Dedicated puzzle enthusiasts see it too often: ordinary crosswords with ho-hum clues like “Toledo’s lake” for ERIE. That means they need to spice up their solving with the pure puzzling pleasure of cryptic crosswords. Here, each clue offers double the dose of wordplay: to find the answer, they’ll have to do a little extra deciphering—recognizing a homophone, for example, or working out a charade. Once fans try cryptics, they’ll never return to regular crosswords again!

Dedicated puzzle enthusiasts see it too often: ordinary crosswords with ho-hum clues like “Toledo’s lake” for ERIE. That means they need to spice up their solving with the pure puzzling pleasure of cryptic crosswords. Here, each clue offers double the dose of wordplay: to find the answer, they’ll have to do a little extra deciphering—recognizing a homophone, for example, or working out a charade. Once fans try cryptics, they’ll never return to regular crosswords again!