The weekly Crosaire began on March 13th, 1943 after an encounter in a Fleet Street bar, writes LORNA KERNAN
DEREK CROZIER was always charming to work with, a gentle man with a clipped voice who began his sentences with the old-fashioned “Now my dear . . .”
He must be the longest-lasting contributor to The Irish Times, having supplied his Crosaire crosswords for just over 67 years. He must also have been the most senior, at age 92.
This is the end of a unique era: one of tapping out words on a manual typewriter, with carbon paper copies and hard copy arriving at various intervals from Zimbabwe in brown envelopes marked by hand with “surface mail” and “printed matter”, reminiscent of an earlier time.
His cryptic puzzles were a microcosm of his marriage to Marjorie – she the avid crossword solver who, until her death, filled in grids with words, he the reluctant cruciverbalist who took her words and moulded them with clever clues.
The story began in December 1941, when Derek’s goddaughter gave him a present of a book of crosswords. Even though he didn’t do crosswords, he decided after a few days that he would “have a go”, only to discover that Marjorie had solved the lot.
"Right," he said. "Now I'll make you up one that you won't be able to solve." And he did. Later on, he woke her in the middle of the night and suggested offering crosswords to The Irish Times. She told him not to be silly and to go back to sleep. This was all the rag he needed: "Right," he said, "I'll show her."
At Christmas Eve drinks in 1942 with Jack White in the Pearl Bar in Fleet Street, he boldly approached then editor of The Irish Times, Bertie Smyllie, and his deputy, Alec Newman, to offer his expertise and, after a few samples were approved, the weekly Saturday Crosaire began on March 13th, 1943. Wednesdays were added in 1950, Tuesdays in 1955, and the go-ahead for today's six-day formula came in 1982.
The crosswords took three to four hours to complete, with Crozier’s workload set at one and a bit a day. Poignantly, it was on Good Friday last, while conjuring up his last one, that he became ill.
Those who were frustrated with his clues often contacted me, not in outrage but more in search of a reasoning behind his answers, or asking when we were running the Crosaire how-to guide again.
As far as the philosophy of the genre went, cruciverbalists were a mystery to Derek, who always admitted he never in fact did crosswords. He couldn’t ever solve them. If he was presented with one of his own creations after a decent interval, he was floored and couldn’t solve it either.
Living in Zimbabwe, correspondence with The Irish Timeswasn't easy. Yet his familiar brown envelopes always seemed to arrive well in time, emblazoned with different postage stamps including Irish, English and South African. Some were marked "by hand" and were delivered to The Irish Timesoffices in person.
Derek always found someone – friends, friends of friends, and friends of Crosaire itself – to take his envelopes and post them safely. Such was his fear of not getting them to the office in time for publication that he worked ahead, with military regularity, and has ensured there is a bag of Crosaire crosswords to publish for at least the next 12 months.
Derek was always surprised and delighted at how popular his crosswords were, and how interested his fans were in him. He was worried when we began to supply answers to his crosswords by telephone and fax. I never did tell him that today the answers can be accessed by mobile phone.
He was amazed at the web and the Crosaire blogs propagating his fan-base across continents, where fans met to discuss Crosaire clues.
He declined to co-operate with a documentary-maker from Ireland who wanted to travel to Zimbabwe to interview him and document his life. He was primarily concerned that a journalist arriving with all the equipment to film and record him might be put in danger.
After all, who would have believed she was doing a story on an old crossword compiler? When a friend of mine was travelling to Zimbabwe last January, I asked Derek if there was anything I could send him. “Yes, my dear . . . well, that’s if they still make them. A couple of erasers; the ones that would do ink. That would be lovely, my dear.”
Lorna Kernan is The Irish TimesCrossword Editor