Alan Connor turns the tables on the torturers. In the spotlight this time is Tom Johnson – also known as Doc, Gozo, Didymus, Twudge, Busman …
Tom Johnson is a setter whose puzzling seemingly cannot be constrained. He sets for Fleet Street and for magazines including the New Statesman and the Cricketer. He sets cryptics and general-knowledge puzzles, including Prospect's fearsome Generalist. He is the editor of the Spectator crossword and of 1 Across magazine.
And he sets for two monthly county magazines, a bimonthly Scottish magazine and publications such as the Puzzler, Puzzle Compendium, Chat Crosswords and Chat Crosswords Select.
Tom has had a quiet influence on British crosswording for some time, and it's about time that we met the setter.
Hello Doc. How did you get involved with crosswords?
I am a Brummie and my parents regularly solved the Reader's Crossword in the Birmingham Mail. They explained definitional puzzles to me and what, for instance, "anagram" meant – I was only about eight years old.
I was soon bitten by the crossword bug and began submitting puzzles for possible publication. One of the Mail's crossword editors provided me with guidance when he realised how young I was. My first published puzzle was in this series, during my O-level year at King Edward's school, Birmingham, and I still recall how impressed my English teacher was.
Which other setters do you admire?
I recall attempting to solve cryptics from the age of about 14, usually in the Guardian, with school friends. It was very much a case of trying to solve a puzzle and looking at the solution the next day in an attempt to understand what we had missed.
Remember that this was before the books Ximenes on the Art of the Crossword and Alec Robins's Teach Yourself Crosswords had been published. Once compilers' pseudonyms appeared in the Guardian puzzles I realised that Araucaria's thematic puzzles were what I had been enjoying the most and this style of crossword was to influence my career.
Bunthorne's puzzles remained impenetrable to me for a long time, but I loved to look at his solutions in an effort to crack his style. He became a good friend when he compiled for 1 Across magazine.
As a teenager I attempted a weekly cryptic by Leslie Stokes; again the learning process was to the fore. I still recall solving "It can cause an interruption to services (6-3)" and realising for the first time how one can "play" with English.
In the 70s Jac's puzzles in the Spectator were formative – of my solving ability and of my understanding of what a thematic cryptic crossword was and how cryptic clueing was done. I got to know Jac: we met once, probably one of the few occasions when he did meet other compilers, and towards the end of the decade, I championed his puzzles whenever I could in print. He then invited me to join the Spectator compiling team in 1981.
Among today's compilers, Michael Curl (Orlando/Cincinnus) stands out. His puzzles never fail to delight me. His clues are witty, concise and always "paint a lovely picture". Most especially, Michael is a wizard anagram-maker. His regular Saturday puzzles in the FT are a testimony to his greatness.
But I have to put Lavatch at the top of my list of present-day inspirational compilers. I am very proud to claim that I "discovered" Lavatch about 10 years ago when he submitted a few unsolicited cryptic puzzles to 1 Across magazine. I knew immediately that Lavatch was going places.
It wasn't long before I invited him to join the Spectator team. His erudition, expertise in working a complex theme into a puzzle and his smooth and elegant clueing style mark him as the doyen of the younger British setters.
I'll give the answer to that clue at the end. How did you choose your pseudonyms? And do they have different characteristics?
I have never thought of this being the case. It is true that a Doc puzzle is very different from a Didymus puzzle, but my pseudonyms merely differentiate my various regular commitments. I haven't consciously thought that I adapt my style to suit each of the different newspapers and magazines for which I compile.
Doc is a snappy three-letter name to mirror Jac's importance in my career, as well as acknowledging the happy coincidence of my surname and Dr Samuel Johnson. Didymus was my second (therefore "twin") pseudonym, for my Generalist puzzles in Prospect.
My three other pseudonyms derive from my abiding interest in bus operations. When Colin Inman invited me to join the new team of FT Polymath compilers, I was on holiday on Gozo conducting research for my book about Maltese and Gozitan buses. This happy coincidence saw the birth of Gozo. When the Toughie series started, Busman was created; a few years later Otterden invited me to join him as joint compiler for the New Statesman crosswords and, on the insistence of the family, I became Anorak!
What have you done for a living besides writing crosswords?
I was a modern language teacher at a local secondary school for over 30 years; during 20 of them I was also the school's examination officer, responsible for all aspects of the school's internal and external exams.
Where do you create your puzzles?
I work from home in south Cheshire, either compiling crosswords or, to a lesser extent, proofreading puzzle magazines. My wife Jean works full-time too but vice versa: proofreading more, compiling less.
We work in our office, often with our cat sitting alongside us on our desk, or in the dining room. Working in a public place, whether it be a library, cafe or pub, wouldn't suit us.
What are the tools of your trade?
List books, reference books and dictionaries line our office: Chambers, Collins, Oxford, language dictionaries, Brewer's various publications, ODQ, crossword dictionaries, biographical dictionaries, atlases and numerous paperback reference books from Oxford and Chambers.
I use the Crossword Compiler program more as an adjunct to my compiling than as my first port of call. I create the grid using CC, but the actual compiling is carried out using books and the words are then entered into the CC grid; I rarely use CC's word lists as my preliminary reference source. Only towards the end of compilation (especially with a Generalist) will I consult the CC's word lists, when all other reference books have done their bit.
What's your favourite of your own clues or puzzles?
In the Spectator in particular, I have probably devised clues that I thought were good at the time, but all are soon forgotten. I have never recorded them in a notebook. I have recently tackled long "&lit" anagrams for the first time, in my Cricketer puzzles and a recent New Statesman puzzle. These have been great fun and very satisfying when they succeed. The NS puzzle contained these two anagrams which respectively lead to the first two lines of Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard:
Poet refers to nightfall (Duly thank clew)
Old Holstein wander. Where will they go?
As for favourite puzzles: my most recent Generalist is always my favourite until the next one, because I get a great kick out of creating a difficult and heavily cross-checked grid with as many interesting long words as possible.
One Spectator puzzle stands out from the 500 or so I have compiled. It was entitled Your Starter For 10. The
solution at 10 down was UNDER MILK WOOD and the unclued lights were the opening words of the radio play: "To begin at the beginning …", and so on -- all compiled on one of our standard Spectator grids!
How would you describe 1 Across magazine to any weekday solvers considering making the leap?
It is a privately published subscriber-only magazine created by Araucaria just over 30 years ago. It contains a mixture of two original Araucaria puzzles, a specially commissioned prize puzzle and puzzles by aspiring amateur compilers.
In addition to Lavatch, I have encouraged and championed Gaff, Chalicea, Aardvark/Scorpion and Boatman. They are all now established compilers in national newspapers, but they all started with us!
The magazine is a pleasant mix of a challenging puzzle or two and, some less demanding items and a couple of pages of The Editor's Musings where I waffle on about crossword events, review books and comment on crossword milestones or anything that tickles my fancy.
Has increased internet use changed the way you think about your demanding knowledge-based puzzles?
Not so much as many would suspect, I reckon. Since much of my compiling is undertaken using books as reference tools, I remain confident that my puzzles can be solved without resorting to websites. Having said that, I know that many Generalist solvers go online to solve my puzzles and (unfairly?) exchange solutions with one another. That disappoints me, as it removes the personal challenge. (But then I am the Victor Meldrew of south Cheshire.)
I imagine that setting for the Cricketer – formerly known as the Wisden Cricketer – might allow a setter to plunge deep into sometimes abstruse cricketing lore – is that the case?
Many younger readers attempt the puzzles, I have been told, so I aim to remain fair to them. I make a point of keeping the principal cricketing references in each puzzle as contemporary or as well-known as possible. Only once have the demands of the cross-checking letters meant that I have resorted to a recherché reference: a Yorkshire batsman of the 1890s!
My clues are always as precise and as clear as possible with details of the county and/or country a cricketer played for in the definition of his name. So "Botham" would not be clued just as "all-rounder", but as "Somerset and England all-rounder". And all the solutions in each puzzle which are not cricket-orientated must have clues which include a cricketer reference.
One quirky aspect of all my puzzles so far is that the name of a Warwickshire cricketer has appeared in each, preferably as a solution rather than in a clue.
Is a propensity to play games with words ever a nuisance to yourself or others?
Far from it. As a family we enjoy playing games with words; puns and nonsense terms are part of our daily conversations and emails with one another. We have silly pet names for one another which have stuck with us for years and all of them are really quite cleverly contrived!
How do you imagine a solver of your crosswords?
Someone who is ready for a challenge with a store of reference books at his or her side. My solvers should have tea and coffee readily available during the day, a glass of wine alongside in the evening and a cat walking through, trying to help in its own way.
If you weren't a setter and editor, what would you be?
Fully retired, and extremely bored.
Understood and many thanks to Tom for the wide-ranging tour! Full details and a sample issue of 1 Across are available by sending a C5 SAE to 1 Across, The Old Chapel, Middleton Tyas, Richmond, North Yorkshire DL10 6PP. And "It can cause an interruption to services (6-3)" is TENNIS-NET.
Alan Connor
guardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds