The season of cerebral gymnastics is upon us again with the publication today of the first qualifying puzzle in The Times National Crossword Championship of 2007.

After a six-year gap the popular mental Olympiad was revived last year, culminating in a grand final at The Times Cheltenham Literary Festival, when the silver trophy was carried off by Helen Ougham, a 50-year-old plant scientist from Aberystwyth and the only woman among the 24 finalists.

As last year, the final will be harder than it was before, with contestants given one hour to solve three puzzles rather than the four puzzles in two hours of past tournaments.

Standards remain high, as would be expected of Times readers. Ms Ougham, who has been doing the puzzle regularly since she was 14, had to twiddle her thumbs for nearly half an hour after completing her three Grand Final puzzles in 31 minutes and 49 seconds.

She was not the fastest, but the two men who beat her on time discovered to their dismay that they had both made mistakes.

Today’s puzzle is the first of four qualifiers that will appear at monthly intervals. Contestants who submit a puzzle with their £15 entrance fee are asked to state the exact time it took them to complete it.

A degree of honesty and trust is required but, according to Richard Browne, The Times crossword editor, there is little point in cheating. “If a contestant lies about his time, he will have quantities of egg on his face when he turns up for the final and finds he cannot do the puzzles in the allotted time.”

Mr Browne has some advice for competitors. “Stay calm; you are not going to be booby-trapped by fiendish puzzles far more difficult than the ones which appear daily in the paper. Take it gently, and above all check what you have done.”

Solving crossword puzzles is said to be an excellent way of keeping the brain active. Martha Redfern, from Crail, Fife, was last year’s oldest grand finalist at 93; she went out in the semi-final.

The 50 fastest solvers of today’s puzzle will be notified in good time that they have won a place in the final. If the postman brings no news, please try again with any or all of the remaining three puzzles.

Fifty qualifiers from each puzzle will be joined by the 50 fastest finalists in last year’s competition at the University of Gloucestershire campus, in Cheltenham, on Sunday, October 7. The 250 finalists, each paying a £10 entrance fee, will be split into two groups of 125, with three puzzles to solve in one hour. The 12 fastest correct solutions in each group go forward to the grand final, where they will face three new, and harder, puzzles to be solved within the hour.

The 25 fastest solvers with correct solutions from the two preliminary groups will earn themselves free entry to the 2008 competition. Whatever the outcome, it’s an enjoyable day. As Ms Ougham said last year: “It’s a great excuse for spending a whole afternoon doing crosswords and talking about crosswords to people who love crosswords.”

The Times crossword was born on February 1, 1930, when, in response to reader pressure, this newspaper decided to introduce a puzzle that had proved a huge success in the United States. It was said at the time that US readers were spending five million hours a day solving crosswords — more time than the nation was losing through labour strikes.

Early crosswords were simple affairs, more Su Doku than sagacity. For many years The Times crossword built its reputation on what Browne has described as “references to things you would find in the mental lumber room of the average Oxbridge graduate or senior civil servant”.

But no more, in our much more homogeneous society. “We have a more popular culture now, but popular culture changes so fast you can never be sure what people remember. I try to discourage contemporary or ephemeral references in clues,” Mr Browne says.

The Times crossword tries not to be merely a word game, free of all literary reference. It tries to be rounded and challenging at the same time. Mathematicians, we hear, like to do it first thing in the morning as a warm-up for some serious thinking later in the day.

So set those mental cogs whirring and allow the grey cells to be teased. Age and gender are no barrier to that coveted trophy.

Give us a clue

The Ancient Egyptians are believed to have constructed crosswords as part of their fascination with cryptography.

Crosswords emerged as a parlour game in the US and Britain from the mid-19th century.

The first published crossword appeared in the New York World in 1913. Other American papers followed suit in the 1920s as the craze caught on In 1924.

The Times called crosswords “the pastime of a few ingenious idlers”. However, under pressure from readers, the paper printed its first crossword on February 1, 1930.

M. R. James, Provost of Eton College from 1918 to 1936, is reported to have solved these early puzzles in the time it took to boil his breakfast egg — “and he likes his eggs lightly boiled”, P. G. Wodehouse wrote.

Inspector Morse, the fictional television detective played by John Thaw, is portrayed solving crossword puzzles as he cracks murder cases. Among other thespian fans of the Times crossword was Sir John Gielgud.

Studies in America show that pensioners who tackled four crosswords a week were less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease than those who managed only one.

American crosswords are composed of straight clues, but with lots of interlocking words and few black squares. British crosswords tend to be cryptic.

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