This is me, Andrew Briggs, and, I’m wearing a hat!
My wife (Josie) dubbed me with this moniker when we were researching her first book, Walks in the Wilds of Norfolk (1998), as I always wore a bright blue floppy hat when we were out on our rambles. It not only served to keep the sun off my fair skin but it made sure she couldn’t lose me.
Of all the pictures in that book, only one showed a person – me, wearing the hat!
Why puzzles?
Puzzles are fun, so why not?
As a Maths teacher, it seemed that my whole subject was just about solving puzzles – so, fun for work as well as leisure!
After enjoying solving puzzles for many years, I decided I wanted to have a go at compiling them. My first published puzzle (an ans-a-gram) appeared in the Christian Puzzler in 1988.
In the 2000s, a new puzzle came along, Sudoku. In 2008, I entered The Times national Sudoku competition and placed an impressive 23rd. I decided to try compiling Sudokus of my own but added the twist of using letters instead of numbers – with a hidden word and Bible clue. These were used in my Church weekly newsletter for a couple of years and, at the prompting of a good friend (Michael Goodey) I got a book of these published in 2012 (Bible Word Sudoku). A couple of years later, I followed that up with Word-Clue Sudoku.
Why a website?
I’m old enough to remember the early days of the internet, when people created websites of things they were interested in – for free!
I understand that many of the larger websites need to defray their costs with advertising but on some sites this can be distracting (and sometimes overpower the content). So, I decided that I not only wanted to share many of the puzzles I’ve produced over the decades with a wider audience, but to share them for free – with no interfering adverts, no subscription, no sign up!
If you use a lot of the puzzles and feel that you want to contribute to them in some way, please make a donation to Missionary Aviation Fellowship (MAF) – they do a great Christian and humanitarian work, using aircraft to reach people in isolated places around the world.
Please remember that the downloadable puzzles here are for personal use or for not-for-profit publications only. It would be nice (but not essential) if you acknowledge me and mention my website.
Anything else?
I decided to see if I could get a significant number of Word Sudoku puzzles on a ‘theme’ – I was pleasantly surprised at how many I could do. Below are some ‘self printed’ titles that I use to raise funds for local charities, my Church or for MAF when I accompany my wife on her MAF talks. I don’t have any current plans to offer these online.
I’ve also been playing with word versions of some of the Sudoku ‘variants – hopefully I may get a collection of those published in the near future.