New edition of Chambers Dictionary

The 11th edition of the Chambers Dictionary is due to be published in a week's time. You can preorder it from Amazon at the unreasonably low price of around £23 for either the standard or the thumb-index edition.

Unlike the stopgap 10th edition (2006), this is a proper 5-yearly update, so it will replace Chambers 2003 as the primary reference for advanced cryptics. You have been warned.

Well I have an even older (1998) edition of Chambers and I realize that a number of cryptic compilers recommend Chambers and rightly so because it has a number of quite obscure words. Nevertheless my "default" option, both for determining meanings and for cryptic solving, is the big Collins. My mean reason is the better treatment of personal and place names which some people may think are not really what a dictionary, as distinct from an encyclopaedia, should be about (I think the OED did not include proper nouns although it did have adjectives derived from them). Just to give a couple of examples I looked up and found "Hellespont" (because the name came to mind after recent reading) in Collins. Not far below was "Helmand" - a province of Afghanistan which crops up quite a lot in news broadcasts at present. Neither is present in my old Chambers. Many of the words I've had to turn to Chambers for have been slightly (in a loose sense) archaic or outmoded and it would be interesting to know whether a new edition has anything to add that is different from its competitors.

Thanks for the information brunellus. I have an ancient Chambers and put off buying the 06 edition. Now I'm glad and shall get the new edition. Might first have a look at the big (how big?) Collins though.

I'm a relative newcomer to Cryptics although I've been doing simple ones for years (the Puzzle People's Cryptic Cross-Words). Does anyone have any recommendations as to what might be a good "next step" for me?

Perhaps I should look elsewhere in this group: There might well be clues there.

Possibly worth knowing that if you visit a bookshop to look inside a copy of the new (Chambers) dictionary (inside cover) you can get a code for a 6 month trial of the online version. I did something similar with Collins except the code gave access to a download. A bit of a cheapskate but I did a few months later buy a new print version to replace my old battered copy so I'm not feeling too guilty.
There's a link to the Chamber's here:
http://www.chambersreference.com/dict/external/site/main/home.htm;jsessionid=5FE...

3 Two warnings about Collins:

1. I seem to recall that a new edition a couple of years ago either dispensed with proper names completely or scaled down their coverage. So if the inclusion of proper names is important to you, you should at least check in a bookshop before ordering a Collins dictionary online.

2. My copy of Collins is from 2004 and is labelled "Desktop edition + CD-rom" (with that capitalization, oddly). The coverage in the paper edition seems to be restricted: the unusual word olm appears in the CD edition – "a pale blind eel-like salamander, Proteus anguinus, of underground streams in SE Europe, that retains its larval form throughout its life: family Proteidae" – but not in the paper edition. So if the inclusion of unusual words is important to you, again, you should check in a bookshop before ordering a Collins dictionary online.

I'd certainly be wary of ordering anything on-line without having checked it out first. Most of my (few) online orders are for books I haven't been able to get in the local bookshops although they would certainly order one for me. My Collins is 2006 and claims to be "complete and unabridged". It does have a lot of proper names - both people and places which in my opinion is its strength. I can't say for certain that there has been no reduction from previous editions but I certainly haven't noticed one. It does include "olm". Just in case there's any confusion about my post #4 the remark about Chambers was to an online version which can be viewed as a subscription service and not about ordering a book. Collins allow you to download an electronic version of the big dictionary (using the code) but make a charge for the "professional" version.
On an another track the Daily Telegraph now have a new layout with a "toughy" cryptic crossword on a puzzle page as well as the old cryptic on the back.

Have you tried the Telegraph Toughie? I haven't, though I notice that the first one is online here. Apparently it's meant to be "a regular Tues-Fri feature".

Yes. I thought the first two were not much different from the usual back page Xword and I almost got them both almost finished (but not 100%). Today's was quite a bit harder (I didn't get very far) but I noticed that the compiler was named ("Notablilis"). It's early days yet but perhaps as with some other papers the compiler's name will provide a clue about what to expect. I suppose like all of us I'm looking for a challenge but don't want to crucify myself.