1 Across, F**k

Famously, the internal telephones at MI6 during the fifties and sixties were always busy for the first hour of the business day, as pipe smoking men with initials instead of names ‘phoned one another for assistance with the that day’s Times crossword.  That, at least, is how the story is reported in Peter Wright’s memoir ‘Spycatcher’.  One would hope, of course, that this is, if not an outright case of a writer being ‘economical with the truth’, then at least having the courtesy to disguise the real purpose of the exercise, that during those decades crosswords were used by the security services to, not as you might imagine communicate hidden messages to agents, but rather to keep Oxbridge Commie Pooftas preoccupied with matters cryptic rather than Cyrillic, and above all prevent them doing the will of their red paymasters.

I fucking hate crosswords.

And they hate me.

But I hate them more.

I am also truly awful at them.  This is possibly (probably) because I lack the education and the lateral thinking abilities to realise that ‘Trojans mince with alacrity’ means ‘Effervescence’, but is more likely the result of their being situated towards the back of the newspaper.  This means by the time you reach the crossword, you will have read about who has been doing what to whom on an international, national and personal scale.  Then it’s the horoscope ‘No chance of getting nine across today, you fuckwit’ and onto the puzzles.

When did the puzzles become so difficult?  Crosswords?  Sodyouto?  What happened to join the dots?

Get angrier and angrier and angrier, give up, turn page.  Sports.  Set controls for ‘incandescent’.

There are, it’s fair to say, different types of crosswords.  Mixed ability, so to speak.

General knowledge.  If you can answer three questions on round two of ‘Mastermind’ or any question, at all, in any series of ‘University Challenge’, this is the one for you.

Quick.  By far the most satisfying, but can go very wrong very quickly.  The thing about quick crosswords is that those that set them like to establish a theme.  So once you realise that all of the answers are the surnames of characters from the popular soap ‘Crossroads’, you’re away.  However, if the theme of the day is ‘something other than ‘Crossroads’’, you’re fucked.

Cryptic.  The only one that matters.  A proper crossword.  The clues are things like ‘Lakes sailed by cheeses’. And the answer will probably be something like ‘Buzz Aldrin’.

How?

How the fuck is that even possible?

I once went through a period (‘Moon river’ (6)) of buying a daily paper, keeping it, then the next day sitting with the crossword, and the solution, to see if I could work out how ‘angry owls’ becomes ‘defenestrates’.

The answer?  It fucking doesn’t!  I am now convinced that the cryptic crossword is a ruse perpetrated on us by people, and I’m not saying they are all working in the intelligence community, to do two things.  To keep us busy, and to keep us in our place.

That’s why I make a point of, just now and again, picking up a copy of ‘The Times’ and, in the space of a ten minute train journey, ‘completing’ the crossword while chuckling to myself.

Of course I don’t, I’m not fucking insane.  But I would be, if I had to work out what ‘Woodland folk’s banquet, enjoyed quietly’ (9) means.  (I check the next day, the answer was ‘Archbishop’.  ‘TWF!’ (Anag.)).

Of course I admire the mental agility of the sort of people who set these things.  And indeed those that solve them.  But I can’t help but think that they are in competition with one another, or even cahoots (Mr Toad’s exclamation! (7)) and that the whole thing is a male-dominated attempt to find the dominant male, judged on who has the biggest lexicon.

That being the case, the only setter I continue to look on with favour is a red one, and until the news gets so unpalatable that they start using cryptic clues for headlines, I’ll leave the puzzles to men who measure their masculinity by how hard a clue is, and how long it takes them to solve it.