Roger Squires

Roger Squires (born 22 February 1932 in Tettenhall, Wolverhampton, England) is a retired British crossword compiler/setter, living in Ironbridge, Shropshire, who is best known for being the world's most prolific compiler. He compiled under the pseudonym Rufus in The Guardian, Dante in The Financial Times and was the Monday setter for the Daily Telegraph.

Roger Squires in 2005

Early life

Squires was educated at Wolverhampton Grammar School where he gained his School Certificate before joining the Royal Navy at age 15 as a Boy Seaman.

His first published puzzle appeared in 1963, the year that he left the Navy, in the Wolverhampton Express & Star. The first national was the Radio Times, and in the same year he became a regular compiler with the Birmingham Post. He then started compiling for syndicates that supplied puzzles for newspapers in the UK and abroad.

Career

In 1981 he joined The Guardian, the Times Educational Supplement,"The Glasgow Herald" and Financial Times and became the Birmingham Post crossword editor for 22 years. In 1986 he joined the Daily Telegraph and The Independent. He compiled for The Sun (1992–1998), The Times (1993–2005) and the Times Educational Supplement (1981–2006). He has set crosswords under pseudonyms including Rufus, Dante, Icarus, Hodge and Bower.[1]

In 1990 he captained the Great Britain crossword team in the 12 nation International Crossword Marathon in Bjelovar, Yugoslavia.

He registered his company name of "Cryptic Crosswords" in the early 1970s.

He has now published over 70,000 crosswords in total, and on 14 May 2007 what was estimated to be his two millionth clue was published in the Daily Telegraph. The clue was 'Two girls, one on each knee (7)'.[2]

Squires is recognised by Guinness World Records as "The World's Most Prolific Crossword Compiler".[3] He appeared in the Guinness Book of Records from 1978 until all crossword records were dropped in 2002. An update to December 2005 was included in the 2008 print edition.

His puzzles have appeared in 32 countries outside the UK. In 2013, he celebrated his 50th year as a professional setter, on the same day as the Crossword's First Centenary. By 30 June 2013 he had compiled 74,634 crosswords, equivalent to 2.25 million clues. He holds the record for the longest word used in a published puzzle, the Welsh place name: Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, which he clued as an anagram: "Giggling troll follows Clancy, Larry, Billy and Peggy who howl, wrongly disturbing a place in Wales (58)". He is one of only four setters to have been on the regular teams of all five quality newspapers (The Times, Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, The Independent and Financial Times). He holds the Guinness Record for the Longest Published Crossword – at 8 feet long, because Onsworld Ltd were unable to publish the whole 24 ft puzzle. He has also produced a 3D crossword that fits on a Rubik's Cube.[4]

Publications

Many crossword anthologies, including The Times, Guardian, Telegraph, Financial Times, and the Herald include cryptic puzzles by Squires, including one book devoted solely to 100 of his Guardian cryptics. In collaboration with Ken Guy he produced three general knowledge books on "The 1950s", "The 1960s" and "The 1970s".

He has been featured in a number of crossword books[5] about Squires' inclusion in "A Display of Lights (9)".

In 2000 the Times Educational Supplement published an article titled "Clued up"[6] in which he was interviewed.

Other various appearances

Apart from crosswords, he is qualified for membership of Mensa[7] and The Magic Circle, and he was a Fleet Air Arm observer in his twenties, during which time he qualified for the Goldfish Club (for survivors of aircraft ditchings) by escaping from his Gannet AEW aircraft 60 feet below the surface off Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in March 1961.[4]

From 1964 to 1977 he made over 250 appearances on TV as a comedy magician.

He was featured talking about crosswords in the TV programme "How To Solve Cryptic Crosswords" (BBC4) in 2009, and in the BBC One Show (BBC1) in 2011.[8]

Personal life

In 1977 his first marriage foundered and he gave up professional acting and magic to work from home so that he could look after his two pre-teenage sons.

Squires later married Anna.

A keen sportsman, Squires represented the Royal Navy and Fleet Air Arm at football and cricket and is a qualified Football Association Coach and Referee.

gollark: 3-torus? Interesting! Time to use this.
gollark: It's that language where you have those 8 commands which make macros, I implemented it.
gollark: And Tux1, before you say anything, this is you.
gollark: LyricLy, you can't even make macron.
gollark: Consume an apioform of τ-4 class.

See also

References
  1. "Why you buy a particular paper (9)", The Independent, 4 December 2006
  2. (Pat-Ella)"Crossword setter hits puzzling landmark", Richard Savill, Daily Telegraph, 15 May 2007
  3. "Ace’s two millionth brainteaser", Shropshire Star, 1 October 2007
  4. "Tales from a cryptic crossworder", BBC News, 7 November 2002
  5. "Editor’s tribute to cryptic king Roger", Toby Neal, Shropshire Star, 23 December 2008
  6. "Clued up", Steven Hastings, Times Educational Supplement, 1 December 2000
  7. "Mensa FAQ "Have you got any famous members?"". Mensa. 22 July 2014. Archived from the original on 22 July 2014. Retrieved 13 August 2014. Other celebrities reported to have qualified for membership include... Guinness World Record crossword compiler Roger Squires
  8. "Interview: Roger Squires", Shuchismita Upadhyay, Crossword Unclued, 9 November 2011
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