I am not ashamed to say I am addicted to Cryptic Crosswords for over 40 years. If I am asked to thank the English race for just one invention, I shall unhesitatingly choose the Cryptic Crossword. It is a wonderful pastime and I thank God I fell into this habit. I cannot remember when I started solving crosswords. What I remember is that Santhanam (now my brother-in-law) and I used to jointly solve Indian Express crossword in our college days. After marriage, Amritha (my wife) also got interested to cryptic crosswords and we solve together the Economic Times crosswords every day. In my view, Economic Times (which reproduces the London Daily Mail crossword) has the best clues among the Indian newspapers. Statesman, Telegraph, Sunday Hindu and Sunday Times are also good. While in Mumbai, I used to solve the Jumbo Crossword (full page) in The Afternoon Despatch & Courier on Saturdays in which I have won prizes on a few days. I have also developed Crossword Lessons for those interested to know about them. From 21st June 2009, I have started posting crosswords from The Hindu of Sunday with hints to solve. I try to post it before 5.00 PM IST every Sunday. From April 2009, Amritha and I have started compiling Tamil cryptic crosswords for a Yahoo group devoted to this pastime. They will also be posted here regularly.

Please click on the links in Table below to read about/solve cryptic crosswords in English as well as Tamil

S.Parthasarathy
2nd July 2009