Derek “Crosaire” Crozier died over the weekend. I made sure to get a paper yesterday and was determined to finish it but alas I didn’t quite make it.
No other crossword comes close to the elegance of the Crosaire. But I stopped doing it a couple of years ago. I couldn’t justify paying 1.80 every day when I just went straight to the Crosaire, and often didn’t look at the rest of the paper. Except for some interest in the art page, the rest of that paper just puts me asleep.
It was such a ritual part of my morning, an OCD ritual; I had that fold down to a tee, black bic at hand (had to be black), all answers in upper case, and a diagonal tick over the number of every solved clue. Doing the online version just didn’t do it for me somehow.
Elsewhere:
- Tributes flow as ‘genius’ crossword-setter dies
- O’brien press have a Crosaire book.
- Derek Crozier bio on a Crosaire blog