Remember when the crossword was something people actually fought over?
When puzzle books lived beside the armchair, a half-finished jigsaw could occupy the dining table for days, and somebody inevitably insisted they knew the answer to a cryptic clue while refusing to explain how they got there. Nobody called it brain training, we just enjoyed trying to work it out.
Australian author and illustrator Lorena Carrington wants us to pick up the pencil again.
Her new book, A Puzzling Pursuit, is a wonderfully unusual combination of murder mystery, Australian road trip and puzzle book, sending readers around the country while challenging them to solve 100 puzzles along the way.
It sounds slightly mad, which, as it turns out, is exactly how Carrington likes her projects.
“I do love a wonderfully mad project!” she told Starts at 60. “And I tend to seek out different projects all the time.”
Carrington has illustrated fairy tales, picture books and book covers, written children’s books and short stories, created jigsaw puzzles and storytelling cards, and even writes cryptic crosswords for friends and family.
“No-one can ever say I’m a one-trick pony,” she laughed.
“A Puzzling Pursuit is a perfect amalgam of all of the skills and passions I’ve built up over the years. An illustrated, adventurous story, full of puzzles. What could be more fun to create?!”
The idea began with a conversation with Carrington’s publisher at Penguin, Ashwin, who was looking for a specifically Australian puzzle book.
Did she have any ideas?
“My response was essentially, ‘Hold my beer’, and six months later, this is what they got!”
What they got is a 288-page mystery that begins with the suspicious death of a colleague at a small-town newspaper. The reader is drawn into the investigation as clues, riddles and puzzles begin leading them across Australia.
There are sudokus, word searches, logic and word puzzles, cryptic crossword-style clues and others Carrington invented specifically for the story.
Some should fall reasonably quickly while others, she admits, may test the serenity.
“I hope it’s a good mix of quick and easy puzzles, and some that take a bit more time and thought,” she said.
“And maybe one or two that will make you want to throw it across the room!”
Carrington is particularly proud of the final puzzle in Case No. 4, which brings together a trail of clues scattered throughout the chapter.
“But I’ll say no more.”
Probably wise.
Australia isn’t simply the backdrop to the mystery as Carrington wanted the country itself to become part of the adventure.
Her research method would have looked quite at home in a police procedural.
“I quite literally had a map of Australia pinned to the wall, covered in sticky notes, printouts of notable places, and a whole lot of red string connecting them all,” she said.
“Very murder-wall.”
Readers travel from a small town to the city, along the coast and around the country, encountering familiar Australian places and peculiarities along the way.
The challenge was making sure every state and territory got a look-in.
“Some, admittedly, were more fleeting than others!” Carrington said.
“I took great delight in exploring some of our well-known tropes, and did my very best to be playful with them without making fun of them.”
Carrington’s puzzle obsession didn’t begin with this book. As a child she became fascinated by Masquerade, Kit Williams’ celebrated illustrated puzzle book, which contained clues leading readers to the location of a real treasure: a gold and jewelled hare buried somewhere in Britain.
“I was obsessed with it, and very annoyed that I didn’t live in the UK where the treasure was hidden,” she said.
Then there was Australian author and illustrator Graeme Base’s The Eleventh Hour, another intricately illustrated mystery packed with hidden clues.
Carrington studied it so intensely she began seeing hidden mice in real life. She also accumulated maze books, joke books, word puzzles, jigsaws, magic tricks and those infuriating wooden puzzles that only fit together in one particular way.
“Needless to say, I was an only child,” she joked.
Perhaps that childhood fascination also explains why Carrington understands something important about puzzles: the pleasure isn’t necessarily in being brilliant at them.
It’s in stopping everything else for a while and becoming absorbed in the problem.
That idea feels particularly relevant now, as Carrington believes many of us are tiring of lives increasingly dominated by screens, notifications and the constant competition for our attention and she readily admits she’s hardly immune.
While answering Starts at 60’s questions on her laptop, Carrington noticed she’d been tagged in an Instagram post.
She picked up her phone. Ten minutes later, she returned to the interview.
“So yes, anything that diverts our brain from attention-grabbing screens is so valuable!” she said.
“There is such joy in sitting down with a pencil and paper and giving ourselves the small challenge of solving something ourselves.
“Our brains deserve it.”
There’s something refreshingly uncomplicated about that. No notifications, scrolling, nor an algorithm deciding what you should look at next. Just you, a pencil and a clue that refuses to cooperate.
The timing of A Puzzling Pursuit isn’t bad either, with Father’s Day approaching it offers something a little different for the dad who loves a crossword, murder mystery, Australian road trip or simply disappearing somewhere quiet with a pencil and a problem to solve.
And when Mother’s Day rolls around, the same applies to puzzle-loving mums – or, for that matter, anyone who gets an unreasonable amount of satisfaction from solving the clue before everybody else.
There is, however, one question Carrington admits has been keeping her awake. After creating 100 puzzles, how confident is she that every single one is watertight?
Penguin brought in a specialist puzzle proofreader, while at least three editors have worked their way through the book, so Carrington is hopeful.
“But saying that, we are human, and I take all responsibility for the letters I no doubt will get!” she said.
Then we made the mistake of suggesting some fiendishly clever retired cryptic-crossword champion might discover an alternative answer to puzzle 73.
Carrington’s response was immediate.
“And now I’m going to go check number 73!”
Want to take the challenge? A Puzzling Pursuit by Lorena Carrington is out now through Penguin Random House Australia, RRP $34.99. Find out more or grab a copy here.
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