Puzzle fundi Bianca Harvey will have you scratching your head

You may see the same 3 or 4 names in every edition of the Courier, but no one produces content more consistently than the team behind our weekly puzzles.

They are supplied by a team of 3 professional puzzle-makers at Puzzle Fundi.

Bianca Harvey, who started Puzzle Fundi in 2016, has had a lifelong obsession with puzzles, crosswords, board games and everything in between.

She grew up on a farm in Limpopo, near the Zimbabwean border and recalls the time she spent solving crosswords as a teen.

“It was a real family experience for us. We would all huddle over our kitchen table and race to finish the latest crosswords and puzzles that my dad brought home. Come rain or shine, electricity or not, you could find us there on a Saturday afternoon,” she said.

Although this was a weekly ritual, Bianca did not consider puzzle creation as a career path until visiting her brother in Switzerland in 2013.

He had just published a Sudoku book and convinced Bianca to put her puzzle-solving skills to the test and try to create a crossword for herself.

“It took a while to get into it because you obviously have to plot the bare bones of the crossword and then make everything fit in around it. It was like a whole puzzle in itself.”

The process is now well-oiled and Bianca has a database of thousands of words to use as needed.

The art comes in creating clues that are accessible and current so that anyone who keeps up with what is happening in the world can solve them.

“One of the biggest highlights of my job is that I learn so much trivia just by keeping up to date with the news.”

She also has to keep an eye on words that may have been commonly used in the past that would now cause offence, or could have become slang for something untoward.

Aside from her beloved puzzles, Bianca enjoys spending time with her husband and 6-year-old son at their house in Umdloti as well as clay pigeon shooting and off-road biking when she gets the time.

She also has another business, Harvey Fusion Designs, an interior design firm based in Umhlanga.

Bianca strikes a balance between logical and creative thinking on a daily basis and tries to live up to the moniker of ‘chic-geek’.

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