Chambers Back‐words for Crosswords: A Reverse‐Sorted List (3rd ed.)

Using this dictionary is a weird, surreal experience: “swaggering” files before “sniggering”; “peafowl” before “barn owl”; and “ugly”’ before “handsome”. Proper names and phrases are featured alongside the more usual dictionary fare: thus “cliffhang” is followed by “strap‐hang” and “Fritz Lang”. “Take a break”, “worse luck”, “Gladstone bag” and “Wasily Kandinsky” are but four other examples of words and phrases included.

There are 110,000 words and phrases in this new edition of Chambers Back‐words for Crosswords. They are arranged, first, by number of letters, from three to 15, and then by alphabetical order from the end of each word...