WITH so many books available to help the crossword fanatic to find those infuriating missing words that glare at you endlessly on the grid, I was keen to try this new book.

Oh dear, maybe it's just my little grey cells, but I really couldn't get my head round this one at all! Thinking backwards from the end of a word just isn't natural... or easy. After all, how many of us can recite the alphabet backwards as quickly as we can forwards? Don't see many hands up.

Even trying to work out how words had been listed, let alone trying to find one, was confusing and didn't seem logical. After an hour of trying to understand and make sense of it, I gave up in desperation, convinced that I must have some fundamental brain defect whereby the forward and lateral-thinking parts were intact, but the one needed to use this book just didn't exist.

Updated: 17:29 Tuesday, January 14, 2003