Azed is a crossword which appears every Sunday in The Observer newspaper. Since it first appeared in March 1972, every puzzle has been composed by Jonathan Crowther who also judges the monthly clue-writing competition.[1] The pseudonym Azed is a reversal of (Fray Diego de) Deza, a Spanish inquisitor general. This combines the inquisitorial tradition of Torquemada and Ximenes (the two previous composers of the "advanced" Observer crossword) with the wordplay element of a British cryptic crossword.
It challenges its followers with a much higher proportion of obscure and archaic words and allusions to the Classics than would normally be found in a modern blocked puzzle, thus providing an extra aspect of difficulty for the seasoned cryptic solver. [2]
The 2000th Azed puzzle was published on 26 September 2010. The 500th competition puzzle was published on 1 August 2010.
The puzzle
The puzzle's barred grid signals a more extensive vocabulary than that of the usual cryptic crossword.[3] Up to half of the answers may be "dictionary words" [4] and its standard reference, The Chambers Dictionary, is an essential aid for most solvers.[5] However, a much lower percentage of unchecked letters[5] – those that appear in only one answer – helps to alleviate this, as does the rigour with which the clues are constructed. Azed is a strict Ximenean, a stickler for grammatical and syntactical soundness in clues.[1] This precision assists both the discovery of the right answer and the solver's confidence that it is correct. As is common with barred puzzles, when the solution is published it is accompanied by short notes to explain how the more difficult answers were derived from their clues.
At approximately six-weekly intervals, the crossword is a "special". In these there are special rules for solving the clues or entering the answers into the diagram. Many are composed to mark particular events and often use devices from other standard specials.
The competition
The clue-writing competitions, first started by Ximenes, take place on the first Sunday of each month and at Christmas.[5] To enter, solvers must complete the grid correctly and submit it with a cryptic clue of their own devising. For a plain puzzle, the clue-word is indicated by a simple definition. If the competition puzzle is a special, finding the clue-word may be part of the puzzle and frequently the submitted clue has to conform to the puzzle's particular conventions.[6]
Azed Prize Bookplate (Reg Boulton design)
The competition results are announced three weeks later. There are three prizes, each of a book token and an Azed bookplate, and the names of the prizewinners are published together with their clues. A further twenty or so names appear below – these solvers' clues have been "Very Highly Commended" (VHC). The First Prize winner is also sent the Azed Instant Victor Verborum Cup to hold for a month before passing it on to the next winner.[7] ("Instant" here means "of this month", as in "the 3rd instant".) For the Christmas Competition, the VHCs also receive prizes.
On non-competition weeks, book tokens are awarded to three solvers selected at random from the submitted grids.
Every year an "Honours List" is published showing the most consistent clue-writers over the course of the year. Each prize-winning clue earns its writer two points and each VHC clue one; clue-writers do not receive points for HC clues. Annual champions are entrusted with a silver salver for the length of their reign, before passing the trophy on to the next winner. Any competitor who has scored four points or more without receiving a prize gets a consolation prize. Currently, the Azed year commences in September and concludes in August.
The Azed Slip
The Azed Slip presents all the VHC clues in full and adds the names of about fifty "Highly Commended" solvers whose clues did not quite make it to the VHCs.. After the lists come Azed's comments, in which he may respond to reader comments, or reveal the problems that month's competitors experienced, often using anonymous unsound submissions to illustrate his points.[8] He also gives news of forthcoming cruciverbal events or publications, and deaths of long-standing competitors. Described in Chambers Crossword Manual as "Azed's Clue-writing School ", the slip has had a great influence on standards of cluemanship.[9]
↑ Words found in large dictionaries but rarely encountered elsewhere. They may be obsolete (e.g. preace), in a particular dialect (e.g. twichild), literary (e.g. forswonck), Biblical (e.g. five-square), technical (e.g. trecento), variant spellings (e.g. zho, zo dso, zhomo, dsomo, jomo, zobo, zobu and dsobo) or just unusual (e.g. carnifex)
1 2 3 D S MacNutt with A Robins (1966). Ximenes on the art of the crossword p. 136, p. 107, p. 131, p. 136, Methuen & Co Ltd, London; reissued 2001 by Swallowtail Books
↑ "The Legend of the Cup" at the end of the seventies was that during the IRA bombing campaign, a first-time First Prize winner who knew nothing about this custom received an unexpected parcel from Dublin - prudently, he carried it out onto his lawn and called in the Bomb Squad. Anthony Ellis at the Observer was told this story by both Azed and Don Manley and tracked down the recipient, Rear Admiral Ridley. He said that though it seemed possible that the IRA had picked his name out of Who's Who?, he had still opened the parcel himself - "very carefully at arms length.". Ref: Anthony Ellis Cup holds the clue The Observer Magazine (1 Nov 1981)
A crossword is a word puzzle that usually takes the form of a square or a rectangular grid of white- and black-shaded squares. The goal is to fill the white squares with letters, forming words or phrases that cross each other, by solving clues which lead to the answers. In languages that are written left-to-right, the answer words and phrases are placed in the grid from left to right ("across") and from top to bottom ("down"). The shaded squares are used to separate the words or phrases.
A cryptic crossword is a crossword puzzle in which each clue is a word puzzle. Cryptic crosswords are particularly popular in the United Kingdom, where they originated, Ireland, Israel, the Netherlands, and in several Commonwealth nations, including Australia, Canada, India, Kenya, Malta, New Zealand, and South Africa. Compilers of cryptic crosswords are commonly called "setters" in the UK and "constructors" in the US. Particularly in the UK, a distinction may be made between cryptics and "quick" crosswords, and sometimes two sets of clues are given for a single puzzle grid.
The Chambers Dictionary (TCD) was first published by William and Robert Chambers as Chambers's English Dictionary in 1872. It was an expanded version of Chambers's Etymological Dictionary of 1867, compiled by James Donald. A second edition came out in 1898, and was followed in 1901 by a new compact edition called Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary.
The Reverend John Galbraith Graham MBE was a British crossword compiler, best known as Araucaria of The Guardian. He was also, like his father Eric Graham, a Church of England priest.
Sudoku is a logic-based, combinatorial number-placement puzzle. In classic Sudoku, the objective is to fill a 9 × 9 grid with digits so that each column, each row, and each of the nine 3 × 3 subgrids that compose the grid contain all of the digits from 1 to 9. The puzzle setter provides a partially completed grid, which for a well-posed puzzle has a single solution.
The American Crossword Puzzle Tournament is a crossword-solving tournament held annually in February, March, or April. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 tournament was canceled. In April 2021, the 43rd tournament was held virtually. Founded in 1978 by Will Shortz, who still directs the tournament, it is the oldest and largest crossword tournament held in the United States; the 2019 event set an attendance record with 741 competitors, including over 200 rookies.
Games World of Puzzles is an American games and puzzle magazine. Originally the merger of two other puzzle magazines spun off from its parent publication Games magazine in the early 1990s, Games World of Puzzles was reunited with Games in October 2014.
The New York Times crossword puzzle is a daily American-style crossword puzzle published in The New York Times, online on the newspaper's website, syndicated to more than 300 other newspapers and journals, and on mobile apps.
Codex is a game show that aired on Channel 4 from 12 November 2006 to 15 December 2007 and was hosted by Tony Robinson.
Jonathan Crowther is a British crossword compiler who has for over 50 years composed the Azed cryptic crossword in The Observer Sunday newspaper. He was voted "best British crossword setter" in a poll of crossword setters conducted by The Sunday Times in 1991 and in the same year was chosen as "the crossword compilers' crossword compiler" in The Observer Magazine "Experts' Expert" feature.
A cross-figure is a puzzle similar to a crossword in structure, but with entries that consist of numbers rather than words, where individual digits are entered in the blank cells. The numbers can be clued in various ways:
Merl Harry Reagle was an American crossword constructor. For 30 years, he constructed a puzzle every Sunday for the San Francisco Chronicle, which he syndicated to more than 50 Sunday newspapers, including the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Seattle Times, The Plain Dealer, the Hartford Courant, the New York Observer, and the Arizona Daily Star. Reagle also produced a bimonthly crossword puzzle for AARP The Magazine magazine, a monthly crossword puzzle for the Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI, and puzzles for the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament.
Derrick Somerset Macnutt (1902–1971) was a British crossword compiler who provided crosswords for The Observer newspaper under the pseudonym Ximenes. His main oeuvre was blocked-grid and "specialty" puzzles. Even though he only provided conventional blocked puzzles once a week for the Observer Everyman series for about two years his strong views on clueing, expressed in his 1966 book, have been a source of debate in the cryptic crossword world ever since.
John Derek Crozier, under the pseudonym "Crosaire", was the compiler of the cryptic crossword in The Irish Times from its inception in 1943 until the year after his death. It was formally named "The Irish Times Crossword", as opposed to the non-cryptic "Simplex crossword" which was published alongside it from 1951. As Crozier was the sole cryptic compiler for 68 years, the crossword itself became known as "the Crosaire" by metonymy. The pseudonym "Crosaire" is a play on his own surname and crosaire, the Irish for "crossroad". After Crozier's death, The Irish Times formally renamed its cryptic crossword in his honour.
Roger Squires is a retired British crossword compiler/setter, living in Ironbridge, Shropshire, who is best known for being the world's most prolific compiler. He compiled under the pseudonym Rufus in The Guardian, Dante in The Financial Times and was the Monday setter for the Daily Telegraph.
Sir Christopher Jeremy Morse KCMG was an English banker, cruciverbalist and chess composer who was Chancellor of the University of Bristol from 1989 to 2003, and was chairman of Lloyds Bank.
John Halpern is a cryptic crossword compiler for newspapers including The Guardian, The Independent, The Times, the Daily Telegraph and The Financial Times.
Lollapuzzoola is a crossword-solving tournament held annually on a Saturday in August. Founded in 2008 by Brian Cimmet and Ryan Hecht, it is the second-largest crossword tournament in the United States, and the only major tournament in New York City. The term "Lollapuzzoola" was coined by Amanda Yesnowitz, as a play on the Lollapalooza music festival. Lollapuzzoola 15 took place online and in person on August 27, 2022, and was cohosted by Brian Cimmet, Brooke Husic, and Sid Sivakumar.
A Printer's Devilry is a form of cryptic crossword puzzle, first invented by Afrit in 1937. A Printer's Devilry puzzle does not follow the standard Ximenean rules of crossword setting, since the clues do not define the answers. Instead, each clue consists of a sentence from which a string of letters has been removed and, where necessary, the punctuation and word breaks in the clue rearranged to form a new more-or-less grammatical sentence. The challenge to the setter is to find the missing letters, which will spell out a word or phrase that should be entered into the grid.
People Puzzler is an American television game show hosted by Leah Remini and broadcast by Game Show Network. It premiered on January 18, 2021.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
