Roger Squires - Prolific Professional Career

Prolific Professional 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 for virtually every British newspaper, under pseudonyms including Rufus, Dante, Icarus, Hodge and Bower. These include The Observer, Sunday Correspondent, Daily Mail, and Mail on Sunday. 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)'. Squires is recognised by Guinness World Records as "The World's Most Prolific Crossword Compiler". He appeared in the Guinness Book of Records from 1978 until all crossword records were dropped in 2002, though they were continued online until 2006. An update to December 2005 was included in the 2008 print edition. The 1992, 1993 and 1994 editions also included his brief history of crosswords. His puzzles have appeared in 592 outlets, including 113 publications in 32 countries outside the UK. 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. Since passing his two millionth clue Squires has cut down his workload and now only provides regular crosswords for The Guardian, Daily Telegraph, Financial Times, Yorkshire Post, The Telford Journal and for two syndicates, Gemini Crosswords and the Press Association. For two years from January 2009 he single-handedly supplied the Guardian Saturday Magazine General Knowledge crossword.

Milestones in his career include: passing publication of 4,000 cryptics for the Birmingham Post (in 2001), 1,000 cryptic crosswords for The Financial Times (2003), 10,000 quicks for the London Evening Standard (2004), 1,000 cryptic crosswords in the TES (in 2000), 1,000 Quicks for The Guardian (2000), 15,000 cryptics for Gemini Crosswords (inc. The Features Syndicate, First Features) (2010), 5,000 cryptics for the Press Association (inc. Central Press Features, Morley Adams Ltd) 2010, 3,000 cryptics for the Glasgow Herald (2010), 3,000 cryptics for the Yorkshire Post (2010), 1,500 cryptics for the Telford Journal (2010), 1,000 cryptics for The Guardian (2010) and 1,000 cryptics for the Daily Telegraph (2010), this latter event being celebrated in an article titled "Meet the Telegraph's cryptic crossword maestro".