‘FT solvers tend not to mind the risqué clues’

Spurred by their popularity on digital devices and the benefits that medical studies have found they can have on mental health, puzzles have been having an extraordinary renaissance. For Colin Inman, the FT crossword editor for over four decades, the buzz is appreciated, if possibly slightly perplexing — after all, crosswords have been his life for some 70 years.

“I used to solve cryptic crosswords at the back of the class at school,” the 84-year-old says. “It was just a words thing, I was looking for a diversion.”

Cryptic crosswords have been his living for half his life. He became the FT’s crossword editor in 1979 and commissioned, polished and published more than 13,000 puzzles until his retirement late last year.

He inherited three compilers — one a Wimbledon umpire whose cryptics didn’t impress Inman, another who soon quit after getting a job teaching bridge on cruises. Forty-two years later, he bequeathed a roster of more than 30 compilers — an eclectic group including a heart surgeon, an oil pipeline construction worker and a drystone wall builder. Some make a living out of cryptics and other puzzles. Many fit setting around their regular working day. Each of them appears in the FT crossword slot with a moniker only they can explain — Mudd, Gozo, Flimsy, Gaff, Slormgorm, Moo, Phssthpok among them.

All of them understood the standards Inman expected from an FT cryptic puzzle. “I greatly respected his no-nonsense honesty and direct approach,” says Mark Kelmanson, who compiles for the FT under the pseudonym Monk.

John Halpern (Mudd) was told when he began setting for the FT that Inman was “bluff and amiable”. His approach to setters was to be “delightfully hands-off and trusting. Colin simply enjoyed his work, which made our jobs so much easier.”

Dozens of would-be setters sampled the bluff side of Inman, however. Their puzzles, though technically sound, invariably fell short of the standards he expected. “You turn down setters because they don’t inspire you,” Inman says.

The better setters are those who make a clue read naturally, known in the trade as a “surface” clue — for example, “Peer has some admirable qualities (5)”.  Many setters spurned by Inman took umbrage. “I have turned away dozens of men, some who have had an overinflated idea of their merit. I have turned away very few women.”

The FT, somewhat late to the idea of crosswords, published its first puzzle in March 1966, the same day the paper launched a daily guide to flat racing and reported that the World Cup trophy, on display in Central Hall, Westminster, ahead of the football tournament being held in England that summer, had been stolen.

More than 30 years later, the widow of a City of London managing director wrote to Inman: “My husband complained to his chairman, who was on the board of the FT, about having to buy two newspapers — The Times for the crossword and the FT for his information re the City. Some time after the complaint, lo and behold, a crossword in the FT.”

On a return visit last month to Bracken House, the FT’s postwar City HQ which it vacated in the 1980s before returning in 2019, Inman recalls the FT bar, which had waitress service; how compilers used to dictate their puzzles to copytakers, which were then typeset during lunch; and the volume of reader complaints when the crossword was once moved off the back page.

He spurned the crossword rules or conventions familiar in other papers. “They get a lot of complaints about things their readers regard as non-PC. FT solvers tend not to mind the risqué clues,” he says.

He accepted clues involving cricket, but drew a line at football and golf. Thematic crosswords are fine. “We are probably the only paper to have marked Swan Upping”, the annual ceremony on the Thames. This weekend’s cryptic crossword, printed below, is themed in tribute to Inman.

Not one to heap praise on compilers, he took the view that publication in the FT was all the approval they needed. Two exceptions are Bert Danher, who set for the FT as Dinmutz and often made music his theme. His cousin, Sir Paul McCartney, wrote to the Daily Telegraph following its obituary about his pride in Bert’s compiling.

The other is the Rev John Graham, Cinephile in the FT. “He once did a puzzle on synonyms of the police — not just the usual derogatory terms. No one commented. I think the puzzle was in response to a driving offence — he tended to handle roundabouts uncertainly. He pushed the boundaries more than anyone else. He did themed puzzles on things you wouldn’t imagine — female whodunnit writers, poets, soap, pig products.” As Araucaria in the Guardian, the Reverend Graham used the clues in one puzzle to announce he was dying of cancer.  

Regarding the future of cryptic crosswords, Inman has supreme confidence, not just because of the growth in interest in word puzzles, but because of their intrinsic complexity. Most crossword bloggers regard the FT as being of middling difficulty, compared to other papers. Many readers find cryptic clues too hard, regardless of the degree of difficulty.

That’s too bad, says Inman, who established the FT’s fearsome weekly general knowledge crossword (he called it Polymath because “it sounded a bit pretentious”) and compiled the FT’s first Style Guide 30 years ago. “As a brand, the FT is not one that can easily compromise.” 

Roger Blitz is the FT’s crossword editor

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