Posted on behalf of Mitz
The Guardian year in crosswords 2025
The new era for the Guardian Crossword under Alan Connor has now firmly got into its stride. 2024 saw a record number of different contributors to the Daily Cryptic slot (32) but in 2025 this has been surpassed again – over the course of the year we saw 33 different pseudonyms. How different to the early years of the pseudonym era when the entire stable of Guardian setters was just 9 people! There were 4 Daily Cryptic debuts in 2025, matching the previous year, and more in other series that I will come to. As well as the debutants, 6 other setters set new personal appearance records and 3 matched their previous personal records. One setter reached a very significant milestone, and we said “so long” to a top contributor, for the time being at least.
Here are the individual totals for daily puzzles:
Paul – 44 (up 4)
Brummie – 27 (up 4, new record)
Vulcan – 25 (down 2)
Brendan – 18 (up 10)
Brockwell – 17 (up 8, new record)
Imogen – 17 (up 2, new record)
Philistine – 15 (up 4)
Pasquale – 13 (level)
Pangakupu – 12 (level)
Vlad – 12 (up 5)
Tramp – 11 (level)
Enigmatist – 10 (up 7)
Fed – 10 (down 1)
Carpathian – 9 (up 4, new record)
Kite – 9 (level, joint record)
Anto – 8 (down 5)
Maskarade – 6 + 2 specials (see note below) (down 2)
Alia – 6 (debut)
Ludwig – 6 (up 4, new record)
Qaos – 6 (down 7)
Harpo – 5 (up 1, new record)
Yank – 4 (down 2)
Boatman – 3 (down 2)
Matilda – 3 (up 1)
Picaroon – 3 (down 30)
Soup – 3 (up 1, joint record)
Arachne – 2 (down 1)
Omnibus – 2 (level, joint record)
Serenos – 2 (debut)
Ariel – 1 (debut)
Chandler – 1 (down 1)
Dynamo – 1 (down 2)
Ramsay – 1 (debut)
The 4 debuts were more straightforward than those from 2024: Alia is definitely an established setter from elsewhere, and there are strong suspicions that the same is true of both Serenos and Ramsay, while Ariel is comedian Angela Barnes. Welcome to all.
Both in August for the Bank Holiday and between Christmas and the New Year, jumbo puzzles appeared in the print edition only from Maskarade (which causes me a bit of a headache, to be perfectly honest). Do I include these in the daily stats for Maskarade, or should they be placed in the occasional “Special” category? My instinct says the latter, as there were regular numbered Prize puzzles on both dates (from Enigmatist and Brummie) but maybe readers will have different opinions.
Speaking of Enigmatist, this has been his most prolific year in the Guardian for a long time – he last reached double figures for Daily Cryptics in 1999. As for Omnibus, the theory persists that the modern iteration of this pseudonym is a collaboration of many setters – it would be lovely for this to be confirmed or denied.
There were no puzzles from Sphinx this year, and we know that Jack (Jason Crampton) is now Crossword editor at the Times, so his lack of appearance was no surprise. January 30th also saw the final Picaroon puzzle for the foreseeable future as James Brydon took up his post at the Telegraph. I am personally pleased for them and annoyed at their absence in equal measure.
There was one major milestone reached in 2025: on May 6th Pasquale set his 400th Daily Cryptic for the Guardian – only the 13th setter ever to achieve this. He doesn’t seem to be slowing down at all, so maybe in a few year’s time he’ll become the 10th to reach 500…
Looking to the year ahead, only Vulcan is within touching distance for 2026 – he’s currently on 193 and so likely to reach 200 in March, although it was a surprise not to see him on December 29th as it was the first time he had failed to appear a fortnight on from his previous puzzle since May 2022. We’ll put that down to a holiday season glitch unless he’s MIA again on January 5th. Further ahead, 2027 is looking like being a bumper year for milestones with Tramp, Paul, Brendan and Philistine all knocking on the door.
Three setters appeared on all 6 days of the week: Brummie (completing the set very early in the year on March 28th), Brendan (for the 8th time and 6th in consecutive years) and Pasquale (who was absolutely everywhere this year).
The Saturday Prize slot was distributed as follows:
Brendan, Brockwell, Paul – 6 each
Enigmatist – 5
Brummie, Philistine, Vlad – 4 each
Imogen, Kite – 3 each
Fed, Maskarade, Matilda, Tramp – 2 each
Arachne, Pangakupu, Pasquale, Qaos – 1 each
Over to the Quiptic series – there were 9 different setters here in 2025, providing the following number of puzzles:
Anto – 10
Carpathian – 9
Pasquale – 8
Chandler – 7
Hectence – 6
Harpo – 6
Pangakupu – 3
Alia – 2
Picaroon – 1
For Harpo, Pangakupu and Alia these contributions were their first for the series, and indeed in Alia’s case this was his Guardian all-format debut, shortly before his first appearance with a Daily Cryptic.
Hectence is still way out in the lead in the historic Quiptic table with 214 puzzles. Anto is on 96 and so may well reach 100 during 2026 – if so he’ll be the 5th setter to do so.
The Genius saw 11 different setters in 2025, with only Pangakupu providing 2 puzzles, in June and December. The others were as follows:
January – Picaroon
February – Karla
March – Pasquale
April – Enigmatist
May – Tramp
July – KGB (debut)
August – Claw
September – Soup
October – Odo (debut)
November – Glyph (debut)
There were 10 Quick Cryptic setters, offering a masterclass in how cryptics work to new solvers:
Ludwig – 10 (debut QC)
Chandler – 9
Dice – 7 (debut all formats)
Carpathian – 5
Maskarade – 5
Budmo – 5 (debut all formats)
Pangakupu – 4 (debut QC)
Pasquale – 3 (debut QC)
Picaroon – 2
Eccles – 2 (debut QC)
Carpathian continues to set the pace in this new series, with 18 of the 91 puzzles so far published.
Partly because of the above, there have been more debuts across all formats in the Guardian than ever before, with 9 setters making their first ever appearance. The previous record (not including the 6 in 1971 when everyone’s pseudonym was brand new) was just 5, the number recorded in 1999 (when the Quiptic was introduced), 2006, 2021 and 2024. The Guardian Crossword is certainly on the move.
All the best to everyone in Crosswordland for 2026.
Superb analysis as always, Mitz. Much appreciated.
Happy New Year to all!
Thank you Mitz for taking the trouble to provide this interesting post. I was surprised that pseudonyms were introduced as early as 1971. I was solving at the time but had obviously not noted the date.
To be precise, 28th December 1970. The first 4 puzzles to the end of that year were by Nimrod, Lavengro, Nimrod again and Crispa. The other 6 in the stable at that time – Gordius, Janus, Araucaria, Xerxes, Bunthorne and Audreus – all appeared for the first time in early 1971.
Hi Mitz, I know you were trying to get details on the setters of some of the early Genius puzzles that seem to be missing from the archive. Did you manage to fill in any blanks?
Sadly not – just dead end after dead end, helpful suggestions but nothing conclusive. There are still 20+ early Genius puzzles that I don’t think will ever have a name put to them.
Mitz, thank you for putting this all together. From your post #6, it’s probably, as you say, sadly, a dead end. I wasn’t around then, but I imagine for those who enjoyed them, while nameless, they will be remembered.
Thank you so much Mitz , so comprehensive and so interesting . Your post @4 is the best bit , never knew this before , what a stellar line up . Six of them were still going in the 1990s when I started solving , my first ever completion was a Janus and my first complete failure ( no clues solved ) was a Bunthorne .
[ PDM@7 , great to see you , I did reply to you once this week but very late . ]
Wow! Fascinating! Thank you
We know Sphinx to be Steve Pemberton and his puzzles were tie-ins to TV shows so not great surprise his absence from the list coincided with his absence from the screen (but not the stage…)
@Roz (et al) – if you’re particularly interested in the early history of the G Crossword, this might float your boat!
@10
Fascinating article. Thanks Mitz
This year will see the milestone of puzzle number 30,000, on (if my calculations are correct) Thursday 7th May.
@12
Bang on! Custos provided the special for 15,000, Araucaria for 20,000 and Enigmatist for 25,000 – I wonder who will have the honour this time?
For 30,000 my guess is Paul.
22,000 is noteworthy, I think nearly every clue contains the name of a Guardian setter.
22,000 was the final puzzle by Fawley (Mike Laws) – he intended it as a tribute to all of his wonderful colleagues; many of his contemporaries and those that came after him cite how influential he was.
Fascinating, many thanks Mitz. I don’t suppose you have any information about the identity / identities of the current Omnibus (since 2024)? (As discussed in the comments on 29,889 a few days ago.)
Re your comment @9, if anyone is interested in the history of the Guardian crossword, there is the book “A Clue To Our Lives — 80 years of the Guardian Crossword” by Sandy Balfour. I found it very interesting (though it could have done with a bit of proof-reading 🙂 ).
@Lord Jim: I’m in the dark along with everyone else re: Omnibus. Definitely not readers contributions like the one-off in 2005, but Mr Connor continues to play his cards annoyingly close to his chest on the nature of the more recent puzzles.
I haven’t read Balfour, but I am tempted to seek him out, especially if he covers the anonymous era in any detail…
Great work Mitz, as always.
Mitz@9 thank you and I am not ungrateful but I never click on links . Other people seem to have liked it .
@Roz – totally understand. You’ll be able to Google it if you want – it’s a timeline of the G crossword going right back to the beginning that I put together. Alan Connor kindly published it in his Editor’s blog on the Guardian website in early 2023.
@Grecian – backatcha: lovely prize. I got there in the end, slowly…
Surely it should be Omnes, not Omnibus, were it a cooperative? I have been contemplating this point for days.
Bless you for taking the trouble, Mitz. Always interesting ….
Super summary. Thank you for zooming out to show us the bigger picture, which is difficult to discern on a day to day basis.
This is fascinating – I do read the Guardian blog too so knew about the article.
Stupid question, I know, but have the Specials been added into the numbers? There was one this year from Ludwig as part of the Christmas appendix and published on the 23/12/2025 in the e-paper version, which is accessible online, by changing the number from the second puzzle to a 3 at the end. The other two were published in 2024 and found on that link. One is from Ludwig, for Christmas 2024, and appeared in the Guardian e-paper on 21/12/2024. The other is from Sphinx puzzle which appears in the 2020 BBC production of Dracula. That was published in October 2024 and appeared in the Guardian e-paper on 19/10/2024.
Thank you Mitz. I enjoyed reading this and was surprised at the number of different setters in 2025. I solved the vast majority of daily and prize puzzles, but tasked with listing the names I’d have struggled. Have you been maintaining this record throughout the pseudonym era? I’ve noticed other people sharing stats and analysis on setters, grids and even letter distribution. I’m all for it. Your database must be much coveted among a select few!
@Shanne
Not a stupid question at all. I don’t include the Specials in the count of Daily Cryptics, but I do note them down and include them in the all-format totals for their respective setters.
@Martin
I started building the database about 10 years ago, initially as a just-for-fun way of trying to predict which setter might be up next. At first I only had as far back as the beginning of the online archive in June 1999, and even that has several gaps in the early days. It grew and grew as I got interested in different metrics and historic patterns, and in the end I researched via online newspaper archives to fill in the gaps. Seeing that it might be possible to view the crossword pages further and further back I couldn’t help myself – it took weeks but I was able to note down the full list and found the starting date of the pseudonym era and even when the (Manchester) Guardian first published a crossword in 1929, when it grew to be twice a week and shortly after a daily staple. Even then there were gaps in the archive which I filled by visiting the British Library.
My database is… quite large.
Magnificent. Bravo!
Thank you Mitz for this latest round-up, your review is always a highlight of this time of year for me and I appreciate the extra details that you and others have added in the comments.