by Tom Johnson aka Maskarade and Gozo
Today, February 16th, marks the centenary of the birth of John Galbraith Graham who compiled crosswords under the pseudonyms of Araucaria for the Guardian and Cinephile for the Financial Times.
John was born in Oxford, the oldest of six children. His father was dean of Oriel College and later became a bishop; his mother wrote “children’s religious books” when not managing the large family. John often recalled that he and his siblings found their own amusement — in wordplay, charades and puzzles. By the age of eight he was already solving the Times crossword! Religious faith was of necessity a staple part of his childhood, though his teenage years were marked by questioning and by the time he went up to King’s College in Cambridge to read Classics, he had become an atheist.
World War Two was just beginning; he did not enlist immediately, his thoughts moving more towards being a pacifist, as he once told a reporter, “I didn’t really like this war”. But for some reason which he could never explain, he changed his opinions and decided to enlist in the RAF doing “the nastiest job I could think of and the best way to do it was to become a bomber pilot”. In fact he became an “observer” — the man who dropped the bombs. He flew thirty night missions over Italy, before his plane was shot down and he had to bail out. And so he hid with an Italian farming family in their stable, later learning Italian when billeted with a schoolteacher’s family and teaching the daughter English and Greek. He was rescued by the Americans and was eventually mentioned in dispatches.
On his return home after the war, he went back to King’s College to study theology, eventually being ordained in 1948. Various church posts ensued at East Dulwich, St Chad’s College in Durham, Aldershot, Beaconsfield, Reading University, St Peter’s Eaton Square in London, and finally Houghton and Wyton in Cambridgeshire. While priest in charge at St Michael’s, Beaconsfield, he won the Observer crossword compiling competition for two successive years during the mid-1950s. On the strength of these successes he was invited to join the team of crossword compilers for the Manchester Guardian. He married his first wife Nesta in 1952 but their marriage was to break down, with their final years together becoming more and more unhappy. He and Nesta parted and John left to live with Margaret, who was to become his second wife. Because of church rules in the 1970s, John had to leave the church, as divorced priests could not serve in the ministry. So he had to leave his job, his home and his wife.
These personal circumstances proved painful for John, but living with and eventually marrying Margaret brought the happiness he longed for. After Nesta’s death in the mid-1980s he was able to resume his life in the ministry.
John’s first puzzle for the Manchester Guardian was published on July 10th 1958, and its first clue at 1 Across was “Establishment cut to the bone (8,5)” which yielded the solution “Skeleton staff”. John acknowledged that his style owed much to Ximenes (D. S. Macnutt), the legendary compiler for the Observer, but his clueing was never slavish to Ximenean rules and strictures. Not satisfied with compiling a mere cryptic puzzle John produced many thematic crosswords on the standard 15×15 Guardian grids. In addition he invented the Alphabetical Crossword in which the 26 clues are presented in alphabetical order of the initial letter of each solution, A to Z, with solvers then having to fit the answers into the grid, jigsaw-fashion. The other distinctive Araucarian crossword was a perimetrical puzzle in which the 28 letters around the perimeter reveal a quotation. By 1982 John had decided to extend his commitments and so John Perkin, then the crossword editor of the Guardian recommended him to the Financial Times crossword editor, Colin Inman, who readily accepted him into the team.
In the early 1970s the Guardian decided to end the anonymity of the puzzles and so all the compiling team had to choose pseudonyms. Thus Araucaria, the Latin name for the monkey puzzle tree, was born. For the Financial Times John dreamt up the name Cinephile which is an anagram of Chile pine, the other name for the monkey puzzle tree.
John was to compile for over fifty years for the Guardian working with Perkin’s successor, Hugh Stephenson, and for thirty for the FT. He also provided some of the Quickie puzzles for the Guardian. His formidable knowledge was to be seen in his themes for both newspapers: Shakespeare, English poetry, geography, mythology, the Bible, herbs, bridges, synonyms of “boot”, Italian cities in Italian — the list is endless. His Bank Holiday Jumbo puzzles three times a year for the Guardian and his Christmas Jumbo for the Financial Times cemented his fame and brilliance even further. Hugh remembers Araucaria’s weather forecast Jumbo in which the shipping areas appeared in their appropriate geographical position within the grid. There was a similar styled puzzle featuring the London Underground’s Circle Line stations in order and one including British towns in which the clues contained (well-)hidden place names or else they had been omitted from the clues, thus the solution was the missing word which so made the clue make full sense. Colin recalls especially Christmas Jumbos with London parks and musical instruments as the theme and one with a Muslim theme which occasioned a few complaints, Colin admits.
On average John produced a minimum of fourteen puzzles each month, most of them for these two newspapers, but also for the Church Times and Homes and Antiques. He regularly compiled specially commissioned one-off puzzles to commemorate birthdays and weddings, for instance, for his solvers.
In 1984, while living in Long Sutton, near Settle, he decided to produce a monthly subscription magazine of his puzzles, as his huge cohort of solver-fans was demanding more puzzles than ever from him. And so Subscription Crosswords — and what is nowadays known as 1 Across magazine — saw the light of day. Published locally in Settle, the magazine contained five of his puzzles, mostly thematic, some breaking new ground with their approach.
Throughout his career John encouraged new, young compilers. Best known is the Biggles group. As teenagers John Henderson (aka Enigmatist and Io) and John Halpern (aka Paul and Mudd) had written to him asking for advice and help about compiling cryptic puzzles. Araucaria took them both under his wing, becoming their mentor and it was not long before both of them saw their puzzles appear in the Guardian. The third newcomer was John Young (aka Shed and Dogberry). As their careers blossomed, they would join forces with Araucaria every so often to provide a puzzle for the Guardian under their all-embracing pseudonym Biggles. This happy name was chosen, because the creator of Biggles was “W E Johns” (ie “we Johns”). The crossword editor would then treat them to lunch in Biggleswade.
Araucaria compiled for 1 Across on his own for some years before John Henderson became editor, coinciding with a change to the magazine’s title to 1 Across. Henderson later passed the editorial baton over to Mike Rich for a few years until his unexpectedly premature death. It was then that my personal friendship and association with John Graham began. I had discovered his (anonymous) puzzles when a schoolboy in Birmingham in the mid-60s and when I first saw Araucaria’s name appearing against a puzzle in the early 70s, I realised that it was this compiler whose work had been instrumental in my grounding as a fledgling compiler. Although I had subscribed to 1 Across from the early days, I had never had the occasion to contact Araucaria. But soon after Rich’s death, it was John who phoned me with an invitation consider taking over the editorship of the magazine. And so it was that I travelled to Leeds to meet him and Christine Jones, the publisher, who by now had bought the magazine’s title. Together we discussed how we could progress. Araucaria’s wish was that we should encourage new talent and so, during the next sixteen years as editor until 2017, I featured puzzles by aspiring compilers, many of whom have become established setters in their own right in one or other of the two newspapers — Picaroon/Lavatch, Boatman, Gaff, Aardvark, Moodim and Magwitch/Provis, especially.
During the final decade or so of John’s life, The Guardian organised celebratory get-togethers for his 80th and 90th birthdays at their offices near King’s Cross Station. To mark his eightieth birthday, 1 Across organised a party immediately after the Guardian celebration, at a nearby public house. He was made an MBE in 2005 for services to the newspaper industry. Then for his ninetieth birthday, 1 Across hosted a celebratory birthday lunch which (much to Christine’s pride and satisfaction) was held in the Dining Hall of King’s College, Cambridge, one Saturday in February 2011. Over 120 friends, admirers and crossword luminaries attended. Birthday puzzles were published in both dailies and to cap a momentous year, John was the castaway on Desert Islands Discs on July 10th. His choice of records included Beethoven’s 7th Symphony, The Heavens are Telling from Haydn’s Creation and most poignant of all, the setting of the Song of Mary written by his sister, Mary Holtby. For his book apart from Shakespeare and the Bible he chose the short stories of Saki and asked for a telescope as his luxury.
John’s crosswords were legendary. He delighted in concocting extremely long anagrams, regularly using Scrabble letters as his guide. My firm favourite is “O hark the herald angels sing the boy’s descent which lifted up the world” which can be resolved into the first two lines of “While shepherds watched”. His thematic puzzles were noted for the deep interlinking of the theme words and his ability to “look into” the make up of individual words when cluing was outstanding. Who apart from Araucaria would have spotted that “hi-tech” appeared as part of “White Christmas”?
His puzzles have appeared in a collection of four books published by Chambers Harrap and two collections of Guardian puzzles marketed as “Monkey Puzzles” have been published. Earlier collections of Guardian crosswords have included his puzzles going back to the anonymous days. The Financial Times published a companion collection too in 2009.
During the months after his 90th birthday, it became clear to Christine and me that Araucaria’s health was becoming a cause for concern. For some months he felt unable to contribute his two regular puzzles to the magazine. In the autumn, Colin Inman invited me to compile the upcoming Christmas Jumbo for the FT, as, so he told me, Cinephile felt unable to concentrate on producing one.
In one of his puzzles for the December 2012 issue of 1 Across, John announced to our members that he had been diagnosed with cancer of the oesophagus. Christine and I were very nervous about publishing this puzzle, but John was insistent — “It just seemed the natural thing to do somehow”, he told us. This news from our private magazine soon spread far afield and Hugh Stephenson approached Christine to ask if she would permit the Guardian to publish the puzzle in the newspaper, for all his solvers in that newspaper to see. It appeared in that newspaper on Saturday January 19th 2013.
By the next summer, however, John had decided that providing his next Guardian Bank Holiday Jumbo would not be possible and much to my surprise Hugh Stephenson invited me in what he called “a preliminary email … to take the job on”. And so in late August 2013 the first Maskarade Jumbo crossword was published.
John passed away on November 26th 2013. On Saturday January 4th 2014, a service of celebration and thanksgiving was held at St. John the Baptist Church in Somersham in Cambridgeshire, the village where John had lived for the twenty years since Margaret’s death.
My thanks to Christine, Colin and Hugh for their help and guidance as I prepared this commemoration of John’s life.
What a brilliant life – thank you for the excellent remembrance and here’s a raising of a glass to the man himself.
I have enjoyed reading this tribute.
I used to love doing Araucaria’s puzzles and I wish that the Guardian had reprinted one of his old ones on this centenary. I know that I would have enjoyed it a lot.
Thank you for this
michelle, there is a reprinted John Graham puzzle (as Cinephile) in today’s FT. And the Guardian cryptic is in honour of JG.
Thanks, Mr. Johnson, for this beautiful tribute.
My memory is that of a Cinephile crossword that I solved in print edition of FT aboard a BA flight several years ago before the Web versions came. I completed all but two or three clues, I think.
[That was Rishi]
“In the early 1970s the Guardian decided to end the anonymity of the puzzles and so all the compiling team had to choose pseudonyms. ”
Is this correct? I am fairly sure that names were used as early as 1966. I recall finishing an Altair or Janus in a pb then.
Thanks for the tribute by the way.
cellomaniac@4 – thank you.
I did the Guardian puzzle before seeing this tribute. It would have helped me solve that puzzle more quickly if I had come here first!
I will look at the FT – but it is hard to do that puzzle online. I might do some old Araucaria puzzles at the Guardian archives later this week.
Thanks for the tribute. An inspirational man!
A fabulous tribute – thanks Tom. [And it is Araucaria’s work that encouraged my own love of creating long anagrams.] Though I didn’t have the chance to come in contact with him personally, I have seen how much he has meant to some of those he mentored.
The great man’s puzzles were before my time (in the sense that I picked up the habit of solving Guardian crosswords only seven years ago), but I do remember solving his ‘swansong’ puzzle when it was published, as well as a few others that have been re-published in recent years, and I have long been aware of his influence on the cryptic crossword and on many of its current setters.
Thank you Tom for that anniversary tribute.
Thanks so much for that TJ
Many years ago when I was starting out, I sent a very poor effort, via the Guardian, to Araucaria. He didn’t have to, but he took the time to write a detailed reply with suggestions and pointers. I’ll never forget that. Thanks for the lovely tribute Tom, I think we all miss him, and his wonderful puzzles.
Monkey Puzzle trees are grown at the Bedgebury National Pinetum in an effort to save them. Reading this tribute and the way that Araucaria nurtured new talent draws me to this from Bedgebury’s visitor guide:
“Araucaria Araucaria: A tree that was around in the time of the dinosaurs but is now endangered in its homelands of Chile and Argentina. The seeds of the monkey puzzle tree cannot be stored in a seedbank so the trees must be grown to be conserved.”
Thanks Tom – a fine tribute to tge master. Back in the mid 80s when I first started dabbling in solving, it was the Araucaria jigsaws I liked best, and I could occasionally finish them despite having no formal knowledge of the rules of cryptics. Still much missed.
A very well put tribute to a still much-missed master.
As Araucaria he also had one puzzle in the Listener in the 1980s, themed if I remember aright, on Welsh castles. It was notable for being solvable without needing recourse to Chambers. He refused point blank to be published by Rupert Murdoch, on moral principles, so never submitted to the TImes or Listener puzzles after that series moved to the Times when the magazine itself closed.
John Graham’s appearance on Desert Island Discs can still be heard on the BBC website. I met him only once, very briefly, at a lunch in King’s College, Cambridge, for his 90th birthday. He was very charming then, and he comes over in the DID recording as an absolutely lovely person.
Many of you will already be aware of the special Araucaria tribute puzzle in the 2021 3D Crossword Calendar. Today this puzzle has gone live on the 3D Crosswords website as a prize puzzle, with a prize of a year’s subscription to the crossword magazine, 1 Across, which Araucaria founded along with Enigmatist way back in 1984.
The tribute puzzle is billed as the February Extra 2021, by Enigmatist and Sirius, and can be found here. For those still wishing to purchase the whole calendar, this is still available via the website, but only in a downloadable virtual version, as the printed version sold out.
Nicely put – thank you, Tom, for sharing thoughts of a life lived with wit, good humour and generosity of spirit. As I may have mentioned once or twice, I would not have considered crosswords to be a thing worth much attention, let alone have tried to set them, without Araucaria’s example.
For those who are not already subscribers, you may like to know that 1 Across magazine has a special issue out this week, featuring tribute works by Doc, Enigmatist, Paul, Soup and me …
In trying to revisit the memorable 2013 crossword, which still moves me as much as it did 8 years ago, I found it was archived as Guardian 25,842 on Jan 11 2013, not Jan 13 2013. Still miss his take on wordplay.
Thank you Tom. I had no idea about his wartime experiences. What a rich life.
That brought back some wonderful memoriess, thank you.
The first clue I ever solved was an Araucarian. He gave so much joy.
What a great read. I believe he was the greatest, and it seems, a wonderful human as well as a genius.
I doubt he will ever be surpassed: absolutely brilliant. As a campanologist I particularly remember an amazingly innovative puzzle where the answers were not entered on a traditional grid but in a diagram showing the changes in a bell ringing method.
Geoff@24: You can find links to two of those Araucaria bell ringing puzzles here in this week’s Alan Connor blog on the Guardian website.
One Easter Araucaria had a double grid puzzle. Usually the grids have the same pattern but on this occasion one was reversed. His rubric said (my italics) “You may wonder why the grids are mirror images. The answer will become apparent. The rubric meant nothing to me. After solving some clues I remembered that mirror is the present name for looking-glass but by that time I has spotted Alice as the theme.
During lockdown I have been working my way through the four Araucaria books; most entertaining but sadly finite. I would give several shillings to see again the wondrous shipping forecast puzzle. The greatest pleasure of Christmases past was to sit with an Araucaria jumbo on one hand and the King William quiz on the other. He is greatly missed.
I regret so much that I never met him, but thanks to this detailed commemoration, I feel as though I did. I like to think he has influenced all compilers in some way
I remember his puzzles beginning with a “fill in the gaps” quotation, particularly one using a spike Milligan poem:
There are holes in the sky
Where the rain gets in
But they’re ever so small
That’s why the rain is thin.
The alphabetical puzzles were always 28 clues with two pairs of words beginning with the same letter – a very handy clue to placing the words if you could solve them.
Thank you for an excellent article, beautifully written to celebrate a wonderful man. I rarely finished his puzzles, but the delight when I did so was palpable.
Thank-you Tom for a moving tribute.
I learned the word Kakistocracy from Araucaria. (Worst government is Tory, Ack-ack needed).
It is from the Greek. Kakos, the worst.
Still relevant.
A worthy tribute – many thanks TJ – undoubtedly the all-time doyen of setters – sadly missed.
A shame about the moaners on the thread beneath Enigmatist and Soup’s
tribute puzzle. Recently arrived solvers may not recall that back in the day – ie the pre-internet day – one did not always expect to finish every puzzle – even when the solution appeared the next day (perhaps that was a teaser to get you to buy another paper) there was sometimes some head-scratching to do – particularly with one of the tougher Araucaria puzzles – but it was usually resolved in the end and found to be fair , if tough.
The FT puzzle of the same day, a genuine Cinephile, shows that even when pulling punches for that paper Araucaria’s puzzles were rarely a pushover – albeit always solvable with enough effort.
Of course the paper has changed and is no longer pitched an intelligent broad-minded readership. For a long time the crossward section seemed to be an oasis from that but it is inevitably drifting over time.
I wonder what Araucaria’s reaction to that would have been were he still with us. During his time as a setter the Guardian of the day was cleary his natural home – surely that’s part of the story. Another amazing thing is that he did most of what he did by hand – ie without the help of the software that most modern setters make use of.
I found an old Araucaria puzzle today and enjoyed doing it. Here are the links if anyone is interested.
https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/23949
http://www.fifteensquared.net/2006/12/14/guardian-23949araucaria/
Can anyone tell me what is the quickest/easiest method for finding the old puzzles by Araucaria on the Guardian site?
Michelle @33, there are a lot of them – for much of his career he was averaging more than one a week, and almost every other prize. The Guardian has pages that list all puzzles by setter but his list, like Paul’s and Rufus’s, runs to an awful lot of pages.
beery hiker @34
I seem to recall that in the past, I could search by setter, but I can’t see or find that feature now on the Guardian site. Is it still possible? How?
michelle @35
Try: https://www.theguardian.com/profile/araucaria
I guess that Araucaria had the skill and vocabulary to compile without the aid of computer programmes used by most setters today. His great asset was that you could smile at many of his clues and solutions.
I will always remember the single word clue ‘Moonstarer’
Gaufrid @36
that is perfect – thank you!
I have added it to my bookmarked pages now.
for other setters, this index page is useful too:
https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/2013/oct/28/crosswords-a-z
there are 41 pages in Araucaria’s list, but once you are on page 2 and want to get a lot further quickly, you can edit the number at the end of the URL.
Araucaria was wonderful as a setter and as a person. For the record, though, Ravenrider’s long anagram at 29 above was set by Paul. The clue was: Here ‘n’ there in the heavens’ watery mire are tiny slits, so the harsh weather is slight, not bulky, perhaps?
I knew John Graham, like thousands of others for whom a Saturday Araucaria lit up the weekend. What’s more I actually met him – at his 80th celebration in the City and at his glorious 90th at King’s College in Cambridge. I also mourned him at his memorial service in Somersham. He was simply the best, humble, wise and always interested in others. He realised rules mattered in the world of crosswords but never to the slavish extent that they dissipated the fun. Crosswords must be fun. Without Araucaria no Paul – who in his tribute crossword in One Across put it perfectly….
“To my friend, John Graham – you made me happy”.
What a tribute. So many happy memories of his puzzles. I will never forget his farewell ones . The last solution to be entered was “time to go”. What a man
I once completed a Saturday Prize Puzzle and it was themed, Ports was the theme it is my greatest achievement.
beery hiker @ 40
thank you again – that is very helpful, and I have bookmarked it now.
That is the A-Z list I remembered seeing in the past, but I had been unable to locate it recently.
Excellent tribute. Thanks Tom.
One point: you described JG’s wartime role as “observer” and that he was “the man who dropped the bombs”. I was shocked to read that someone who had recently been a pacifist was prepared to take such a direct role in killing. However, having listened to his Desert Island Discs again, I note that he said he was (at the time he was shot down, at least) navigator on “night-time intrusion” missions, which consisted of flying low-altitude runs behind enemy lines bombing infrastructure such as railway lines.
Thanks also to David @38 for reminding of the delightful anagram “Moonstarer”.
Excellent tribute. Thank you.
Thank you, Tom.
Way back in the early 70’s, I used to buy the Guardian on a bank holiday weekend specifically for the crossword. I also bought the Observer every Sunday for the Azed.
I’ve only been doing daily crosswords since 2013 when I found I could not only bring up the Giardian puzzle on my Kindle using the experimental browser, I could also fill in the grid using the Kindle keyboard!
So my experience of Araucaria is very limited, 3 a year at the most.
Thanks, Tom. A wonderful tribute to a fantastic life. Araucaria brought pleasure to so many.
@Tony+Collman
I seem to remember reading that JG went from being a pacifist to wanting to kill as many Germans as possible. Probably not an uncommon point of view at the time. Contrary to the broad picture painted by the media of the day, the war was not popular at the outset. When it became all out nation against nation war with the possibility of invasion and subjugation to a cruel power opinions changed. We knew we must win, whatever the cost. It was only after the war that the spin changed to justify it as a “good war” – ie where “we” were on the moral high ground – at the time it was firstly an unpopular war (which we were unlikely to win alone) – later a war for survival.
This may not be the place to argue about these things – only recently (ie since those who sacrificed and suffered have mainly passed on) have historians and others been able to dispassionately debate the facts.
What is beyond argument is that JG certainly had a colourful and committed life – even beyond his enormous profile as a crossword setter.
Jolly, you may well have read that somewhere, but he didn’t say anything like that when Kirsty asked him directly about his wartime experiences. Otoh, he didn’t express any sort of determination to avoid killing enemy combatants either.
(I see a lot of comments have been deleted from the Guardian blog. I wonder whose idea that was? Rhetorical Q :-))