David Astle

Master wordsmith and crossword guru David Astle shows how cryptic crosswords can boost your brain power and improve your memory and cognitive capacity. Recent studies have shown that puzzle-solving and wordplay are among the most effective ways to boost the power and agility of your brain. A cryptic crossword a day can help keep memory loss at bay. Why? The answer lies in the art of teasing out a clue, a discipline that calls for logic, interpretation, intuition and deduction as well as the ability to filter nuance and connotation. All these challenges and more are found in the cryptic crossword. And all are invaluable in increasing your brainpower and improving your memory and cognitive capacity. In this entertaining and essential book, cryptic crossword guru David Astle explains how your brain responds to and benefits from attempting these crosswords. A growing body of research suggests cryptic crosswords are the ideal workout for your brain, and Astle shows how regular training of this kind can be fun as well as fundamental. If you've always been intimidated by cryptic crosswords, fear not! Rewording the Brain is an accessible guide to developing and sharpening your puzzle talents. Novices and expert solvers alike will gain plenty of cryptic insights. There has never been a better time to start solving, nor a better teacher than the legendary DA. Also included are 50 cryptic crosswords hand-picked to keep your brain abuzz, ranging from beginner-friendly to fiendishly complicated!

How cryptic crosswords can improve your memory and boost the power and agility of your brain

Rewording the Brain

Crosswords are not as old as you think. The first one appeared a century ago, the little square keeping in remarkable shape. Cluetopia is here to toast the centenary, whizzing you through 100 years of remarkable clues, across the world, seeking the inside stories. Come travel to New Guinea, Venezuela and Metropolis: every destination arising from a clue. Encounter love, murder, hoaxes, propaganda. Visit a Maori funeral, a Bass Strait oil-rig, a Russian game show-just some of side-trips locked inside a crossword. With almost 100 mini-chapters, each one with a clue to crack, Cluetopia is a book for word lovers and puzzle fans. You'll see how crosswords capture the life around them, from prison cells to outer space. A holiday for the head, Cluetopia is as fun, as wild and as wordy as David's previous bestseller, Puzzled.

The story of 100 years of the crossword

Cluetopia

101 Weird Words (and Three Fakes) is a mini-dictionary jam-packed with unusual or interesting words, followed by a fun and descriptive definition for each one. Filled with silly pictures and strange wordy facts, this is a book to sweep the reader through the alphabet from AMBIDEXTROUS (no repeated letters) to ZUGZWANG (not a place you want to visit), with a generous sprinkling of riddles, puzzles and bonus facts. For an extra challenge, try to spot the three fakes in the collection. Is it YARG - the cheese that turned its maker backwards? Or maybe JUFFLE - the semi-jig, semi-shuffle you do on a zebra crossing? Only a true word detective will crack the case!

From Ambidextrous to Zugzwang

101 Weird Words (and 3 Fakes)

Cassowary Crossing is not your average tourist guide. It celebrates the curious, it's a guide to things that most tourists miss. Yes, it offers travel tips, but it is also packed with trivia facts, hidden histories, scary stuff and good old-fashioned gossip. There's pop culture, history, crime, science, art and the bizarre - and that's just in the first few pages. The book is divided into themed chapters from A to Z and whether your passion in gardening or graffiti, mazes or monsters, films or furniture, there's a chapter with your name on it.

A Guide to Offbeat Australia

Cassowary Crossing

David Plomley

Age Staff

75 Puzzles to Twist Your Mind. Volume 1

The Sydney Morning Herald Cryptic Crosswords

Elizabeth Palmer

John Hampshire

Relax and unwind with a hot cup of tea and a quick crossword puzzle. Pretty soon all the stresses and worries of the day will have disappeared.The Sydney Morning Herald TeaTime Crosswords Book contains 75 quick puzzles by popular compilers David Astle, Elizabeth Palmer and David Plomley.

Espresso 2 Crosswords

Sydney Morning Herald

When the temperature plummets and the storm clouds gather, there's no better way to spend an afternoon than relaxing on the sofa with a hot cup of coffee and a good puzzle book. Graded to allow you to pick and choose a puzzle depending on your mood, this book features 75 popular puzzles from the pages of The Sydney Morning Herald. Created by popular compilers David Astle, Elizabeth Palmer and David Plomley, Rainy Day Crosswords will help you pass the time until the sun shines and the great outdoors beckon.

The Sydney Morning Herald Rainy Day Crosswords

Relax and unwind with a hot cup of tea and a quick crossword puzzle. Pretty soon all the stresses and worries of the day will have disappeared. The Age TeaTime Crosswords Book contains 75 quick puzzles by popular compilers David Astle, Elizabeth Palmer and David Plomley.

The Age Crosswords

How to be a champion word puzzler in 20 quick bites! Packed with word puzzles, tongue twisters and brain teasers, this book will give readers all the ingredients they need to solve cryptic crosswords. Kids of a certain age become obsessed with crossword puzzles: what are they? how do they work? when can I solve one all on my own? Word wizard David Astle has come up with a sneaky way to introduce children to the mechanics of cryptic crossword puzzles, by taking them through different kinds of wordplay - anagrams, pangrams, spoonerisms, tongue-twisters, homophones - before presenting them with crossword puzzles to solve using everything learnt so far. 'DA' puns and word plays abound, making this the word nerd's bible of wordy trickery and puzzling.

Wordburger

Sometimes a quick crossword just isn't challenging enough. The Sydney Morning Herald understand this, so to satisfy your need for mind twisting puzzles, we have compiled our 2nd volume of Cryptic Crosswords. Drawn from the pages of The Sydney Morning Herald by veteran compilers David Astle, Elizabeth Palmer and David Plomley, these 75 cryptic puzzles are sure to test your skills. For those who have only recently discovered just how much fun Cryptic crosswords can be, there's an introductory chapter by David Plomley with helpful hints and tips for understanding clues and mastering these puzzles.

75 Puzzles to Twist Your Mind

Fun facts about 101 of the weirdest words in the English language from the wordiest guy around, David Astle - plus 3 bonus fake words: can you spot them?

101 Weird Words (and Three Fakes)

I used to regret not being born Catholic because it meant I'd been denied the joys of self - flagellation. Then I discovered DA and he solved my problem.' - Bill Leak, cartoonist, and anagram of Killable 'He's the Sergeant Pepper of cryptic crosswords. A complete mindf??k.' - Geoffrey Rush, actor, and anagram of Gruffy Heroes Many a puzzle solver has battled against the devilish mind of long - time crossword maker and wordaholic David Astle, known to many as DA. In Puzzled he holds out a helping hand to the lost and perplexed taking us on a personal tour into the secret life of words. Clue by clue, chapter by chapter, we step through a central puzzle, uncovering and unravelling word - secrets as we go. The Steve Irwin Fluke, the Swastika Accident, the Abracadabra Pyramid - hidden meanings, anagrams, reversals - all the Dark Arts are finally revealed. More than a how - to manual, more than a memoir, Puzzled enlightens us about cryptics and delights in the quirky realm of wordplay. It is a book for word junkies everywhere.

Secrets and Clues from a Life Lost in Words

Puzzled

Packed full of puzzles, quizzes and fun facts - along with heaps of funny drawings and appealing activities - this is the perfect book for kids aged 8 and above. A wordplay puzzle book from the wordplay master!

David Astle's Gargantuan Book of Words

Every conclusion arrived at as a result of study of the fragments of information available in respect to money and its creators in the world of the Ancient Civilizations, indicates the existence of a far reaching conspiracy in respect to monetary issuance influencing the progression of man's history in the earliest times of which written record exists. It is also outstandingly clear that it was parent to that acknowledged and most obvious conspiracy such as exists today. Hence was able to develop that conspiracy against mankind most exemplified by a continuous propaganda of hate against all authority: in pre-antiquity and antiquity against the many city gods, and in relatively modern times against the kings that rose out of the ruins of that which had been Rome. As those controlling totally the economic life of a state through monetary creation and emission, must have felt that kings and gods were more of a nuisance than anything else, the instigators of this conspiracy in whatever place and era, obviously were those who first did the business of bankers; the controllers of values, and consequently the economic life of the states wherever the precious metal standard was used.

The Babylonian Woe

A celebration of the 100th birthday of the crossword puzzle.

The Story of 100 Years of the Crossword

Puzzles and Words 2 is the second pocket-sized puzzle book from Australia's best known puzzle-maker and word nerd, David Astle. There are over 175 original puzzles from anagrams to riddles and quizzes for all ages and all levels. Accompanying these are some 250 of David's entertaining word stories-What does zemblanity mean? How does cosmic link to cosmetic? Where does a seahorse sleep each night with an almond? Puzzles and Words 2 will keep your brain active and entertained for hours. As the Dictionary Guy on Letters and Numbers, and DA in the world of crosswords, David Astle's mania shines in his weekly Wordplay column in The Sydney Morning Herald, and in his cultish blog at www.davidastle.com. His latest book, Cluetopia, celebrates 100 years of the crossword.

Puzzles and Words 2

Why are ladies like arrows? When is a bird not a bird? What do you call a nun with a washing machine on her head? Welcome to the weird new word adventure from David Astle, plunging into the realm of riddles, chasing down and prising open 101 curious questions from around the planet. A mindtrip across time and place, Riddledom uncovers relics from over 50 cultures, delving into language and deception, sampling Pompeii walls and Dothraki warriors. Readers can unravel each mini-chapter, wrestling with riddles from Wonderland or Zanzibar, Oedipus Rex or Harry Potter. Come meet French acrobats, coffee slaves, lusty maids and many more along the way. Riddledom is your chance to roam Tasmania and Mongolia, Fiji and Peru, seeking riddles on clay tablets and Popsicle sticks. As David opens Riddledom: 'If you think riddles are solely the stuff of schoolyards and Christmas crackers, you're about to have your head refurbished.'

101 riddles and their stories

Riddledom

101 weird words (and three fakes) is a mini-dictionary jam-packed with unusual or interesting words, followed by a fun and descriptive definition for each one. Filled with silly pictures and strange wordy facts, this is a book to sweep the reader through the alphabet from ambidextrous (no repeated letters) to zugzwang (not a place you want to visit), with a generous sprinkling of riddles, puzzles and bonus facts. For an extra challenge, try to spot the three fakes in the collection.

David Astle

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