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Rating: 
Summary: Crostic Lovers -- check this out!
Review: Fun and challenging crostics. The puzzles in this book are rated as medium difficulty, with the style halfway between "middle of the road" and "contemporary" (via the "Random House PuzzleMeter"). Nice size with steel spiral spring binding. Pages are good-quality paper that accepts pencil well, yet erases easily and cleanly.
Rating:
Summary: LITTLE BIT OF A LETDOWN
Review: Michael Ashley's previous four volumes of crostics were exceptionally good and fun to solve. Michael has given us crostics that don't rely on ridiculously esoteric clues, such as quotes from Shakespeare, unheard of islands, etc. Instead, Ashley uses contemporary clues to solve his puzzles. He also doesn't quote from stuffy writers, etc. However, in this edition, he starts to show a little bit of that "traditional" clue giving, and is not as imaginative as in his previous volumes. Still, he's head and shoulders above the rest, and I look forward to his future editions. Crostic lovers should check out Peter Scher's "Cinema Crostics" for some really fun puzzles!
Rating: 
Summary: Fun, but not enough bang for the buck
Review: The clues are plenty challenging and even tricky, chosen from a wide variety of subjects and levels of expertise, but the quotes at the end are not as interesting as in other acrostics I have done. They are taken mostly from popular humor books or self-help books or celebrity bios. I would rather see meatier quotes from history and science books or essays, or actual quotes from historical figures or documents like the Declaration of Independence. Too often I find that I have the quote figured way too soon and then it is a tedious job to go back and fill in the (almost impossible) clue words I couldn't guess. It would be nice if the quotes were longer and taken from more interesting sources to make them more difficult to guess. The puzzles are still fun, but the payoff at the end (finding out the quote) is too often a letdown.
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