Give us a clue

"They love the ambiguities of English - words which sound the same but have different meanings and spellings, or are spelt the same but pronounced differently - and they have a facility for seeing words not as solid pieces of language, but as made up of parts. Their hearts lift at the recognition that Britney Spears' is an anagram of Presbyterian'!"

Many of the setters in his book can remember a specific occasion on which the potential of this gift for amusement and a peculiar intellectual satisfaction suddenly became apparent.

For Bunthorne' of The Guardian, writes Crowther, it was his realisation that the label on a bottle of vinegar made by the Gartons family could be read backwards to produce a word rather appealing to his schoolboy sense of humour.

Crowther's own enthusiasm for cryptic clues began at five. Though he's lived in Oxford for many years, he was born in Liverpool and brought up in rural Westmorland. "My father was a doctor and I used to go with him on his rounds. He would leave the paper in the car with me while he went off to see Farmer George, and I'd try a couple of clues, then he'd come back and explain them.

"I was a quick learner - temperamentally suited to it. My wife says I always notice oddities, like the place-name Bricklehampton' we pass on the way to the West Country. It has 14 letters, none of which are repeated.

"While I was at prep school, and then Rugby, I graduated through the newspapers until, in the sixth form, I came across Ximenes' in The Observer. I was an instant convert. I recognised someone several cuts above anyone else in terms of wit, humour and challenge.

"I did his crossword through Cambridge, and then in India, where I was sent by the Oxford University Press as a trainee for a couple of years. I entered his monthly competitions for a clue to a given answer, had a few successes, and met him twice, at the regular gatherings he held for his solvers every 250 puzzles. I also started to set puzzles myself, which I submitted to The Listener.

"Some time after I returned to London Ximenes died. There was a great hole in my life. I thought Crumbs! What am I going to do with my Sunday?

"I sent The Observer an In Memoriam crossword, in the shape of a large X. They accepted it and asked whether I would be interested in taking on the job!

"It was a big decision. I was 29 and just getting going in publishing - but I started in March 1972 and haven't missed a week. When I was first married I used to get up at 5.30am and do a couple of hours in the dark before I went to the day job.

"Getting the grid - which has bars at the end of words, not black boxes, so every cell has a letter in it - is the quickest part. Word filling comes next. Anything goes as long as it appears in the Good Book'."

By this he means not the Bible, but Chambers Dictionary. Friends have suggested that his treacherous weekly recommendation of a rival volume was one reason he never got to the highest echelons of lexicography at the OUP before retiring in 2000.

Devising clues, using a spread of the nine varieties he outlines in the book's Introduction, takes five or six hours.

"My clues fit one line of type - I don t like to ramble on. I try very hard not to be boring and I like to inject a sense of humour. It can be quite earthy; I don't mind a bit of smut!

"My puzzles are towards the top end of difficulty. I make solvers struggle - the idea is to mislead them just a bit before the penny drops - but I want them to win, and to have fun."

Crowther carries on the Ximenean tradition of scrupulous fairness through accuracy of meaning and syntactical discipline (the appreciation of which was reinforced by his undergraduate classical studies). He maintains the monthly competition, with its newsletter discussing the winners' solutions, and the gatherings every five years.

His choice of pseudonym was also related to Ximenes, and his predecessor at The Observer, Torquemada, these two being the names of Spanish inquisitors general. Azed, conveniently and delightfully, is a reversal of another: Deza (Fray Diego de Deza in full).

The potted biography' section has many equally beguiling stories about the adoption of pseudonyms; for example those of the Oxford setter Don Manley, whose aliases are other Dons, including Quixote, Bradman and Duck.

As well as 50 puzzles (with solutions, thank goodness) exemplifying individual compilers' styles, Crowther is not averse to the odd tease in the text itself, such as his reference to the appealing anagram of setter John Grimshaw's name: charming, if shrewd, joker', which leaves the reader to work out the middle one.

The inclusion of setters' own favourites among the clues they come across while trying to keep up with the competition can be taxing to the non-expert (speaking personally). Some, though, such as Unsuitable subject for oral examination' (GIFT HORSE), will make even the layman chuckle, as will the aforementioned Bunthorne's treasured anagram: "I.e. what oil-sheik said cheekily unto girl in gin palace", which becomes "What is a nice girl like you doing in a place like this, eh?"

The inclusion of girl' in both versions might be a subject of debate between the Ximenean' and libertarian' schools of crossword setting. Crowther welcomes such discussion. "Not everybody agrees with me and sometimes they write and say so. It's a thoroughly healthy dialogue."

The doing of crosswords goes back about a century, and there's a growing mass of scattered material reflecting the work of distinguished setters.

"Don Manley and I are keen to set up a National Archive" says Crowther. "When leading setters go to the Great Setter in the Sky, they leave behind some fascinating stuff. If nothing's done, there's a risk it will all be chucked out."

Despite this concern, and his delight in the discovery of a new word, or the construction of a particularly elegant puzzle, Crowther has a nicely balanced view of the crossword's place in the wider scheme of things.

"Crosswords are part of my life but they're not the be-all and end-all. I had a solver once who was very earnest and serious. In an unguarded moment I replied to his admiring letter that it was just a game. He got quite upset and said it was an art form - but crosswords are fairly ephemeral when it comes down to it."

Readers of his most enjoyable book will judge for themselves how far this is true.