I heard today that George Hill passed away on Monday August 8th.
George was the “HI” part of Hihoba, a trio who used to solve The Inquisitor together. Although latterly George did it virtually single-handedly.
George did most of the work on his final blog, which, as it turns out, was published posthumously last Tuesday. I put the finishing touches to as it as George had been admitted to hospital with pneumonia. He had been ill on and off since October 2019 but he was keen to keep on blogging as he felt it kept him sane.
I met George once when the Inquisitor blogging team went for lunch in Manchester in July 2017 to celebrate Inquisitor 1500. George regaled us with stories about his sailing expeditions.
Here is Hihoba’s mini bio from Fifteensquared blogger page:
Hihoba
Hihoba is a combination of the names of three retired men – George Hill, Jo Horwood and Barnie Baker – who spend (waste?) more time than they should solving crosswords. We hope that it is helping us to fight off incipient Alzheimers. We operate separately, and then combine resources if (usually when) we get stuck. It’s all done by email now, but I have records to show that we’ve been doing the Inquisitor and its predecessor the Weekend Crossword back into the days when you had to ring people up and actually talk to them!
Hihoba’s first Inquisitor blog was in November 2007:
https://www.fifteensquared.net/2007/11/16/inquisitor-45-the-archers/
Sorry to hear this. Think I met George at a Manchester function too (probably the same one) – nice man.
Have always found the hihoba blogs to be very fair.
Sympathies to family and fiiends.
Very sad news indeed – his blogs were always interesting and informative.
RIP
Very sad news. My sympathy to his friends and family.
RIP. I always enjoy a hihoba blog, and hi’s views will be missed.
My first Inquisitor was no. 1534 (in March 2018), which was blogged by Hihoba. As I very soon learned (and as noted above), the Hihoba blogs were in fact mostly by ‘Hi’, and I appreciated from that first example his frankness about himself (admitting he overlooked a word in the preamble, making more work for himself) and about the puzzle at hand (to the setter: “Good, but not your best.”)
Sad now to see the end of the regular blogs by this worthy member of the team of Inquisitor bloggers. RIP.
Condolences to family and friends.
So sorry to hear the news. We enjoyed Hihoba’s blogs – very appreciative of the team who could solve and blog such devilish puzzles.
Our condolences to his family and friends, including of course ho and ba.