Crosswords by Charlie Methven

Crossword haiku

Back in 2019 it occurred to me that it might be possible to produce a haiku that also functioned as a set of cryptic crossword clues; three crossword clues of 5, 7 and 5 syllables respectively, with the answers having 5, 7 and 5 letters just for added symmetry. Here's what I came up with:

I also had go at “translating” a well-known haiku written by the 17th-century poet Basho about a frog jumping into a pond. As with the other haiku, the "translation" functions as three cryptic clues.

Unhelpful phonetic alphabet

I created this great alternative to the NATO phonetic alphabet where each of the original codewords has been replaced by a different word or name which (sometimes loosely) rhymes with one of the originals. Perhaps one day this will be adopted globally.

Seasonal puzzles

In 2019 I wrote a couple of seasonal puzzles inspired by inspired by Daniel Peake's Puzzlevent project (25 devious Christmas puzzles). The following year I wrote another puzzle to mark the new year.

Two of a Kind | Solution

Noël Puzzle | Solution

Hello 2020 | Solution

Rogetta Stone puzzle for Quiz Master Shop

I drew this map to accompany a wordy puzzle I set for the website Quiz Master Shop. Click here to give it a go and here for the solution.

Cross-letter puzzle for Dog-Ear

When I lived in Norwich as a student (and before I really knew how to set crosswords) I created a small cryptic puzzle for Dog-Ear, a free mini-magazine published in the form of a bookmark which is stocked in bookshops around the country.

My "cross-letter" puzzle consists of 26 clues each leading to a letter of the alphabet - e.g. Sign of affection (1) and Buzzer's sound (1). It was inspired by an essay on crosswords by the French author Georges Perec in which he rather off-handedly writes "it is not really difficult to construct a 1 x 1 crossword with no black squares", before presenting a single cell with the across clue Consonant (1) and the down clue Vowel (1). I eventually did a full-sized crossword tribute to Perec as well.

Click here for a more readable version of this puzzle, and here for the solution.

To be or not to be

During my MA I did a module on Ludic Literature where everyone took turns to produce an experimental or playful piece of work. I produced this version of Hamlet's most famous soliloquy by cutting up bits and pieces of the module paperwork and reading list.

Consonants

There's a neat poem by the experimental poet Christian Bok which is made up entirely of words spelled with letters in the word "vowels" (it's part of his book Eunoia, which includes five main sections that each limit themselves to words featuring only one of the five vowels). I tried to do a similar thing using only words that can be spelled with the letters in the word "consonants":