Yeah. The cryptoquizzes always use some weirdly worded quote that defies all normal random letter distribution. I think they have all won awards for the most verbose and awkwardly worded sentences in the English (sometimes) language.

Here's a thought on Sudoku. If you take a correctly completed puzzle and break the nine boxes apart-cut them out with scissors if it's on paper and mix them up, how long will it take you to put it back in the correct order? Easy, huh? Come on, I mean without cheating! Well for any two boxes of nine you have 4 possible positions....! There are nine boxes with four possible positions with which to begin.... that's 4 to the 9th power or 262,144 possible positions to start. True, once you have put a couple together the odds greatly increase in your favor, However, you cannot know if it is in the correct sequence until you have three boxes of nine lined up! I haven't worked out ALL the odds but it looks intriguing!

The thing I hate about crosswords puzzles is that the more difficult ones are almost always dishonest in some way, including making up words which do not exist anywhere else other than that particular puzzle. Throw in variants and obsolete terms from the Middles ages, fifteen or twenty French terms a few movie actors from the 50's and the composer's niece's middle name and then solve in the suggested one hour. Right.

In the simpler puzzles there are relatively a small portion of the English/ American English vocabulary that have the ability to fit the matrix. I understand the British crosswords tend to not use the American matrix. That is, they have less contiguous squares and therefore use more real words. We seldom see that type puzzle in the US.

As for the Jumbles, Yes! I love them and usually breeze through them but on occasion I'll hang on one and if it's six letters or more! WOW! Talk about your possibilities! Frustrating! Sometimes I'll figure out the final riddle or question and then work backwards.    I would say all this stuff is really a waste of time (kinda like the Internet some days, you know?) but it does keep your mind active so maybe it's not a total waste.