Books by Alan Connor

Do you know which Cluedo character was killed off in 2016? How about which band has a species of shrimp named after it? Reckon you could guess the name of a song from lyrics where the words have been replaced with synonyms?Then fingers on buzzers, because House of Games is back and it's better than ever!Packed with 104 new, classic and fiendishly difficult rounds from the hit BBC show's question writers, House of Games: Question Smash is the ultimate collection of brainteasers, puzzles and trivia. Pit your wits against friends and family with favourites like Highbrow Lowbrow, Rhyme Time and Don't State the Obvious, as well as brand new games from the brilliant minds behind the show. So limber up your frontal lobes, brush up on your trivia and get ready to return to the House of Games.

It's almost like a puzzle to be solved... The Shipping Forecast Puzzle Book tests your general knowledge and lateral thinking through a series of fiendish puzzles, in which all the answers can be found on a map as place names on the coasts or in the seas.

Two Girls, One on Each Knee: A History of Cryptic Crosswords is an audaciously constructed book on the pleasures and puzzles of cryptic crosswords and their linguistic wordplay, from Alan Connor, the Guardian's writer on crosswordsOn 21 December 2013, the crossword puzzle will be 100 years old. In the century since, it has evolved into the world's most popular intellectual pastime: a unique form of wordplay, the codes and conventions of which are open to anyone masochistic enough to get addicted. In Two Girls, One on Each Knee, Alan Connor celebrates the wit, ingenuity and frustration of setting and solving puzzles. From the beaches of D-Day to the imaginary worlds of three-dimensional puzzles, to the British school teachers and journalists who turned the form into the fiendish sport it is today, encompassing the most challenging clues, particular tricks, the world's greatest setters and famous solvers, PG Wodehouse and the torturers of the Spanish Inquisition, this is an ingenious book for lovers of this very particular form of wordplay.Note: The book begins with a puzzle in a standard 15-by-15 grid which incorporates all the basic clue types. The answers are also the chapter titles. Alan Connor writes twice-weekly about crosswords for the Guardian. He has contributed pieces about language for the BBC and the Guardian and works in radio and television, writing for Charlie Brooker, Caitlin Moran and Sue Perkins. His most recent writing was A Young Doctor's Notebook, a TV adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov stories starring Daniel Radcliffe and Jon Hamm.