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Teenagers today, they’re just so cryptic
Boudicca Fox-Leonard has a word with our youngest-ever crossword setter, 16-year-old Lucy Evans
Pretty girl in crimson rose, eight letters; the first cryptic crossword clue Lucy Evans ever attempted. Avid cruciverbalists will alight easily on the answer, but while the rest of you mull it over, consider also that a mere six months later, Lucy’s debut cryptic crossword has been published in this newspaper. Further to that, she is just 16 years old.
The A-level student, whom you will come to know better as Navy Clues (an anagram of her name) over the coming weeks, is not only the Telegraph’s youngest-ever setter, but also several decades younger than the majority of her peers.
Cryptic crossword setters are known for their delight in the acrobatic nature of the English language; its homophones, palindromes and double definitions. Lucy is no different – she is frequently found with her nose in a linguistics text or riffling through the dictionary for the sheer love of words.
Her mum Emma describes her as having always been “slightly old-fashioned for her years”, and the whole family – Emma, a psychotherapist, dad Mark, a project manager at HSBC, and non-identical twin sister, Jess – are mildly bemused by the turn of events.
Cryptic crosswords weren’t part of the landscape at home in Rainham, Kent. Dinner times were for debriefing on their days; school, work (Lucy works part time in a book shop), and friends. “Now we also talk about cryptic crosswords,” says Emma. “It’s become an intrinsic part of all our lives in a really short amount of time.”
Lucy herself is equally surprised by her new role. A keen reader, boardgamer and chess player, with a love of music, she has always been interested in the workings of words. “I’ve always loved reading. And I’ve always liked looking up words in the dictionary and understanding their etymology,” she says. When asked, she volunteers “serendipity” as her favourite word. “Because I like the way it sounds and the meaning of it.”
Yet she had never come across cryptic crosswords (or even non-cryptic ones much), until earlier this year when she went to watch a friend play chess at her then school, Chatham Grammar School for Girls. Chatting to one of her teachers about puzzles, he suggested she might find cryptic crosswords a nice challenge for her brain.
He set her three clues. “Pretty girl in crimson rose (8)”, “GEGS (9, 4)” and “Two girls, one on each knee (7)”. The next day she came in with them done.
“I really enjoyed it, and very quickly discovered a passion for it,” she recalls.
It wasn’t long before she was formulating her own clues and filling in her own grid, publishing her effort on her website. After sharing her first crossword on Twitter, the Telegraph’s puzzles