Related Research Articles
Norman Colin Dexter was an English crime writer known for his Inspector Morse series of novels, which were written between 1975 and 1999 and adapted as an ITV television series, Inspector Morse, from 1987 to 2000. His characters have spawned a sequel series, Lewis, and a prequel series, Endeavour.
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, 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.
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.
The Old Vicarage in the Cambridgeshire village of Grantchester is a house associated with the poet Rupert Brooke, who lived nearby and in 1912 referenced it in an eponymous poem – The Old Vicarage, Grantchester.
Don Manley is a long-serving setter of crosswords in the UK. He has supplied puzzles for the Radio Times, The Spectator, Today, The Independent, The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, and the Financial Times and the Sunday Times among others. He is crossword editor of Church Times.
Colonel Rosa Klebb is a fictional character, the main antagonist in the James Bond 1957 novel and 1963 film From Russia with Love, in which she is played by Lotte Lenya. She is a Soviet counter-intelligence operative.
Robert Smithies was a British photographer, journalist and crossword compiler. He was born in Middleton, near Rochdale, Lancashire.
The New York Times crossword puzzle is a daily 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.
Jonathan Crowther is a British crossword compiler who has for over 45 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.
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. The pseudonym Azed is a reversal of Deza, a Spanish inquisitor general. This combines the inquisitorial tradition of Torquemada and Ximenes with the wordplay element of a British cryptic crossword.
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.
Ruth Crisp (1918–2007) was one of The Guardian's most noted crossword compilers – producing puzzles for them from 1954 to 2004. She also produced crosswords for The Daily Telegraph, The Times, The Independent, the Financial Times, The Sunday Times, and other publications. Crisp's favourite clue of her own creation was: Men's my one failing, (9). The solution is Mnemosyne.
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.
William Lutwiniak was an American crossword constructor who was also known for his work as a cryptologist with the National Security Agency. He composed a total of 8,413 puzzles; his first five thousand were composed between 1965 and 1985, as a hobby.
"The Riddle of the Sphinx" is the third episode of the third series of the British dark comedy anthology television programme Inside No. 9. It first aired, on BBC Two, on 28 February 2017. The episode was written by the programme's creators, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith, and directed by Guillem Morales. "The Riddle of the Sphinx", which is set in Cambridge, stars Alexandra Roach as Nina, a young woman seeking answers to the Varsity cryptic crossword, Pemberton as Professor Nigel Squires, who pseudonymously sets the crossword using the name Sphinx, and Shearsmith as Dr Jacob Tyler, another Cambridge academic. The story begins with Nina surreptitiously entering Squires's rooms on a stormy night and being discovered; this leads to Squires teaching her how to decipher clues in cryptic crosswords.
References
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Shuchi (26 February 2013). "Interview: Sarah Hayes (Arachne)". Crossword Unclued. Retrieved 2 March 2017.
- ↑ Sarah Whittall (1985). A Study of English Nautical Loanwords in the Russian Language of the Eighteenth Century. ISBN 3820488782.
- 1 2 3 4 5 Alan Connor (2 February 2012). "Crossword blog: meet the setter – Arachne". The Guardian. Retrieved 2 March 2017.
- ↑ Alan Connor (15 March 2012). "Crossword blog: webchat with Arachne". The Guardian. Retrieved 2 March 2017.
- ↑ "David Baddiel Tries to Understand, Series 1, Cryptic Crosswords". BBC. 14 January 2015. Retrieved 2 March 2017.
- ↑ Arachne. "Remember the setter is trying to mislead you". BBC. Retrieved 2 March 2017.
- ↑ Amy Glendenning (17 September 2009). "Give us a clue ..." Manchester Evening News. Retrieved 2 March 2017.
- ↑ "100 down as the crossword celebrates its centenary". Channel 4 . 21 December 2013. Retrieved 2 March 2017.
- ↑ "Guardian 26,859 – Arachne". Fifteen Squared. 15 April 2016. Retrieved 2 March 2017.
- ↑ Shuchi (1 June 2011). "Fascinating Facts about Setters' Pseudonyms". Crossword Unclued. Retrieved 2 March 2017.
| General | |
|---|---|
| National libraries | |
