What to read

As usual, there’s a towering pile of books beside my bed that have migrated from to the designated “to read” shelf on a nearby bookcase and I will enjoy a summer holiday where at least three or four hours a day are spent reading. But the book I’m equally likely to take to the beach this year will be a weighty 696- pager without plot or characters. It’s Dick Honor’s

Australasian Cryptic Crossworder’s Glossary for Down- Under Puzzlers. I am not – yet – a Downunder puzzler, just plain puzzled by cryptic crosswords but determined to teach myself how to make sense of them. And cryptic crosswords are supposed to keep your brain active and youthful — and I could really do with some of that. It seems to work for Honor, who, according to the Southern Highlands News in New South Wales, sits down every morning with his wife, Val, to do the Sydney Morning Herald cryptic crossword. He’s 87 and has spent 10 years putting together a glossary especially for Australia and New Zealand. Honor advises that reasoning skills are the key to solving such crosswords. I’d advise that his glossary seems to be working because I’ve already gone from being able to solve two clues to 10!

If only there was more time, another ingredient, in completing the puzzles.