printer's devilry

plural printer's devilries · plural printers' devilries · alternative Printer's Devilry

1. countableuncountablecrosswordingA type of crossword puzzle where solvers have to identify the string of letters, spelling out a word, that has been removed from a sentence.

   Remember: a Printer's Devilry clue need not make real sense in the “deviled” form offered as clue.

   1973 January 1, New York Magazine, page 71

   2 more examples

   I hope that devotees of our plain puzzles will forgive my offering prizes for Apex's Mrs Printer's Devilry Theme

   1979, Games & Puzzles

   Numbered down clues are printer's devilry passages from which the light to be entered has been removed and the gap closed, leaving the remaining letters in their original order.

   1989, The Listener

2. countableuncountableA typographical error.

   This was not a printer's devilry, for taffetas, sugar, mats are similarly misstated.

   1909, The Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review and Oriental and Colonial Record

   2 more examples

   The writer adopted the initials after his nom de plume, Aeon, was once shortened accidentally through printer's devilry.

   2002, Tim Pat Coogan, Michael Collins: The Man Who Made Ireland, Palgrave Macmillan, →ISBN, page 445

   A word of caution! The Bengali as well as the translated texts are not free from Printer's devilry.

   2002, Pratibha India

1. Alternative letter-case form of printer's devilry (“crossword puzzle”).

   Solvers must not only complete the diagram but also send in a "Printer's Devilry" clue to the Keyword in the Playfair Square.

   1971, New York Magazine, page 65

   2 more examples

   In addition, based on a British form called "Printer's Devilry," each answer word has been " stolen" from its clue, wherein it was originally hidden as consecutive letters.

   1968, Albert Ross Eckler, Word Ways: The Journal of Recreational Linguistics

   He set frequently for the Listener between 1932 and 1948, concocting such exoticisms as Printer's Devilry, Playfair and Word Ladder.

   2013, Alan Connor, Two Girls, One on Each Knee: The Puzzling, Playful World of the Crossword, Penguin UK, →ISBN