You learn a lot from crosswords, you don’t learn anything from putting numbers into a grid – you could complete the same one day after day and not even notice.” All clued-up? Try these But when it comes to puzzles, there is a line that even John won’t cross. The weekend includes a welcome crossword and a pub quiz crawl. And on his birthday he and Jane organise a convention in York for fellow obsessives. Now, as well as compiling crosswords, he also sets some questions for the nigh-on-impossible BBC quiz show Only Connect, hosted by Victoria Coren Mitchell. “I act as a barometer, although he does get slightly grumpy if I hand it back without one single tick.” John had a spell working as a psychology teacher, and likes to say he swapped a job where he ticked boxes for one where he fills them. “John will give me his finished grids to solve and I’ll put ticks next to clues that I particularly like,” she says. Just to prove they were a perfect match, on their wedding day, John set clues in various papers whose answers revealed the location of their reception – The Narrowboat pub in Islington, London. ‘Quizzing is shaking off its middle-aged bloke image’: the meteoric rise of puzzle books She is also a keen quizzer who has appeared on Eggheads and would now like a shot at Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
#Beloved crossword editor from 1993 tv
There is a real cryptic crossword community,” says John, who met his wife, Jane, when he appeared in a pilot for a TV quiz show. “However, the more you look at the right answers from the previous day’s crossword, the more you will get a feel for the type of clues they set and there comes a point where it all just falls into place. Good setters will always say what they mean, but they might not mean what they say and it’s very easy to get led down the wrong path. “When you’re starting out you have to learn the grammar and syntax of a crossword.
#Beloved crossword editor from 1993 how to
While a cryptic crossword can read like a foreign language, he believes everyone can learn how to complete one. John describes the relationship between setter and solver as a battle of wits. Believe it or not, there is such a thing as a crossword groupie.” ‘Cryptic crossword community’ “I learnt early on that readers are very quick to tell you if you haven’t got something quite right, but they are also quick to tell you when they appreciate a particular clue. That obviously makes it harder for me, but for both the setter and the solver it brings a greater degree of satisfaction.” Previous themes have included everything from cricket to the slightly more cerebral “meaning of life”. “These days I like all the answers to link to a particular theme.
“The trick with compiling a cryptic crossword is that you have to start with a completed grid and work backwards,” he says. In the Financial Times, John’s alter-ego is Io – the answer to a clue the paper refused to print because it didn’t meet its three letters or more rule. All his pseudonyms were inspired by the English composer’s Enigma Variations, except one. In The Guardian he’s Enigmatist, and in The Daily Telegraph he’s Elgar. He goes by the name of Nimrod in i – where he sets the Inquisitor barred crossword several times a year – and The Independent. John, who has completed The Times’ notoriously difficult cryptic crossword in under three minutes, marked 40 years as a setter in 2018 and he is regarded as one of the best. ‘The trick with compiling a cryptic crossword is that you have to start with a completed grid and work backwards’ (Photo: Steve Bardens/Getty) “It was pretty awful, but I guess everyone needs to start somewhere.” “I cringe when I think about the first crossword I ever set,” he says. In fact, he had his first cryptic crossword published in The Guardian on 29 March 1979, aged just 16. She wasn’t prepared to take me on, but she did say she had enjoyed my crossword and told me I should write back in 10 years’ time.” John was just 11 when he sent his first grid to a national newspaper, with a letter from his father suggesting his son would make a good regular contributor. “Mum was also a bit of a crossword addict and she taught me some of the basic rules, like how setters use words like ‘confused’ or ‘rearranged’ to tell you when a clue is an anagram.” Words of wisdom “Unfortunately, he was dyslexic, so I would often correct his spellings and gradually I got the hang of solving the clues too.
“My dad ran a shop and whenever it was quiet he would get his copy of The Daily Telegraph from under the counter and do the cryptic crossword,” he says.
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