Araucaria (compiler)
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Reverend John Galbraith Graham MBE (born February 16, 1921) is a British crossword compiler, best known as Araucaria of The Guardian. He is also a Church of England priest.
Beside's Araucaria's cryptic crosswords in the Guardian, he also sets quick crosswords for the Guardian, cryptic crosswords as Cinephile in the Financial Times and puzzles for other publications. He took to compiling crosswords full-time when his divorce lost him his living as a clergyman (he was reinstated after the death of his first wife).
He takes his pseudonym from the monkey-puzzle tree, whose Latin name is Araucaria. Another name for this tree is the "Chile Pine", of which "Cinephile" is an anagram.
The much-quoted example of his brilliance in clue-setting is the following:
- Poetical scene has chaste Lord Archer vegetating (3, 3, 8, 12)
which yields "The Old Vicarage, Grantchester". We have not only the name of Rupert Brooke's poem but Lord Archer's home, together with an anagram and a witty comment.
Widely admired for his clever use of cross-references and special themes, he is usually called upon to produce the extra-large puzzles printed in the Guardian on bank holidays; these sometimes even include two grids, with complicated rules governing the placing of answers in each. He is also credited with creating a new format of crossword, the "alphabetical jigsaw" in which the clues are labelled with letters rather than numbers, and the grid has no markers to indicate which answer should be placed where. Instead the clues are arranged in alphabetical order of their answer — usually labelled with the beginning letter, with either one or two clues for each letter. The answers are to be placed "jigsaw-wise, however they may fit," though of course only one arrangement will work. In a few puzzles, an additional clue is given which describes a phrase or set of words going around the edge of the grid (every other square of the perimeter being black) to give a starting point for placing some of the answers. Araucaria's clues to the alphabetical jigsaws are often in the form of rhyming couplets in iambic pentameter.
He was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire in the 2005 New Year's Honours, for services to the newspaper industry.
Two collections of his crosswords have been published under the titles of Monkey Puzzles (2002) and Monkey Puzzles volume 2 (2004).
External link
- "The Monkey Puzzler (http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,438558,00.html)" - 80th birthday tribute from The Guardian.