At the request of the Features Editor, Edmund Akenhead compiled the first Times Jumbo for Christmas 1970. His original choice of a 27 x 27
grid was judicious enough to remain the standard format for today’s Jumbos. I remain in awe of his original constructions, produced without
any modern technological aids. I owe a profound debt of gratitude to him for creating a series that gave me so much pleasure as a solver, and
eventually enabled me to make a living out of a hobby. Jumbos subsequently appeared four times a year, increasing to six by
1988. All those published until May 1996 were included in the first three collections, and this fourth book comprises, in chronological order, the
final eight for bank holidays only (edited by Brian Greer), and the first 52 of the weekly series, inaugurated on September 6, 1997 with number
126. The Times Jumbo, to the best of my knowledge, is the only crossword series to be collected in book form in its entirety.
The expertise and effort required to produce a Jumbo seemed to justify relaxing the tradition of crossword anonymity in The Times for those
whose puzzles appear in this book. All regularly contribute to the daily series.
Richard Browne is Times 2 Crossword Editor, and as such contributes all non-cryptic crosswords appearing in The Times, including Jumbos. He
is a full-time crossworder, appearing in four national broadsheets, and when pseudonymous is Antares or Victor.
Joyce Cansfield is currently the only female Times compiler. She had several times been a finalist in the solving championships before her first
Times daily, and her thousandth will have been published by the time you read this.
John Grant succeeded Edmund Akenhead as The Times Crossword Editor in 1983, a post which by then necessarily included responsibility
for the Jumbos. Before he too retired, he published my first few offerings for the daily series.
Brian Greer took over from John Grant as editor in 1995, on the occasion of The Times Crossword No 20,000. His book How to do The
Times Crossword is required reading for any serious crossword puzzler.
John Grimshaw is Dmitry wherever pseudonyms are used. He has taken
the art of elephantine gridsmithery to unprecedented heights, and has contributed more than anyone else to the weekly series.
Paul Henderson is Phi on a weekly basis on another broadsheet, contributes to its occasional Jumbos, and is one half of Beelzebub in its
Sunday sister paper.
Don Manley’s Chamber’s Crossword Manual is now in its third edition, having become a standard text in the field. He is the Church Times
Crossword Editor, and appears as Quixote or Pasquale elsewhere.
I have edited the weekly Jumbos since their inception, but on succeeding Brian Greer in September 2000, had to relinquish being Fawley, Darcy
and Esau in other broadsheets, although I continue to contribute every third Mephisto crossword in The Sunday Times.
Mike Laws
The Times Crossword Editor
January 2002
Cryptic crossword compiling is a deceptive art. Humpty Dumpty in Lewis Carroll’s ‘Through the Looking-Glass’ sums it up when he says, “When I use a word…. It means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”
May I recommend, particularly to newcomers to the crossword, a simple approach taught me by my father, which is to study the solution and then examine the clue to work out how all the pieces came together to mean what the compiler chose them to mean! The method is particularly apt here because the solver is spared the agony of waiting for the next day’s paper.
Here are a few sample clues to give you a flavour of what lies in store, followed by an appropriate introduction penned by my late father.
Grateful acknowledgment to former crossword editors: – Richard Browne, Mike Laws, Brian Greer, John Grant, Edmund Akenhead, Jane Carton, Ronald Carton, and never to be forgotten our founding father, Adrian Bell.
Enjoy!
David Akenhead, Author of the Computer Crosswords
September 2020
SAMPLE CLUES
Often does badly but gets decorated (9) FESTOONED
Convention: anagram of “often does”. Indicator: “badly”
Unlike Dogberry’s comparisons, not to be sniffed at (9) ODOURLESS
Convention: antonym. In Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing “Comparisons are odorous”. The opposite of odorous is odourless
“Whist, brother”, one need not say to him (8) TRAPPIST
Convention: association – silent order of monks
He may stop playing! (8) ORGANIST
Convention: cryptic definition – obvious when understood
But can these cakes sell like hot ones? (4) ICED
Convention: conundrum (or riddle)
Plain spoken guide (6) DIRECT
Convention: double meaning or two meanings
Policeman calls at the theatre (9) INSPECTOR
Convention: dramatic assoc – refers Priestley’s The Inspector Calls
Telephone about the duck – dry and going bad (7) ROTTING
Convention: envelope – O (duck) and TT (teetotal or dry) inside RING
Champion golfer’s casual request to caddie? (3,3,4) ANY OLD IRON
Convention: familiar – iron as in scrap and iron as in golf; song of music hall comedian, Harry Champion
Hair in distressing condition (5) TRESS
Convention: hidden – disTRESSing
Time and relative dimension in space vehicle. Who told you? (6) TARDIS
Conventions: initials or acronym – refers Dr Who, fictional time traveller
Last of the girls named as story-teller (8) TUSITALA
Conventions: lit. and surgery – “last of the girls” reveals RLS, initials Robert Louis Stevenson, alias Tusitala, “story-teller” of the South Seas
One might be the sum of two equal squares (9) RECTANGLE
Conventions: logic or conundrum
Artist’s punishment of careless kittens (4) OPIE
Conventions: nursery rhyme and word division – refers Three Little Kittens – “they shall have no pie” read O/PIE
A drinking man upset about a heroine of opera (5) TOSCA
Conventions: opera, word division, reversal – “A drinking man” is a sot, “upset” it becomes TOS plus C (about) plus A
Even both ways (5) LEVEL
Convention: palindrome – reads both ways (also double meaning)
Jane is heard to offer a wider view (7) SEYMOUR
Convention: pun or sound – Jane Seymour (third wife of Henry VIII) sounds like “see more”
Roman dictator given total American backing (5) SULLA
Convention: reversal – ALL US for “total American”. Indicator: “backing”
Changed a hundred to six hundred (9) RECTIFIED
Convention: Roman numerals – read instead AC to DC (alternating current to direct current)
A bardic spelling of the last saint (8) CRISPIAN
Shakespeare – in Henry V this is the Bard’s spelling of the patron saint of shoemakers (last saint)
He painted Miss Martin topless (4) ETTY
Convention: surgery – the painter is BETTY minus B (All my eye and Betty Martin)
Sad outcome of rent reduction (8) TEARDROP
Convention: word division – TEAR/DROP read “rent reduction”
Strain to find way about the ship (6) STRESS
Convention: word division – ST (way) plus RE (about) plus SS (ship)
Transport as is right and fitting by river (7) RAPTURE
Convention: word division – R (right) plus APT (fitting) plus URE (river)
Inset paragraph or it has a divisive effect (9) SEPARATOR
Conventions: word div/envelope – SET plus PARA (inset – in set) plus OR
The state of one had rejected love (5) IDAHO
Conventions: word div/reversal – I (one) plus DAH (had, rejected) plus O (love)
Maybe either state is unorthodox (9) HERETICAL
Conventions: word div/anag – HERETI (anagram of “either”; indicator, “maybe”) plus CAL (state – California)
Eating corn, perhaps, each appears to transgress (8) ENCROACH
Conventions: envelope/anag – EACH envelopes (indicator, “eating”) an anagram of CORN (indicator, “perhaps”)
The devices used by a cryptic crossword compiler are so many and varied that an introduction such as this can only give the beginner a glimpse of them. Experience will prove the best teacher, but I hope that the following tips will help the beginner in his or her first steps towards mastering ‘The Times’ (and similar) crosswords.
The best known device is the anagram. “Terribly angered” is a definition of the answer “enraged”, which is also an anagram of “angered”, the word “Terribly” being used in the clue as an anagram indicator. The solver should always be on the look-out for words suggesting arrangement, change, wrongness, confusion, strangeness and the like which may point to anagrams in the clue: “new” is sometimes used, also “sort” and “out” (in the sense of “wrong”), while “perhaps”, “maybe”, and “possibly” will probably indicate anagrams.
Then there are words which have different meanings: “refuse” in a clue may appear to be a verb meaning “decline”, but it may really mean the noun describing “rubbish”: “tent” may mean not a canvas shelter, but a Spanish wine: “saw” or “gnome” may mean a maxim. Solving crosswords certainly helps to enlarge one’s vocabulary. All sorts of words have hidden meanings in crosswords with “do” clued as a party, “letter” as a landlord, “number” as an anaesthetic (that which numbs) and so ad infinitum, the oldest chestnut being “flower” as a river, while “sewer” may mean a sempstress and “cover for a sewer” will mean not a manhole but a thimble, and “tour de France” is not a cycle race but the Eiffel Tower.
Many a crossword answer is made up of other words indicated by the clue. “Loudly disapprove royal skating display? Some reservations here (7-5)” is solved by joining up Boo-king off-ice, while Mild-red is well known as a girl with slightly communist sympathies. A word may consist of one word containing another (Envelope), and there are many other ways in which words (including abbreviations) may be combined either in their normal, or in anagrammatic or reversed forms to make the answer. In such “build-ups” the word “river” may refer to one of the compiler’s favourite British waterways – Dee, Exe, Fal or Ure (tributary of the Yorkshire Ouse).
Solvers should be familiar with many common abbreviations, such as e.g., i.e., the points of the compass N.S.E.W. (sometimes clued as bridge players), musical notes A to G (or doh, re, mi etc) and Roman numerals M, D, C, L, X, V, I. The clue ” 1,200 less 200 (10)” needs conversion into Roman numerals “MCC less CC” and anyone interested in cricket will know that the M in MCC stands for Marylebone. Chemical abbreviations for elements are sometimes used such as “au” (gold), “ag” (silver), “fe” (iron) etcetera. The letter L could be clued as money (pound sign), 50, lake, or as student, tyro, novice or learner (driver with L Plates. Solvers are also expected to know simple words in the more familiar foreign languages, particularly the articles, e.g. el (clued as “the Spanish), der (“the German”) un (“a French”) etc.
Finally, to mention four other types of clue:
(a) Hidden answer clue “Something more in the next race (5)”, here the answer EXTRA appears in consecutive letters in the clue (nEXT RAce”).
(b) Surgery, which requires a certain amount of doctoring of words to produce the desired effect. Associated words like “beheaded”, “curtailed”, “reduced”, often indicate this type of clue: “Humperdinck in turn to some extent a singer (6)” answer TREBLE is one of my favourites. Engelbert (“in turn”) gives in reverse form TREBLEGNE and “to some extent” indicates a need for surgery or reduction.
(c) “Sound” clues with sound-indicators such as “say”, “we hear”, “it’s said”, or “sound” telling the solver to look to the sound of the words used. “Some measure of spirit? I say! (5) gives the answer OPTIC (optic measures used in bars). “Say” in the clue tells the solver to look to the sound of “I”, that is “eye” revealing an alternative meaning.
(d) The acronym or word made up from the initial letters of other words. “Paddy as the normal agriculture initially here (5) PATNA.
An ounce of practical demonstration being worth a pound of theory I leave the rest up to you.
