Since moving back to the UK at the beginning of August, I have restarted one of my favourite passtimes: reading the i newspaper. It’s my favourite newspaper, not just because of it’s non-leaning journalism or it’s spouting of the best radio shows to listen to (another of my favourite passtimes now I have my cassete player/radio again), but because of the multipage puzzles always found in the centre.

Throughout the week, the newspaper constantly rolls out a quadruple page spread of the best puzzles: sudokus, crosswords, wordsearches, and a favourite of mine called bridges. I only sporadically buy the weekday edition of the paper but it’s always fun when I do.

However, on the weekend, specifically on Saturday morning, the newspaper produces a special weekend edition. It’s nearly twice the price of the usual newspaper as it spans over both Saturday and Sunday, and it boasts twice the usual amount of puzzles within its centre pages also. Within these puzzle pages is where the focus of todays post comes about.

The Jumbo Crossword Puzzle

Whilst I am usually able to solve all of the puzzles within the paper by Sunday night, there is one that alludes me. A gigantic, nearly one hundred clue, jumbo crossword. I am a firm believer in not looking up the answers to crosswords, to me it’s better to leave the puzzle unsolved than to cheat my way through it. However, I have been attempting this puzzle for years and have never even gotten close to solving it by Sunday evening.

Last week, I extended the deadline, if I didn’t have the puzzle solved by Friday evening and the next jumbo crossword, I would give up. This time I was able to solve about 80% of the puzzle before the end of the week rolled around, and whilst slowly solving it I noticed something interesting.

Throughout the week, I constantly had the clues to the puzzle circulating around my head. Who was that Brazilian goalkeeper? What was that bible verse? Just where is that lake? It all effectively annoyed me into desperately wanting to find out the answers, but without the internet, how was I to do it?

I began searching through troves of local resources for the answers. My local library has a map section and I soon found Lough Neigh in Northern Ireland, I popped into a local church to ask the priest where to find the story of Jacob and Zilpah, I was far from lost without the constant hounding from social media. My mission to solve the puzzle not only improved my research skills, but my social skills and my willingness to learn new things.

I felt such immense satisfaction at finding out the answers I knew that once this Saturday morning rolled around I would immediately snap up the next issue and begin my next quest for answers. That, brings us to today.

I now have the latest weekend issue of the i. A hundred clues to solve and a week to do it in, but I do not think I should keep this challenge to myself, I think it would be much more fun to involve everyone else. So without further ado, here are the rules of the game.

The Rules

1. You cannot use the internet to look up answers to any of the clues.
2. You can use any other resource at your disposal. Libraries, people, shops, and the general world are all freely available to you.
3. If the clue asks about a TV show or movie and you do not know the answer, you must watch at least an episode or the full movie to find out the answer.
4. You cannot buy the i newspaper on Monday, the answers are in there and the deadline for the challenge is on Friday.
5. If, by any chance, you accidentally find out the answer to a clue from the internet, you must cross out that clue and it will not count towards your solving.

Of course, I am not controlling you. I will not stop you from disobeying the rules, but the only person you will be letting down here will be yourself. The only person who misses out on the satisfaction of solving the puzzle will be you, I still solve my puzzle all the same.

If you intend to join me with my challenge then I intend to post my answers for the crossword every friday evening and implore you to post your own answers in the comments of those posts.

Of course, as this website itself is part of the internet, you cannot use it as a source of information either, however informative you may find its pages.

My intention for this challenge has multiple branches. I want more people to do crosswords. I want more people to get more involved in their local amenities. I despise the internet. I want to steal your handwriting to commit fraud (just kidding). Above all though, I want people to start believing in themselves. Everyone I’ve met since I’ve gotten back has been so down in the dumps, thinking that the world has gotten to a point where nothing feels solvable, but it all is. Sometimes you just need a little patience, a good head on your shoulders, and your favourite pen.

See you on Friday,

Cassie