Jonathan Crowther

Jonathan Crowther is a British crossword compiler who has for over 45 years composed the Azed cryptic crossword in The Observer Sunday newspaper. He was voted "best British crossword setter" in a poll of crossword setters conducted by The Sunday Times in 1991 and in the same year was chosen as "the crossword compilers' crossword compiler" in The Observer Magazine "Experts' Expert" feature.

He was born in Liverpool in 1942, the son of a doctor, and grew up in Kirkby Lonsdale in the Lake District. He was educated at Rugby School before going on to read classics and classical philology at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. From there, in 1964, he joined Oxford University Press and he worked for them, in India, London, and Oxford, until his retirement in early 2000. His final position was as a lexicographer writing dictionaries for foreign students of English. Married with two sons, he lives in Oxford.

Encouraged by his father, Jonathan enjoyed solving crosswords from an early age. He caught the Ximenes bug while still at Rugby and "just lived for Sundays" thereafter. His first puzzles to be published were in the university weekly, Varsity, under the pseudonym Gong and after leaving university he started submitting to The Listener. They published sixteen Gong puzzles between June 1965 and February 1972. He continued to be a Ximenes competitor until Ximenes' death in 1971.

Appointed as Ximenes' successor, he cast around for a new pseudonym. His two predecessors had taken theirs from Spanish inquisitors-general but none of the names remaining seemed suitably impressive. However, reversing the last name of one, Diego de Deza, gives (to British ears at least) the first and last letters of the alphabet. Letter manipulation and word reversal are integral parts of a cryptic crossword: thus Azed was born. Azed No. 1 appeared in The Observer in March 1972 and monthly clue-writing competitions à la Ximenes resumed. These still continue and in the monthly "slip", he gives details of each competition and discusses points of technique and more general interest relating to his puzzles. He relishes the dialogue the competitions generate and many regular solvers have become his friends. Among the technical comments can sometimes be found glimpses into his private life – he is very interested in cricket and less so in football … he took part in a performance of Haydn's Nelson Mass at Radley College … one of his sons is a rock musician. Interesting in their own right, these snippets are seized on by the more cunning competitors as ways to make their clues more appealing to the judge and so increase their chances of success.

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