It's the Brian Laird show on WNYC. I'm Tiffany Hansen filling in for Brian who is off today

The world of crossword puzzles has a loyal fan base that can almost be described as a cult following.

As crossword fanatics know, there's nothing more frustrating

than an unhelpful clue, one that leaves you maybe more confused.

And if you're the kind of person who attempts a crossword puzzle and feels like your

intelligence has come under question. Yes, we may have a book for you. So whether you finish

the daily crossword or you've never even attempted one but would like to. Our next

next guest is here to help. David Buckspan is the author of a new book called

Crossword E's, a guide to the weird and wonderful language of crossword ease, a guide to the weird and wonderful language of crossword

puzzles. The book also looks at the game's history and it's present and it teaches

you how to speak crossword ease. We're going to find out what that is. In just a second

David welcome back to WNYC. Thanks for coming in. Hi Tiffany I'm so honored

to just overjoyed to be here. It's really great. We're glad you're here.

All right, so what makes a good there

there's two sides to this right there's there's clues and answers so on both

site what makes a great clue? Yeah well it's interesting actually there

are two sides but they are so like tightly connected I started writing this

book I thought okay I got to I got thought, okay, I got to think about these little

answers that come up all the time. But you're right, actually. It starts with a good clue. And

a good clue is one that I find I can have a there can be a few different reasons for

for enjoying it, but one would be when you look at it and you're like I do not know what this thing is.

Oh my God why are they asking me this?

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