Thjs brand new edition of the highly successful Oxford Crossword Dictionary still draws on the authority of The Concise Oxford Dictionary and The New Shorter Oxford Dictionary, and will provide crossword lovers with everything there is to know about how to solve crosswords. There are over 250,000 entries, alphabetically arranged by word-length for easy look-up, and the list of words has been fully updated for this edition to include up-to-the-minute words. The lists include not only standard English, but also foreign words, phrases, idioms, obsolete words, and irregular forms, which usually appear in word game clues. To help you answer general knowledge clues, list have been fully updated and reorganized for this edition so that finding the answers to clues are made easy. New lists have been introduced, including food and drink, plants and animals, and computer games. Lists of famous people in the arts, historical and political figures, monarchs, presidents, sports personalities, and writers will help you solve biographical clues. A new long introduction by Michael Macdonald-Cooper, compiler of crosswords for The Independent, is required reading for all crossword enthusiasts. It gives a fascinating history of both British and American crosswords, and details of the origins of cryptic crosswords, with practical advice on how to solve them.