What is it about the compilers of crosswords, those anonymous fiends who can
make or break a person’s day? What are the secret Faustian powers that keep
millions of us in their thrall — intellectually stumped one minute, trailing
clouds of glory the next. The fortunes of newspaper empires, it is said,
rest not on their foreign news coverage or investigative reporting but on
the ability of their crossword setters to attract and retain a loyal
following. “Meddle with the crossword at your peril,” I was told in my first
editing job.
Compilers are coy folk, traditionally sheltering behind occult pseudonyms such
as Machiavelli, Tantalus and Phi. Yet perhaps not so modest after all:
Jonathan Crowther is the true identity of Azed — setter of the Observer
crossword, heir to Ximenes, the acknowledged father of the cryptic word
puzzle — and he has outed dozens of his fellow compilers in a series of pen
portraits for his new book The A-Z of Crosswords. To a man they
were delighted to furnish him with full CVs, including their real names.
Well not quite to a man: the venerable Araucaria, 82-year-old John Graham,
setter of the Guardian crossword since 1958, regretted that he was
“too old and ill” to accede to his colleague’s request for a small
autobiographical essay. Instead, he suggested, Crowther should draw on a
previous Guardian profile of him. “He is a fairly solitary man,”
says Crowther, “and many people regard him as the best setter there is.”
There is a fractional pause: “I am not among them,” he adds.
We are sitting in Crowther’s study in north Oxford, its walls lined with
reference books — the Chambers dictionary, of course, the Harvard
Concordance to Shakespeare and Bradford’s Crossword
Solver’s Dictionary.
Are he and Araucaria old rivals? “There is a certain frisson between us, yes,”
he concedes. Araucaria specialises in themed puzzles and is “not too
concerned about Ximenean strictures”, while for Azed, the elegant, accurate
clue is the thing. Both men read classics — Graham at Cambridge, Crowther at
Oxford — an academic subject that a number of compilers have in common. Some
rue the passing of a classical education among solvers but not Crowther:
“Good riddance, as far as I’m concerned,” he says. “Crosswords that rely on
general knowledge in any area are necessarily exclusive — no one is
omniscient and it is unfair to expect others to share one’s own expertise.”
Apart from the study of classics, other commonalities among compilers emerge
in Crowther’s book: the Church, music and maths and aerodynamic engineering,
early retirement and age — the majority are over 60 and several were born in
the 1920s. Some express the fear that short attention spans and the vogue
for computer games and puzzles such as Su Doku may sound the death knell for
the sustained effort of a difficult cryptic.
“I don’t think so,” says Crowther. “People still read books, after all.”
If not terminally ageing, the world of the cryptic is somewhat inbred, he
admits: “At least half the setters regularly solve my puzzle.” And several
contributors to the book have chosen the same Azed clue as their favourite:
Bust down reason? The answer is Brain wash. “Bra in wash,” explains Crowther
helpfully, seeing my baffled expression. “It is slightly cheeky and a bit
sexist, but it remains one of my favourites too.”
There are three key ingredients to good clue-writing in Crowther’s view:
“Accuracy, economy and wit, with, if possible, that elusive marriage of a
brilliant idea with elegant wording that lifts a clue into the alpha-plus
class.” And, he adds, a setter should always think of the solver who derives
satisfaction from a completed grid: “This is the ideal end result of the
tussle of wits between them. If a puzzle is so complex that few can solve
it, it is wasted effort all round. The setter may feel that he or she has
created a masterpiece, but it will remain largely unappreciated.”
Araucaria
John Graham was born in 1924 and has been setting puzzles in The Guardian
as Araucaria (also known as the monkey puzzle or the Chile pine) since 1958.
He grew up in Oxford, where his father was Dean of Oriel College, and read
classics at King’s College, Cambridge, until the war intervened. He joined
the RAF, later returning to King’s, this time to read theology, and was
subsequently ordained, eventually becoming vicar in Huntingdonshire.
By this time he had won an Observer competition for crossword setters
two years running, and had been engaged by The Guardian to set crosswords
for the paper once a week. This began as a sideline but by the end of the
1970s became a necessity after his first marriage ended in divorce.
Under the Church’s rules at the time, this disqualified him from continuing in
the ministry. The Guardian then increased his quota, and at present
he sets six Araucarias for the paper monthly, as well as one in three of the
quick crosswords. In addition he contributes cryptics to the Financial
Times (as Cinephile, an anagram of Chile pine that also betrays a
fondness for the silver screen).
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He works at a desk upstairs in the cottage in Somersham in Cambridgeshire
where he has lived alone since his second wife, Margaret, died some years
ago.
John specialises in themed puzzles: one of his most famous was built round the
South African resistance to apartheid, while another marked the 250th
anniversary of the death of J. S. Bach. He is fond of long anagrams, his
favourite being one he used in a Christmas puzzle: “O hark the herald angels
sing the boy’s descent which lifted up the world”, an anagram of “While
shepherds watched their flocks by night, all seated on the ground”.
Dimitry
John Grimshaw was born in Fulham, West London, in 1950 (by a strange
coincidence next door to the pub where he now meets with a group of other
crossword setters). He was educated at St Clement Danes School and St
Catherine’s College, Oxford, where he read engineering science and
subsequently gained a DPhil in studies in hypersonic aerodynamics.
John’s puzzle debut was in The Listener series in 1981, and
since then he has had more than 30 Listener puzzles published and
was co-editor from 1984 to 1994, having been offered the job as the only
all-correct solver in the preceding two years.
There are several outlets for his barred cryptics but by far his biggest
contribution to the art has been the daily times2 puzzle, which he
has set single-handedly since March 2003, his 1,000th puzzle appearing in
May 2006. He has also provided all the Saturday times2 jumbos since
they began. John chose Dimitry as his pseudonym mainly because of his love
of the music of Shostakovich, but also because of an imagined cryptic
significance of Dimitry the False Pretender from Russian history, and its
potential for interpretations as “(being) dim, I try” and “I’m into dirty
tricking”.
He is pleased that his full name is an anagram of “charming, if shrewd,
joker”. He enjoys walking, canal boating, and, above all, music. For many
years he has been chairman of the Havergal Brian Society, which promotes the
underrated composer’s music.
Alaun
Nuala Considine’s father was Irish ambassador to various countries, so her
schooling was largely abroad. After leaving school she studied piano at the
Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome and operatic singing with Maestro Mario
Ranucci, one of whose claims to fame was that he could sing in a soprano
voice as well as a rich baritone one.
At the age of 18 Nuala met the love of her life and gave up a musical career
in favour of marriage. She and her husband Brian compiled a crossword
together for fun which they submitted to The Irish Times. It was
accepted, and became the first of many on which they collaborated.
Nuala then worked for a newspaper features agency Morley Adams, writing
everything from theatre and film reviews to advice to couples on how to lead
a happy married life. The agency also produced crosswords, and it was here
that Nuala found her true milieu.
She has provided crosswords for, among many others, The Daily Telegraph,
the Daily Express, the Evening Standard, the Daily Mail,
the Financial Times, The Washington Post, New Scientist,
the Daily Sketch and, the Sunday Correspondent.
Nuala also compiled a crossword called “The Stinker” for the Weekend
Mail, which had a devoted following. One group who attempted regularly
to solve it jointly, became so frustrated that they wrote to the paper
asking for a photograph of the setter so that they could throw darts at it,
a request that was politely refused on the grounds that the setter was a
lady.
Richard Browne, the Times Crossword Editor
Richard Browne grew up in Cheam, Surrey, attended Epsom College, and took a
classics degree at Trinity College, Oxford. He spent 25 years with IBM,
doing crosswords as a hobby and graduating from joint compilation of the IBM
house magazine to an invitation to join The Times team in 1987.
Having taken early retirement, he became a full-time compiler in 1993,
creating the times2 crossword, which he compiled for ten years. He was
appointed crossword editor of The Times in 2002.
Richard’s interest in crosswords started early, attempting the junior picture
puzzle in the London Evening News and helping his grandfather with
the Sunday Express skeleton puzzle before graduating to his dad’s Daily
Telegraph and The Times. He carries everywhere with him a card
listing the words he is currently seeking inspiration to clue.
Richard lives on the Hampshire coast with Marilyn, his wife of 33 years. He is
a keen amateur singer of classical music, performing regularly in Winchester
with the Wayneflete Singers, with whom he has made Prom appearances and
numerous CDs (one of which, Belshazzar’s Feast, won a
Grammy). He also performs with a smaller choir specialising in his favourite
repertoire, Renaissance sacred music.
Richard is not a fan of burrowing through Chambers; he prefers the elegance of
ordinary words clued simply but with originality, wit, and maximum sleight
of hand — a far greater challenge to the setter, in his opinion, than
anything permitting obscurities — and has always admired Brian Greer
(Virgiuius) for this. Although in principle a strict Ximenean, he enjoys
Araucaria and Bunthorne for their sheer fun.
The A-Z of Crosswords by Jonathan Crowther is published in hardback by
Collins, £17.99. Available from Times BooksFirst for £16.19, free p&p.
Call 0870 1608080
