Two Girls, One On Each Knee
  • Published: 27 August 2014
  • ISBN: 9780141977102
  • Imprint: Penguin Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $39.99

Two Girls, One On Each Knee

The Puzzling, Playful World Of The Crossword

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A delightful language book for readers of the Etymologicon and Eats, Shoots and Leaves - a wonderful gift book full of surprising and exhilarating stories

In the century since its birth, the crossword has evolved into the world's most popular intellectual pastime: a unique form of wordplay, the codes and conventions of which are open to anyone masochistic enough to get addicted. In Two Girls, One on Each Knee, Alan Connor celebrates the wit, ingenuity and frustration of setting and solving puzzles. From the beaches of D-Day to the imaginary worlds of three-dimensional crosswords, to the British school teachers and journalists who turned the form into the fiendish sport it is today, encompassing the most challenging clues, particular tricks, the world's greatest setters and famous solvers, PG Wodehouse and the torturers of the Spanish Inquisition, this is an ingenious book for lovers of this very particular form of wordplay.
  • Published: 27 August 2014
  • ISBN: 9780141977102
  • Imprint: Penguin Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $39.99
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About the author

Alan Connor

Alan Connor is the author of Two Girls, One on Each Knee: The Puzzling, Playful World of the Crossword ("witty, charming, encyclopaedic and highly readable” - The Spectator) and The Joy of Quiz ("An absolute delight” - Mail on Sunday). He has made quizzes for various TV shows and newspapers and written comedy including BBC Film's The Rack Pack, A Young Doctor’s Notebook (Jon Hamm and Daniel Radcliffe) and Have I Got News For You.

Also by Alan Connor

The Traitors
Pointless Facts for Curious Minds
House of Games
The Shipping Forecast Puzzle Book
Richard Osman's House of Games
The Joy of Quiz
See all

Praise for Two Girls, One On Each Knee

Alan Connor's charming, fascinating history . . . is as elegantly sprinkled with surprising gems as the most satisfying crossword . . . thoroughly, consistently entertaining . . . In a single, gloriously decipherable chapter he lays out with perfect clarity the entire range of rules and devices through which cryptic clues work their magic

Sunday Times

It is witty, charming, encyclopaedic and highly readable - and it can be read in any order. Take a chapter or a paragraph, a puzzle or a clue. In each the reader will find something to intrigue and delight.

Spectator

Two Girls is a lovingly crafted little book, from the table of contents - where chapter titles are hidden in a crossword designed by the great Araucaria - to the index, which skips from "I give up, see frustration" via "primness in American crosswords", to finish with "zookeepers, beleaguered".

The Times

A lovingly crafted little book . . . Connor's wry, good-natured tone and his commitment to the serious business of play make him the perfect guide to a great pastime as it approaches its 100th birthday

Daily Telegraph

Connor writes with great flair . . . it is nice to dip in and out of his entertaining essays

Church Times

An ideal stocking filler

Metro

The brilliant new book on crosswords that delivers fun galore whether you're a doer or a duffer

Mail on Sunday

There is something to entertain even the most infrequent dabbler

Financial Times