Sudoku could signal the end of an era for cryptic crossword
March 20, 2008
By The Independent
The cryptic crossword, known outside the UK as the British crossword, is a deviant language where "geg (9,3)" means scrambled egg, Presbyterians are not people but an anagram of Britney Spears, and HIJKLMNO is water (H to O).
Those who have discovered it are slaves for life. No other puzzle even approaches the beauty of its clues and the discreet, jubilant elevation of self-respect it inspires in a solver who arrives at the solution.
But the cryptic crossword is from another age. It has survived for about eight decades as a habitual corner in newspapers. Now, in a world obsessed with Sudoku, there is a fear that the cryptic crossword might not survive for long. It has been completely overshadowed by other puzzles.
There is more money to be won by solving Sudoku puzzles. In bookstores, too, Sudoku is taking up more space than the cryptic crossword.
Even before the arrival of Sudoku, the constituency of the crossword was being steadily depleted. Solvers were getting steadily older and the young did not seem to care.
Sandy Balfour, the crossword editor of The Guardian, admits: "The cryptic crossword is not as popular as it used to be." But, he adds, the quality of the puzzle is at its best today: probably never before have the cryptic clues been so beautiful, so tough and so amusing.
"The health of the crossword is very good," Balfour says. "But the future seems uncertain."
He is in the British Library, researching a forthcoming book on the history of Guardian crosswords. He is better known as the author of Pretty Girl in Crimson Rose (8): A Memoir of Love, Exile and Crosswords.
Balfour was a late entrant to the cryptic; he had graduated by the time his girlfriend showed him his first cryptic clue, "Pretty girl in crimson rose (8)".
The answer was rebelled: pretty girl (belle) in crimson (red) is re-belle-d, which also means rose, the past tense of rise. This clue is among the easier ones.
What would truly satisfy the addicted solver is to crack something like this: "In which three couples get together for sex (5)." The answer is LATIN because three couples equals six, and six is sex in Latin.
Mike Hutchinson, the crossword editor of The Independent, bears the mild disdain that most lovers of the cryptic have for Sudoku. "I can't remember a single thing I learnt from solving them," he says.
"I've learnt so much about the world just by solving the cryptic." And, of course, Sudoku cannot make you laugh like the cryptic can when, say, you discover "PM Tony Blair" is an anagram of "I'm Tory plan B".
Hutchinson is in Joe Allen's, near the Strand, waiting to lunch with the crossword editors of other papers. Colin Inman, the Financial Times crossword editor, a tall man with droopy eyes, arrives. He says in a deep, prophetic tenor, "The cryptic will never die. Sudoku will die."
But, increasingly, newspapers are finding Sudoku more convenient and rewarding. The Japanese puzzle gets generous sponsors easily and the number of Sudoku fans far outnumber adherents of the cryptic.
Even though the crossword has become a British institution, it is a very small enterprise. There are about 30 top crossword compilers, most of whom are celebrities among the devout solvers, and they are paid just £100 (R1634) to £200 per puzzle by the papers.
"Do not retire thinking you can make money by writing crossword puzzles," warns Hutchinson.
The compilers want to be remunerated for what they do, but they love the art of creating the cryptic crossword. "It's like playing in a football stadium," says John Halpern, also known as Punk. "And our game is to lose gracefully."
The world of the compilers is a parallel universe where a great old man called Araucaria is a living legend.
There is a galaxy of celebrities like Enigmatist, Nimrod, Pasquale, Bradman, Monk, Punk, Shed, Mudd and Virgilius. A single compiler may have several pseudonyms and will probably be popular under them all.
John Henderson has a following in The Guardian as Enigmatist and in The Independent as Nimrod. The shy lecturer in clinical psychology, at 44 one of the youngest compilers, once used the famous dying words of Lord Nelson to Thomas Hardy, "Kiss me, Hardy" as a clue to encode PECKING ORDER.
Another of his memorable clues: "The real reason for the meeting between Volkswagen and Daimler (6,6)." The answer is HIDDEN AGENDA because the word "agenda" is hidden in VolkswAGEN DAimler.
As Punk explains, "People who do Sudoku are people who haven't discovered the cryptic crossword yet."
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