Madam, - Congratulations to Derek Crosier and his Crosaire achievement. I remember doing the first Crosaire and agree with him that it is "vanishingly improbable" that there are very many of us left. I was a young civil servant in the Department of Local Government in the early 1940s and I had to work on a Saturday morning, as was normal at the time. The Irish Times published Crosaire only on Saturdays and, with little work given to us to do, solving the clues was consolation for having to go to work on that day.
The crossword next appeared on a Wednesday and then on every second day of the week, by which time I was married and no longer working. These days the crossword is done before the news is read.
Any chance of reintroducing the Monday Literary Competition? - Yours, etc.,
MARY O'DOWD, Villiers Road, Dublin 6.