How It Began
In the winter of 1989, in the seaside town of Port Elliot, on Ngarrindjeri Country, near the mouth of the Murrundi (Murray) River, the writer and crossword fan Tess Brady sat down to solve a literary crossword. It was so bad she knew she could do better, so she did.
That summer, her seaside cottage was filled with artists, writers and university students whose holiday job became creating word and visual puzzles for the newspapers of Melbourne and Adelaide. Out of this flurry of activity, Snodger Puzzles emerged.
The name Snodger is from a word used in their first crossword puzzle. It is an old Australian word, used by CJ Dennis in a poem where he declares it to be ‘a snodger of a day’.
Snodger Today
The company is now based in Clunes, on Dja Dja Wurrung Country in rural Victoria.
To accommodate the growing skills of Tess and her daughter, Catherine Gough-Brady, the company has developed two streams: Snodger Puzzles and Snodger Media.
Snodger Puzzles has published over 40 puzzle books. The team of compilers continue to make specialist crosswords for weekend newspapers, including The Saturday Age General Knowledge puzzle and Codeword, The Sunday Age Giant puzzle and the Adelaide Advertiser Crossquiz.
Snodger Media produces non-fiction media work, including multiple documentary series for ABC TV and ABC Radio National, and more recently, experimental works and short commissioned films for international art galleries.