According to John Finnemore, the comedian and crossword compiler (he sets the Times Listener crossword under the pseudonym “Emu”), Crowther has been the crowning glory of a 96-year triumvirate of Observer crossword setters.

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. [1]. 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] Annual champions [ edit ] Crowther himself is characteristically modest about the achievement, but it’s hard to make a comparison for that kind of consistency, because so few exist. After all, Melvyn Bragg gets a two-month summer break on In Our Time, while Polly Toynbee is from time to time “away”. That’s not a word that anyone would use to describe Crowther’s work. Wheen speaks of “the consistent high standards of wit and elegance running through the entire oeuvre”, of a voice so distinctive that he feels he’s come to know the man through his clue-writing. Crowther himself demurs when I ask him what his own favourite is from the many thousands of clues he’s compiled down the years, preferring instead to praise the “staggering brilliance” of some of his readers in the competitions he runs.The thought of Azed’s curious grid-full of cryptic letters coming to an end would make a lot of lads – and a few lasses – very sad indeed. Thankfully, Crowther, who turns 80 later this year, has no plans to quit just yet. He will continue his weekly routine of drawing out the blank pattern, then filling it in with words and, finally, the most demanding part of the job, coming up with the clues. Heald testifies to Crowther’s masterly use of the “&lit” form of the clue, which combines definition and wordplay in a seamless whole. One example he gives is “My letters could make lad sad”. The answer is “Lass”, which is both definitional – a lass’s letters could make a lad sad – and wordplay, “L as s” means that lad becomes sad. Don Manley (2006) Chambers Crossword Manual (4th Ed) p. 208-216, "Azed's Clue-writing School", Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, ISBN 978-0-550-10220-1, ISBN 0-550-10220-5

It might be thought that crossword compiling is an obscure line of work. But the extraordinary recent success of Wordle shows that there is a widespread appetite for word puzzles. If that online test is at the easy end of the spectrum, at the other end is the mysterious and rather daunting world of cryptic crosswords. Even the names of the setters are intimidating. 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.Crowther met him at the Oxford literary festival some years ago, where Frayn was giving a talk. When Crowther introduced himself as Frayn was signing books, the author jumped to his feet, beaming with a big smile, and declared that Crowther was not at all how he had imagined him. Then turning to his wife and fellow author Claire Tomalin, he said: “Darling, this is the chap who you say ruins your Sundays.” Despite such lifestyle diversity, the large majority of serious crossword competitors are male and most are never going to see 50 again. Wheen described a character named Richard Heald, who has won the annual clue-writing competition eight times, as “the voice of youth”.

Crowther says that people send him their research on trying to program computers to write cryptic clues. “Without exception, they are pretty useless. There’s no real-world knowledge there. No humour and I think you have to have a sense of humour, otherwise it would be dreary.” On no less than 2,594 occasions over the past five decades, Crowther has set the cryptic crossword that, among aficionados of the form, is recognised as the finest in the field. In 1991, he was voted “best British crossword setter” in a Sunday Times poll and the same year earned the title of “the crossword compilers’ crossword compiler” in the Observer Magazine’s Experts’ Expert feature.The late Colin Dexter, author of the Morse books, was another keen, and rather successful, crossword-solver, winning a number of competitions. He also became a good friend of Crowther’s. The journalist and writer Francis Wheen is yet another devotee. He says he came relatively late to the party, towards the end of the last century. Up until that point, he’d done the normal cryptic crosswords, but had thought of Azed as looking “a bit weird for the likes of me”. You don’t want to be satisfied with a second-rate clue,” says Crowther. “If it doesn’t please me, I’ll scrap it.” On non-competition weeks, book tokens are awarded to three solvers selected at random from the submitted grids. 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.

He would also no doubt win the title as the most dependable, not just in terms of the standards he maintains, but also when it comes to attendance. Across the entire five decades of his stint, regardless of holidays, illness, the birth of his two sons or the kinds of crises that affect every family, he has not missed a single week in which the newspaper has been published. a b c 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

Macnutt’s own death – only mortality appears to stop crossword compilers – created another vacancy. Having overcome his reservations, Wheen wished he’d started earlier. For many years before the advent of phone apps, he found himself lugging around a hefty Chambers dictionary, deemed essential for crosswords.