In the winter of 1989, in the seaside town of Port Elliot, near the mouth of the Murray River, the writer and crossword fan Tess Brady solved a literary crossword she thought was so bad that she decided to show the paper what it should look like.

That summer her seaside cottage filled with artists, writers and university students whose holiday job became creating word and visual puzzles for the newspapers of Adelaide and Melbourne. Out of this flurry of activity evolved Snodger Puzzles.

The name Snodger came from a word used in the 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'.

After awhile Tess moved on to help establish creative writing subjects at various universities and Snodger followed her daughter, Catherine Gough-Brady (a documentary filmmaker), to Melbourne. In its new location, surrounded by the cafes of Caulfield, Snodger continues to make specialist crosswords for weekend newspapers. The company has used the changing skills of Tess and Catherine, and now Snodger makes educational DVDs on Australian writers and creates web page solutions for artists and advocacy groups.

Snodger is also slowly acquiring an art collection depicting the alphabet.