For nearly a century, the Guardian has been challenging and delighting its readers with these puzzles. Here’s to 30,000 more
Late in 1928, the Guardian made plans to give its readers a weekly cryptic puzzle.
At the time, crosswords were considered a waste of time; other newspapers campaigned against them as a distraction keeping the working man from his duties, but the cryptic was different.
Sly and witty rather than purely definitional, the cryptic makes every clue a little riddle in itself, leaving the solver to puzzle out what the coded message is trying to convey.
The weekly puzzle soon became daily, and today we publish cryptic crossword number 30,000.
