down and recast. Many explanations have been given for the religious or supernatural connotations of the term. From the Middle Ages onward, p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
José Limón
José Arcadio Limón (January 12, 1908 – December 2, 1972) was a dancer and choreographer from Mexico and who developed what is now known as 'Limón technique'. In the 1940s, he founded the José Limón Dance Company (now the Limón Dance Company), and in 1968 he created the José Limón Foundation to carry on his work. In his choreography, Limón spoke to the complexities of human life as experienced through the body. His dances feature large, visceral gestures — reaching, bending, pulling, grasping — to communicate emotion. Inspired in part by his teacher Doris Humphrey's and Charles Weidman's theories about the importance of body weight and dynamics, his own Limón technique emphasizes the rhythms of falling and recovering balance and the importance of good breathing to maintaining flow in a dance. He also utilized the dance vocabulary developed by both Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman, which aimed at demonstrating emotion through dance in a way that was much le ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Crosswords
A crossword is a word puzzle that usually takes the form of a square or a rectangular grid of white- and black-shaded squares. The goal is to fill the white squares with letters, forming words or phrases, by solving clues which lead to the answers. In languages that are written left-to-right, the answer words and phrases are placed in the grid from left to right ("across") and from top to bottom ("down"). The shaded squares are used to separate the words or phrases. Types Crossword grids such as those appearing in most North American newspapers and magazines feature solid areas of white squares. Every letter is checked (i.e. is part of both an "across" word and a "down" word) and usually each answer must contain at least three letters. In such puzzles shaded squares are typically limited to about one-sixth of the total. Crossword grids elsewhere, such as in Britain, South Africa, India and Australia, have a lattice-like structure, with a higher percentage of shaded squares ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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