Entering the brain is no easy thing. Despite the fact our skulls cradle the organ all day, so close we might touch it, the mystic pulp seems exiled to another dimension.

Even if you were to spy on the brain in a lab, what would you learn? Where would you even start? Its lobes are too complex, too vulnerable, to accommodate curious amateurs, and the wave-like graphs arising from clinical trials read as an alien language.

Hence this amateur needed brainy people in his corner, the insiders of this inner space, to illuminate the cavern we carry above, to unpack the cave’s delicate contents. For this book to exist, I needed the fMRI firm on my autodial, a host of neural angels to translate gyri and sulci, the basal ganglia and the somatosensory cortex, to explain how thoughts emerge and shuttle.

The first such angel came out of the blue, the newest neurologist in Melbourne, Sarah Holper. Just when every research paper seemed a foreign document, when every clinic I’d pestered was courteous but not collaborative, a neurologist-in-training sent me an email, unsolicited. Sarah was then a relative pup in the realm of brain research, an intern yet to qualify as doctor. She wished to talk about crosswords while I wished to talk about brains. Together, the gist of those chats proved to be this book’s genesis.

Far more than a sounding board, Dr Holper (as she made the grade mid-manuscript) has been my guide in a strange domain, a door opener, a catalyst, an interpreter, shedding light on the cerebellum’s workings as much as how research trials are initiated, and how they operate.

Indeed, we stand on the brink of a world first, determined to examine a cryptic-solving brain in action, a venture no lab has ever tried before. To make this possible, Melbourne’s newest neurologist has enlisted her mentors—doctors David Abbott and David Darby—to supervise a study involving unseen clues flashing on monitors, diverse cryptic recipes every 12 seconds, all within the comforts of one raucous tube. The trial will measure how the lobes respond when deciphering wordplay. My lobes in fact, my skull tabbed for science, my brain poised to conquer anagrams and charades as I lie supine in a magnetic field.

Ideally the trial would be part of this book, yet six months of paperwork have cruelled that ‘pipe dream’. Nonetheless, I look forward to sharing any updates down the track, perhaps in my own paper, or a Rewording sequel at least. Neurons willing, and hurdles cleared, our experiment is due to advance the research literature one step further as we take a lateral peek into the body’s most mysterious and magisterial organ, to observe how it ticks, and how it solves.

Not that I’ve minded the ongoing delays. Quite the opposite: with so many forms to fill, so much apparatus to check, so many protocol clauses to revise, I’m now convinced that nobody is free to tinker with the brain at will, not even the experts. It seems our grey matter matters greatly, and that’s a good thing.

It’s also why I’m indebted to every cranial ally who escorted my wanderings of the interior, from Dr Holper onward, making Rewording the Brain as rewarding an odyssey as it’s been. My thanks to both fellow Davids, namely Associate Professor David Abbott and cognitive neurologist Associate Professor David Darby at the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, who have offered sustained and simpatico support for Operation Cryptic.

Rousing cheers also for Professor Jennie Ponsford, the director of the Monash-Epworth Rehabilitation Research Centre, and speech pathologist Jennifer Brown at the Macquarie University Hospital—two more gatekeepers who were game—or foolhardy enough—to consider scanning a solver’s brain at play. Thanks also to neuropsychologist Maggie Phillips, who floated the possibility of a puzzle trial in the first place, an idle remark she let slip on an afternoon bush walk.

To my friends at Dementia Australia, including Maree McCabe, Dr Kaele Stokes, Neil Samuel and Christine Bolt: you have been ferocious advocates. As my own dad eventually succumbed to frontal lobe dementia in 2013, I’ve been a proud ambassador for the cause, and I appreciate your contributions to this project, in offering both manuscript advice as well as the latest research findings.

Which seems my cue to cross to the beloved elders at the University of the Third Age, the crossword tribe who defy all talk of cognitive decline, meeting every second week to wrangle deceptions. You inspire us all.

I’d also like to thank Neo for his malingering confessions, as recorded in the Together chapter. As both a coder (and lunchtime decoder), Neo must retain his alias to deflect any accusations that his workplace puzzle-cracking is more important than, well, work.

Warm applause for Dr Debra Aarons, who lectures in linguistics at the University of New South Wales. Patient to the nth, Debra had the stamina to dismantle Chomskyian algorithms across a genial exchange of emails, the better to frame her research into playful clue-conquering. If colourless green ideas sleep furiously, then they do so under Debra’s caring eye.

Overseas, the Buckingham investigators—doctors Kathryn Friedlander and Philip Fine—have offered no less vigorous assistance, delving deep into their research of the puzzle-solving elite. I look forward to seeing the same pair extend our understanding of crosswords as a benign addiction, from Bangalore to Singapore. And please, count me in. The world can never learn enough about how puzzling keeps us thriving.

Crossword setters from across the United Kingdom and the United States also need saluting, the legion of magicians whose sample clues adorn the book’s second part. While a byline sits beside each clue, crediting the setters from Arachne to Vlad, I’d like to add my appreciation of your mind-bending here. Via your weekly Qaos, you spare a million brains from the Mudd, and I’m as grateful as any other solver.

Last in line are the book-dreamers at Allen & Unwin, where publisher Jane Palfreyman saw the sense of entering the brain in the first place, while the editorial A-team of Angela Handley, Ali Lavau and Aziza Kuypers has been dynamic in solving the manuscript’s own mental challenges, not least the arrangement of sections, sentences, cubes and matchsticks.

Did I say last? My brain must be lapsing. I’d like to thank Tracy O’Shaughnessy for her constant support and insight, both within and beyond these covers. There’s a chance our next coffee might dodge any talk of brains or clues, but it’s a slim one.

Which reminds me. The sooner I wrap these acknowledgements, the quicker I can pounce on my next puzzle to untangle. Wish me luck—and may your own brain bloom in search of its own ahas.