22.12.2.1.25 22.12.6 19.5.11.3.22 18.10 17.18.1.2.12.17.11 (Puzzler Code Crackers)

Ethan Switch - Wednesday, 28 May 2003 - Print Version

At last count there were some 15 crossword and similar styled magazines covering their section of the newsagents. Most of these are from Lovatts and include variations on the now three basic styles of letter based puzzles: crosswords, word searches and referential. Each of these are in essence known collectively as crossword puzzles due to their orientation.

Setting on to the scene to challenge the Lovatt's hold on the mental calisthenics market, Puzzler Media/IPC Media Australia have entered with a tentative two with a further duo to hit later on in the year. Of the two that are currently out on the market, Puzzler Code Crackers looks to embody all that you can muster from yet another puzzle magazine.

According to Puzzler Media: "Code crackers may look like crosswords, but they have no clues! Instead, in each puzzle, every letter of the alphabet has been replaced by a number; the same number represents the same letter throughout the puzzle."

This means that a code cracker is more than a word search and less than a true crossword puzzle. A referential.

Creating one, according to reverse engineering principles of this explanation, is easy and involves nothing more than lining arbitrary and common words across and down to interlace and overlap each other - as would be the standard look to a crossword puzzle - and then, instead of conjuring or exerting any more such mental power, removal of the letters takes places.

What is left resembles a completed crossword puzzle but without the numbers indicating whether it is 8 down or 13 across. No, instead what lies in the boxes are numbers representing the letters they have replaced. This then leaves all the work to that of the reader to figure out what they are doing with a book full of clueless puzzles. While this is fine interspersed amongst crosswords, crozzles/arrowheads and word searches, an entire magazine full is stretching it thin.

In testing the true malleability of the form, Puzzler Media have attempted to pervert the course of what is essentially less than an idea over and over, altering the titles given to each of the puzzles, Who's Your Father... Sing It Again? and Code Cracker 36 to name just but a few.

Working on a puzzle book is repetitive at least and the lay out of the pages in Puzzler Code Crackers makes no bones about this. The same border graphics are used no more than five pages of the previous and the littering of questions for titles only leaves out one, Why?

Sixty six pages of nothing.

Ethan Switch