Here's how jayisgames.com describes Crickler (http://crickler.com/crickler.html):

It's like a crossword, but not! The clues consist of sentences with words missing, grabbed from various news stories, and your job is to fill in the blanks. As you solve the easy clues, letters pop up in the harder ones, making them solvable. There's several new puzzles each day, and the difficulty adjusts to your solving skill.
Try it out. It's a nice distraction from the workday.

pretty cool, and very challenging for my French brain ;)

FM

This is not on topic all that much, but for those who like interesting crosswords, can any explain to me the type of puzzle that they have in the back of Harper's Magazine? It doesn't have a name on there, so I'm not sure what it's called. But I;ve been reading for years and have never managed to figure out one clue, I have no idea how it works. Every month they tell you it requires "mental repunctuation" of the clue, but that doesn't help. I even look at the answers the next month and still don't get it.

I do get crosswords, so I'm not complely hopeless.

Try it out. It's a nice distraction from the workday.

I really enjoyed the intro to crickler puzzle, but the actual ones suck because they seem to require that I give a rats ass about the Russia/Georgia/Ossetia conflict.

They need to make a sports and entertainment version so I can fill in the blanks for sentances like this instead:

Britney Spears was recently hospitalised for _____ too many ____. Dr. Phil will be _____ her shortly.

Those would be fun blanks to fill. I won't even care if my answers are right or even fit in the blanks.

I've really enjoyed this. except on one I solved everything but got stuck on that amazon question at the bottom.

This is not on topic all that much, but for those who like interesting crosswords, can any explain to me the type of puzzle that they have in the back of Harper's Magazine? It doesn't have a name on there, so I'm not sure what it's called. But I;ve been reading for years and have never managed to figure out one clue, I have no idea how it works. Every month they tell you it requires "mental repunctuation" of the clue, but that doesn't help. I even look at the answers the next month and still don't get it.

I do get crosswords, so I'm not complely hopeless.

+1 on this. In the book Wordfreak, Fatsis makes a mention of these types of puzzles as being British crossword puzzles. Sure, OK, maybe, but I still have no idea how to do them. I think I got one clue right a few years back. The Harper's puzzles do a nice job of making me feel that I am not intelligent enough to read their magazine, though. :lol:

This (http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=136883)seems to be a bit of an explanation. There's also several on line if you search for cryptic (and the term seems apropos). Maybe when I have several months free, say, laid up in a hospital bed, I'll learn how to do these. Yeesh.

dola

Here's a tutorial for cryptics. I think I'm actually onto the idea now, but hunting down and recognizing keywords seems difficult.

Cryptic Crossword Puzzles - How to do (http://www.lovattscrosswords.co.uk/how_to_do_cryptic_crosswords.htm)

wow, I really like this. Bookmarked. Thanks for bringing these to my attention.