Alan Turing—the father of modern computing, Bletchley Park’s most famous codebreaker and one of the most extraordinary minds of the twentieth century—was absolutely hopeless at crosswords.
“Maurice and Francis Price arranged a party with a treasure hunt last Sunday,” wrote Turing in a letter in 1937 while he was at Princeton University in America. “There were 13 clues of various kinds, cryptograms, anagrams and others completely obscure to me. It was all very ingenious, but I am not much use at them.”
A little later in the war, when Turing had been sent out from England to join US cryptographers in Washington, a colleague asked for his help in solving that day’s cryptic teaser. Turing’s response? “That’s one of those Herald Tribune cryptograms,” he said. “I’ve never been able to do THOSE!”
So it is startling to think that if Turing had taken on the Daily Telegraph’s famous 1942 challenge to solve its cryptic crossword in twelve minutes or under, he would not have succeeded—and as a result, might have missed out on one of the more striking ways of being recruited to Bletchley Park.
This section of puzzles features not only that particularly significant Telegraph crossword, but also other wartime crosswords from The Times—for as we shall see, these puzzles were a crucial part of the fabric of Bletchley Park life.
The crossword printed in the Daily Telegraph on January 13, 1942, now has its place in history as a particularly British approach to seeking out the most supple wartime minds.
It had all started innocuously enough. In the latter stages of 1941, as the war in North Africa was unfolding, letter writers to the Daily Telegraph seemed concerned not so much with military gains, or with rationing, or with seeking out Fifth Columnist spies—but more with the quality of the daily crossword. Among the readers’ letters were complaints that it had simply become too easy.
These letters first caught the attention of W. A. J. Gavin of The Eccentric Club, a venerable Mayfair dining society which aimed for a membership of original thinkers. Gavin thought it would be amusing to put up a prize for a special challenge. He got in touch with Daily Telegraph editor Arthur Watson, who was immediately taken with Gavin’s idea for a £100 prize for anyone solving the daily crossword in under twelve minutes.
It was an amusing stunt in its own right, but the idea of it also caught the imagination of several key Whitehall figures.
A challenge was issued to the readers of the Telegraph. Those who accepted came to sit in a special area of the Telegraph newsroom, and on that chilly grey morning in January 1942, five people succeeded in correctly filling in the puzzle in the allotted time. Though the prize money was a substantial sum, a greater prize lay behind it. Because also witnessing the competition were figures from a shadowy sub-department of MI6.
One of the winners was a man called Stanley Sedgewick. Interviewed many years afterwards, he said: “I received a letter marked ‘confidential’ inviting me, as a consequence of taking part in the Daily Telegraph ‘Crossword Time Test’ to make an appointment to see Colonel Nicholls of the General Staff who ‘would very much like to see you on a matter of national importance.’”
Mr. Sedgewick duly went along to Whitehall and so it was—having signed the Official Secrets Act—that he was recruited to the Bletchley Park operation. He was told, he said, that he had a sufficiently “twisted brain” for the arduous work to appeal. (The other winners were approached and coaxed in a similar fashion.)
At this point it should be intriguing to find out if any one of us in this modern age also possesses a sufficiently “twisted” brain to match that original twelve-minute feat. Can you beat the clock by completing the historic crossword on the following pages in the allotted time—and if so, might you have been one of the people finding yourself being quietly approached by the War Office and then being told to report to “Station X,” the code-name for Bletchley?
Crossword solving became a ritual for some of the codebreakers. Some favoured the Telegraph; others The Times. Among the fans of the latter was Hut 6 codebreaker Rolf Noskwith. Whenever he and fellow Bletchley-ite Sarah Norton were on the train out from London Euston to return to their duties in Buckinghamshire, they would share The Times’ crossword—one of them solving one half before then passing it over.
And one guaranteed source of tension in the wooden huts—quite separate from the crushing pressure to get codebreaking results—concerned who got to The Times first each day. There was a semi-agreement whereby the crossword was copied out, so that the one in the newspaper would be left pristine for whoever came next.
The idea that there was a direct link between the crossword craze and the codebreaker’s mind had spread from across the Atlantic. The American equivalent of Bletchley Park during the war was an establishment called Arlington Hall in Virginia, not far from Washington DC. One of its recruits was a man who did not merely solve crosswords: he compiled them.
William Lutwiniak had been a serious cryptic crossword enthusiast since his early teens. His passion—and his talent for winning “cryptogram” competitions—brought him to the attention of the authorities.
Just before America entered the war in 1941, Lutwiniak recalled, “I got a communication from the Signal Intelligence Service, William Friedman, asking me if I’d be interested in signing up for the army extension courses on cryptography and cryptanalysis . . . It had been one of my fondest dreams to some day be a cryptanalyst as a profession,” he continued. “It never occurred to me that it might actually happen, I didn’t think there was any such place in the government.”
TELEGRAPH
JANUARY 13TH, 1942
ACROSS
1. A stage company (6)
4. The direct route preferred by the Roundheads (5,3)
9. One of the ever-greens (6)
10. Scented (8)
12. Course with an apt finish (5)
13. Much that could be got from a timber merchant (5,4)
15. We have nothing and are in debt (3)
16. Pretend (5)
17. Is this town ready for a flood? (6)
22. The little fellow has some beer; it makes me lose colour, I say (6)
24. Fashion of a famous French family (5)
27. Tree (3)
28. One might of course use this tool to core an apple (6,3)
31. Once used for unofficial currency (5)
32. Those well brought up help these over stiles (4,4)
33. A sport in a hurry (6)
34. Is the workshop that turns out this part of a motor a hush-hush affair? (8)
35. An illumination functioning (6)
DOWN
1. Official instruction not to forget the servants (8)
2. Said to be a remedy for a burn (5,3)
3. Kind of alias (9)
5. A disagreeable company (5)
6. Debtors may have to this money for their debts unless of course their creditors do it to the debts (5)
7. Boat that should be able to suit anyone (6)
8. Gear (6)
11. Business with the end in sight (6)
14. The right sort of woman to start a dame school (3)
18. “The war” (anag.) (6)
19. When hammering take care not to hit this (5,4)
20. Making sound as a bell (8)
21. Half a fortnight of old (8)
23. Bird, dish or coin (3)
25. This sign of the Zodiac has no connection with the Fishes (6)
26. A preservative of teeth (6)
29. Famous sculptor (5)
30. This part of the locomotive engine would sound familiar to the golfer (5)
He ended up working for senior codebreaker Solomon Kullback, himself addicted to cryptic puzzles. After a spectacular secret cipher war focusing on German codes, Lutwiniak had the chance to pursue the career he really hankered for: devising cryptic newspaper crosswords full-time.
Britain’s crosswords exerted a pull on American codebreakers too. Utah-born Frank W. Lewis had been inducted into cryptanalysis in his home country, and towards the end of the war he had been sent across the ocean to Bletchley Park. It was while he was there that he discovered the fabulous intricacies of the British cryptic crossword.
What started as an enthusiasm took over his (off-duty) life; when not attacking naval codes, Lewis immersed himself in all the tricks and stratagems employed by the cryptic crossword setters. Come the end of the war, this brilliant cryptanalyst returned to America and became a hugely respected figure in the top-secret National Security Agency. He imported those British crossword skills with him, becoming—like Lutwiniak—an enormously popular puzzle-setter. His chosen outlet was the Nation newspaper.
But that is not to say that Bletchley could not produce its own indigenous crossword compilers. Mathematician Shaun Wylie—who at university had side-stepped into classics, his extraordinary mind dancing across disciplines—was one of the most stalwart figures in Hut 8, working to demolish the German navy’s codes, and later became a senior figure in the regenerated GCHQ. Perhaps tellingly, Wylie also gained an enormous amount of satisfaction compiling cryptic crosswords for The Times under the enigmatic pseudonym “Petti.” These were said at the time to be the most fearsome puzzles set for a mainstream publication.
One Bletchley codebreaker, thinking back over his time at the Park some seventy-five years earlier, considered that breaking into Enigma codes required the sort of dual mind-set that was necessary for cryptic crosswords. He said that one had to be both ultra-focused and yet also relaxed, for no one had ever been able to solve a cryptic puzzle with a loaded gun pointed at their head.
Although cryptic crosswords during those war years were very similar to those enjoyed now, there is a suggestion that today’s generation might struggle with the vintage puzzles. The linguistic double-backing and somersaulting is much the same but puzzlers then would also have been required to have a depth of general, cultural, classical and Biblical knowledge that might not necessarily be so prevalent now.
Phil McNeill, a recent puzzles editor of the Daily Telegraph, said of the crosswords that the newspaper printed in 1944 around D-Day: “They were certainly more diverse. General knowledge clues nestled beside anagrams; riddles, or cryptic definitions, were to be found alongside quotations.
“Like today,” he continued, “there were hidden words, homophones, double definitions and wordplay, but in a much looser format. It was a very mixed bag. I found it fascinating to try to think like a solver of the 1940s. Were they more literary than us? The compilers did like their poetic quotations. Were they better at lateral thinking? Some of these riddles certainly require a leap of the imagination. There are a few answers that you may never have come across.”
Added to this was one particular cultural consideration Mr. McNeill faced when reprinting certain old puzzles: clues containing terms that would now be considered grossly offensive. “There is one that we would not carry today as we are more sensitive—or less robust—about possible racial insults,” he said.
Old-fashioned terminology aside, both British and American codebreaking authorities understood very well how crossword puzzles might help the wider cryptological war effort, both in terms of sharpening methods of thinking, and also as a means of relaxing after a stressful shift.
They could also be used in more oblique ways: senior codebreaker Dilly Knox sometimes used puzzles as a metaphor to explain the work in hand to his new young recruits to Bletchley’s “Cottage” (a research department set up in a small house next to the stables). Incidentally, Knox’s equally intelligent brother Ronald was a crossword show-off who once irritated Evelyn Waugh by solving all the “across” answers of one cryptic puzzle, and then correctly filled in the “down” answers without even looking at the clues.
So here is a fine selection of crosswords of a wartime vintage, selected from particularly auspicious days for Bletchley; days when vital codes were cracked, and when the Park was directly influencing the turning points of the war. These are the puzzles that codebreakers such as Stuart Milner-Barry were itching to solve even after the most gruelling, mind-shredding all-night shifts. The crosswords are presented here both as an enjoyable test and also as a means of gaining insight into the workings of the young minds that were solving them.
1
THE TIMES
AUGUST 15TH, 1939
Several weeks before war is declared, the codebreaking operation moves from London to Bletchley.
ACROSS
1. The speech of a baby elephant employs it, perhaps (11, 4)
9. Evidently I turn green with dizziness (7)
10. American inventor, not Oriental (7)
11. Indoor caps for the masses (4)
12. Not usually thought of as a composer of small beer (5)
13. She exhibits a miser’s characteristic in 25 (4)
16. Section announcements (7)
17. The rarefied atmosphere necessary for vanishing tricks (4, 3)
18. The gardener is unfeeling with an inhabitant of his soil (7)
21. The mother insect is an elephantine creature (7)
23. Domesticated river (4)—
24. —and streams of fire-water? (5)
25. See 13 (4)
28. A freckle? (7)
29. It pulls a vehicle back on a hill (7)
30. Flag seen and felt unwillingly (5, 3, 7)
DOWN
1. They have brought colour to our flags (two words) (8, 7)
2. Food that gets into the mouth of only a favoured horse? (7)
3. Chain letters? (4)
4. They seem foolish things to eat with soup (7)
5. “—as simplicity, and warm As ecstasy” (Cowper) (7)
6. A land where you are without a ship (4)
7. To fern may be sound, mother (7)
8. Ballet music is not their forte, however (5, 10)
14. Obsolete scuffle (5)
15. Diaphanous (5)
19. The country of the people in the song (7)
20. Where a relative is in not up (7)
21. Naturally they take some of the secretary’s time (7)
22. Singular action popular among 8 (7)
26. How part of 4 can be taken (as it often is) musically! (4)
27. Just weather (4)
2
THE TIMES
JANUARY 2ND, 1940
The first break into Enigma using the large perforated sheets of card known as “Jeffrey sheets.”
ACROSS
1. Poachers’ wear? (9)
6. Tip or no tip (5)
9. They are very absorbing (5)
10. Not necessarily an inconsiderable period (9)
11. A swell affair (10)
12. An American girl can make it so different (4)
14. Ploughshare without puss (7)
15. Lordly wear (7)
17. Rests or places where you can get them (7)
19. Man to whom one doesn’t mind lending (7)
20. It’s in shocking taste (4)
22. Not articles of small arms (6, 4)
25. Queen Cole is evidently not at a loss for words (9)
26. Look for him in the Mile End Road (5)
27. Not a “jam session” according to Carroll (5)
28. Hurry with the clue (9)
DOWN
1. Dragged into matrimony? (5)
2. Adam couldn’t claim them (9)
3. They progress without effort (10)
4. Retribution (7)
5. Not another name for dogfish (7)
6. Avuncular pledge (4)
7. His delight is play (5)
8. He takes great care (9)
13. Hyne’s captain seems to enjoy good health in Yorkshire (10)
14. What dry rolls are probably made of (9)
16. The paint combine briefly? (9)
18. Ball for the angler (7)
19. Suitable nickname for the cupholders (7)
21. Wordsworth’s standard of loneliness (5)
23. This bread isn’t (5)
24. A thing of custom (4)
3
THE TIMES
SEPTEMBER 2ND, 1940
At the height of the Battle of Britain, Bletchley breaks into the Luftwaffe “brown key” Enigma codes, helping air defence against the forthcoming Blitz.
ACROSS
1. Sir Robert Kindersley’s idea of public virtue, perhaps (6, 5)
10. Bench wear (5)
11. High church abroad (9)
12. Having that sombre half-holiday feeling? (9)
13. A little land having a tenant (5)
14. Assent (6)
16. One gets The Times back (8)
18. Description of Gilbert Jessop’s idea of the way to score (3, 5)
20. Poster gone quick (6)
23. North-Western side (5)
24. Mob lawyer (anag.) (9)
26. It hardly suggests Dr. Gayda in a manner of speaking (5, 4)
27. Evidently the wood-worker is no fisherman (5)
28. Do these result from a correspondence course in journalism? (4, 7)
DOWN
2. Announcement by the dog’s victim (5)
3. Made secure (7)
4. 2 takes a letter for a ruse (6)
5. Rescued (8)
6. Goldsmith didn’t make violoncellos (7)
7. It is not to imply that the flower in question sets a standard of impudence (5, 2, 1, 5)
8. Playgoers will remember Brewster’s (8)
9. He has two arms, legs, wings and insides (6, 7)
15. Few people stay here long, however much they declare they like it (4, 4)
17. A Looking-glass day (8)
19. What Henry V was anxious should not be asked on St. Crispin’s Day (3, 4)
21. Dance with the rest in confusion (7)
22. “Thy Naiad airs have brought me home To the glory that was—” (Poe) (6)
25. She is not necessarily a match-maker (5)
4
THE TIMES
MARCH 24TH, 1941
The first of the crossword-puzzle-addicted Wrens arrive at Bletchley, there in part to operate the bombe code processing machines.
ACROSS
1. Deportment in the strong-room? (4, 7)
9. A strapping sort of jumper (4).
10. Brainy (10)
11. This garment is for the protection of the kitchen front (7)
12. Bush-ranger’s defeat? (7)
14. Apparently Oliver Twist wasn’t (9)
16. Do they come into view in Lancashire? (5)
19. The cows are not sold to them (5)
20. She had many pressing suitors but found them all bores, so to speak (9)
22. What is she at? He supplies the answer (7)
24. The making of its first syllable—ask William of Wykeham (7)
27. Rides with mother having an outside attempt (10)
28. It may have sauce for a cargo (4)
29. A stethoscope will not discover if one is so (11)
DOWN
2. It’s simply all the rage (5)
3. But if they were one couldn’t see whom to salute (4, 4)
4. Found in the repertoire of a concert party (4)
5. A bird with diver’s interests (6)
6. This seems to be the place where the planning committee should meet (9)
7. Barry, I’ve made a book (8)
8. Bearing (4)
13. Hamlet referred to the law’s (5)
15. It doesn’t mean a man who falls down when skating (9)
17. Stuff produced from air and metal (8)
18. Heroic aspect of a broken musical instrument full of sand (8)
21. French hunting (6)
23. “The cock’s shrill clarion or the echoing—, No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed” (Gray) (4)
25. He seems the right man to have battled at Lord’s (5)
26. The heathen, by implication, did (4)
5
THE TIMES
NOVEMBER 3RD, 1942
As the desert war in North Africa turns, and The Battle of El Alamein is won, Bletchley has been working closely with its Cairo outstation, intercepting messages to German general Erwin Rommel, secretly contributing to the triumph.
ACROSS
1. Terms of reference (7, 3, 5)
9. A journal “in the know” should have many adherents (8)
10. Jews were not plagued here (6)
11. Novel treasure (6)
12. Drawn out, perhaps, and certainly awkward (8)
13. Something beefy is afoot (7)
15. MSS (7)
18. They keep themselves to themselves, as the saying goes (7)
19. Benedictine gratis (7)
21. Sound advice to a poseur? (1, 7)
24. Symbolic representation (6)
26. The company takes its rations back with it (6)
27. Evacuation, in their case, is made compulsory (8)
28. Good reading for the black-out (5, 10)
DOWN
2. Suitable material of which to build a church? (9)
3. All’s right with the world, she observed (5)
4. It will serve the purpose (9)
5. Not the Spitfire’s cannon (6)
6. The first thing, as a rule, to do with an allotment (5)
7. One could make it with reels (9)
8. Four-footed guide (5)
14. It’s candid, but seldom candied (4, 5)
16. Quite appropriate for the chips to come in with the fish (9)
17. For an up-to-date Daisy Bell, perhaps (3, 6)
20. The M.O. in the last state of confusion, or very near it (6)
In conditions of top secrecy, the Colossus machine comes to Bletchley Park—a construction that can crack codes from Hitler himself and which also heralds the dawn of the computer age.
ACROSS
1. I face blondes in Bucks (12)
9. A capital city (5)
10. Scarcely contains the whole of it (3)
11. A mess of game (5)
12. River of battle (4)
13. A means, perhaps, of confusing the issue (10)
15. Reeve, for example? (8)
17. “The royal—and all quality, Pride, pomp and circumstance of glorious war” (Othello) (6)
20. To do so involves footwork (3)
22. His faith involves a change of 11 (6)
23. A festival to disregard (8)
25. This can be made with eight hands (10)
28. Jenny in uniform (4)
30. Room to move (5)
31. Sister and parent of a patriarch (3)
32. Sartorial geese (5)
33. Our dull-witted ancestors (6, 6)
DOWN
2. Sand-eel if changed (9)
3., 14. A priestly vestment (8)
4. An orderly mob? (8)
5. Productive (6)
6. Sister of Lucie and Tillie (5)
7. High lama (5)
8. They are merely one’s personal impressions (12)
9. Unswervingly opposed, perhaps, to matrimony (12)
14. See 3
16. Unmanned hills (3)
18., 29. Bumptious (8)
19. The ultimate maximum? (9)
21. It is larger than the place in which it grows (8)
24. Limbs of a man of letters (6)
26. Shakespearian clown (5)
27. i.e., pull it (2, 3)
29. See 18
7
THE TIMES
JUNE 6TH, 1944
D-Day—and as the Normandy landings are under way, the Bletchley codebreakers are decrypting all German communications and feeding the intelligence instantly to Winston Churchill.
ACROSS
1. Some smart little beasts (9)
9. “Go, lovely Rose” (—) (6)
10. Roman subsistence allowance (8)
11. It’s a bore when they come into action (8)
13. Blessed in poetry (7)
14. The forty-ninth was dramatized (8)
15. Scoffs (5)
18. Part of 25 (3)
20. Cut down colour (3)
21. Genuinely attached to 28 (5)
24. Torturers did not add insult to injury by charging this up to their victims (8)
26. Snake in a coil (7)
27. Shot in the chest? (8)
29. A bonded store (8)
30. City mostly what a city inevitably is (6)
31. Sandy site for houses (9)
DOWN
2. Anything but a steady movement (7)
3. The right place for anybody wanting a mattress? (7)
4. The saint is not in pain: quite the contrary, indeed (6)
5. “E’en from the—the voice of nature cries” (Gray) (4)
6. Success in these depends largely on the use of one’s hands (9)
7. Well, Nelly, the Minister of Food spells it differently (9)
8. Peel’s Tory reconstruction (9)
12. Freshwater fish found in a saltwater ship (5)
15. Orestes was a legendary one (9)
16. It is only practised to deceive (9)
17. Rains cats (anag.) (9)
19. Apparent in the formation of Latin gerunds (5)
22. Account, perhaps, for the faked permits (7)
23. Fuel carrying on five (7)
25. Town wear (6)
28. It would be just after me (4)
8
THE TIMES
JULY 1ST, 1944
Bletchley Park is now decoding more messages than ever before—some 4,500 communications a day—from theatres of war all around the world.
ACROSS
1. J. Owl’s impudence (5, 2, 4)
7. Singular gun dog (3)
9. There are whispers that we own the grog (7)
10. One means of putting shrews under (7)
11. Can you face it? (6)
12. Horatio, don’t exclaim! (5)
15. Woman at the wheel. Not joyriding, though (8)
16. Shell of somewhat milky appearance (6)
18. It demands elbow-room (6)
20. Tom’s mare is quite a little creature (8)
23. I am hors-de-combat in the London suburb (5)
24. Vindictive when the French don’t cheer (6)
27. Ran into Stevenson’s Prince in Italy (7)
28. Final attachment (7)
29. In respect of which the Church cannot be accused of blindness (3)
30. Not a device for discovering if anybody has been at the decanter (11)
DOWN
1. There is no credit in being sharper at this (4)
2. By Jane (4)
3. Not how you spell cow, young lady—unless it has gone to your head! (7)
4. Certainly, the soup dish was not intact last night (8)
5. They are taken, booked, worn and carried out (6)
6. Ran cool (anag.) (7)
7. The colour of its hair is always changing—for artistic effect (10)
8. The very flower of little operas! (10)
13. They are helpful to those who find it difficult to get up (10)
14. Land’s End, Spain (10)
17. They seem to outlaw song (8)
19. These canaries never sing (7)
21. A saint, lace him (7)
22. Captured by Alexander’s men (6)
25. Britons never will be what he just escapes being (4)
26. Singularly it is in the plural (4)
9
THE TIMES
MARCH 21ST, 1945
Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery crosses the Rhine, helped in part by crystalline intelligence from Bletchley.
ACROSS
1. It’s a fake and that’s where we get stuck (5)
4. A long time in the pantry (9)
8. Simply super if feline (8)
9. Its 8 are not quite so outstanding as those referred to in the clue (6)
11. I’m the unknown quantity, somewhat bucolic (4)
12. Cancel (5)
13. It often, when painful, gets black (4)
16. First cousin to a pedlar of dreams, perhaps (6, 6)
19. “What a world of happiness,” sang Poe, “their harmony foretells!” (7, 5)
21. Longing to be a batsman? (4)
22. It is found in the hosiery department (5)
23. A sheepish hero (4)
26. Dean of Barchester might end with a tent (6)
27. Where the addition is made is stated, though a suggestion of doubt follows (8)
28. He’d riches, and did this with them (9)
29. Awaited (5)
DOWN
1. A little bit of India swallowed by a child’s dog quite transparent (9)
2. Only half enough legging for 26 (6)
3. For this is deserting drink (4)
4. The right man to toast at a bump supper (12)
5. Greedy in a six-a-penny way (4)
6. Tut, and confuse the eagle (8)
7. Charlotte M. (5)
10. He dead might be the result of getting thus mentally disorganized (6, 6)
14. Little room here, afloat or ashore (5)
15. I am in the slot and capsized (5)
17. Claim in a musical instrument (9)
18. “—, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything,” so to speak (8)
20. Able and performed (6)
21. Foreign currency (5)
24. It’s decreed, as it were (4)
25. She got her “A” certificate, but didn’t get . . . (4)
10
THE TIMES
MAY 8TH, 1945
Victory in Europe—but apart from some drinks on the lawn and an address from the Bletchley vicar, the codebreaking work goes on, monitoring signals from the Far East and, a little later, from the Soviet Union.
ACROSS
1. “Nay, now you are too flat. And mar the concord with too harsh a—” (Two G. of V.) (7)
