Celebrating the crossword
CThis week we celebrate the 75th edition of the South African Cryptic Crossword, published weekly in Grocott’s Mail. Sue Maclennan gets a glimpse into the minds of its compiler, and two of its solvers. rossword solvers Bev Fourie and Leela Pienaar are preparing their revenge on compiler George Euvrard, a former dean of education at Rhodes University.
“We’re compiling a crossword for George to complete… and it’s not going to be a pushover!” Pienaar said.
The South African Cryptic Crossword, a first as far as is known, which began in August 2015, is Euvrard’s latest enterprise for people to expand their minds and terms of reference.
The qualified counselling psychologist is the co-founder of the Polar Plunge – Grahamstown’s mid-winter swim across Grey Dam. He is also the founder of the Indlela yoBuntu pilgrimage from Grahamstown to Cape Town.
“I’d been looking at the crosswords published in papers across the country and I noticed that all of them were syndicated from England,” Euvrard said.
There was one exception. But although Finweek’s Jack Dunwoody lives in South Af- rica, all the clues and references were decidedly English.
In an as yet unpublished academic article titled ‘South Africanising the English Cryptic Crossword’, Euvrard describes the world view of the genre as London-Etonian-Conservative- chauvinist-colonial-centric.
So in Grocott’s Mail, he made “a total shift”. He attempted to South Africanise the traditional English crossword in terms of language, history, geography and culture.
As a psychologist, he ties this in with a sense of identity, as defined by 20th century psychologist Abraham Maslow.
“How can we gain a sense of who we are and what we believe, and develop a deep trust in this, when we constantly