KEY POINTS:
The cryptic 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 when he or she 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 newly obsessed with Sudoku, there is a fear the cryptic crossword might not survive.
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 puzzles is at its best today: probably never before have the cryptic clues been so beautiful, so tough and so amusing.
Balfour, better known as the author of Pretty Girl in Crimson Rose (8): A Memoir of Love, Exile and Crosswords, 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, though entertaining, is among the easier ones. What would truly satisfy the hopelessly 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 Sudoku cannot make you laugh like the cryptic can when you discover PM Tony Blair is an anagram of I'm Tory Plan B".
Like most of us, the compilers want to be remunerated for what they do, but they love the art of creating the cryptic crossword more. "It's like playing in a football stadium," says John Halpern, also known as Punk. "And our game is to lose gracefully."
John Henderson, a 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.
Increasingly, he is being asked to create the cryptic as a gift. "A girl contacted me to write a crossword about her parents for their 50th wedding anniversary."
Don Manley, also known as Pasquale, Quixote and Bradman, says, "We are not drawing in that bright schoolboy or schoolgirl any more." But he is optimistic. "People used to say that the churches will be finished once all the old ladies died. But then the young girls became little old ladies."
- Independent
