This document summarizes controlled sequential Monte Carlo, which aims to efficiently estimate intractable likelihoods p(y|θ) in state space models. It does this by defining a target path measure P(dx0:T) and proposal Markov chain Q(dx0:T) to approximate P(dx0:T). Standard sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) methods provide unbiased estimation but can have inadequate performance for practical particle sizes N due to discrepancy between P and Q. The document proposes using twisted path measures that depend on observations to better match P and Q, by defining proposal transitions P(dxt|xt-1,yt:T) that incorporate backward information filters ψ*t(xt)=P(yt