Ron: What is your profession?

Richard:
I am a software engineer, aka a computer programmer.

Ron: Where do you live?

Richard:
I live in Essex, in England. I have lived in numerous places in England throughout my life. I was born in Worcestershire and lived there until getting my first permanent job after graduation. Hence my choice of nom on WelcomeHolmes: Jonathan Small, who said
"I am a Worcestershire man myself,--born near Pershore."

Ron: What other pastimes do you have, apart from Sherlock Holmes?

Richard:
I play the piano, though, regrettably, nowadays, I don't have the time or opportunity to make music with others. I also used to compose music -- but I need music to have real tunes and real chords -- quite old-fashioned concepts, these days! Oh, to be living in another age, 1895, perhaps.

Ron: When did you first come across Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson?

Richard:
Holmes and Watson have long been on the fringe of my knowledge of literature, partly through quotations and partly through references in other contexts. For example, long before I read DANC, I knew of the cryptography in it.

I don't go in much for reading fiction. One day, I dipped into a Holmes omnibus out of curiosity, started reading STUD, and was transfixed. I had to buy these stories and read them all!

That was quite recently. I wish I'd "discovered" the Holmes stories sooner!

A good proportion of the Holmes corpus is short stories, each of which can be read at one sitting; that endeared me to the Holmes stories all the more, as I don't like a long novel that I daren't start because I know I'll have to keep coming back to it. It's a pity that novels are more popular than collections of short stories, and that so many Holmes pasticheurs write novels rather than short stories.

Ron: What appeals to you most in the stories of the Canon?

Richard:
Holmes's deductions... when I can believe in them. It worries me, though, when an element in the story is implausible, or just wrong.

The scene-setting and atmosphere, too. There's not so much scope to flesh the characters out, but then you don't expect so much of that in a short story.

Ron: Who is your favorite character in the Canon and why?

Richard:
Sherlock Holmes, naturally!

Or do you mean a character who only appears in one story? I don't like to pit the characters against each other. I prefer to have them all rather than picking a favourite one.

Ron: How did you come across the WelcomeHolmes list?

Richard:
Straightforwardly, by net search, which found alt.fan.holmes, HOUNDS-L and WelcomeHolmes.

Ron: How did your interest in crossword puzzles begin?

Richard:
Ever since I was a schoolboy, I've been interested in solving cryptic crosswords. My parents took The Guardian, which, typically for a British daily broadsheet newspaper, has a cryptic crossword and a quick one in each issue. It was always the cryptic for me.

My Gran was a crossword fan and would save up Telegraph crosswords for us to do together when I visited. That's how I learnt a lot of the cryptic crossword lingo.

Now The Guardian puts its crossword on its web site, so I can do the crossword without having to subscribe to the newspaper!

If other crossword fans want to know more of my crossword activity on the net, follow the Usenet newsgroup rec.puzzles.crosswords. Last Xmas on that newsgroup I moderated a clue-writing competition (CWC 192). In a CWC, the moderator picks two words and sets entrants the task of cluing them. It was Xmas, so it was clear what my words should be: BLUE and CARBUNCLE. Among the entrants was Chris Redmond (who runs the excellent web site www.sherlockian.net).

Ron: Is there a link between the Canon and crosswords for you?

Richard:
No; they're separate hobbies.

Read what Holmes has to say near the start of SIGN:

"My mind," he said, "rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation.

Anyone living in the 1930s (when crosswords were becoming popular in Britain) or later might have used the crossword, not the cryptogram, as an example of what could stimulate his brain.

Ron: Are there basic rules you have to observe when designing a crossword?

Richard:
Ask the professionals! There are books that introduce cryptic crosswords to the novice, such as Don Manley's "Chambers Crossword Manual", which contains a chapter where he describes how he constructed the grid and answers for a crossword.

There are rules about what makes a good grid. However, the crosswords I've posted to WelcomeHolmes are unusual in that, rather than using a conventional grid, I worked in some canonical reference in the pattern of the black squares. This unfortunately means a loss of quality: no symmetry, inadequate checking, some 2-letter answers and too many short answers.

"A Fine Collection" (on Claudia's Quatrian web site) used an American-style grid which might almost pass muster for an American publication. It has 180-degree symmetry and every white square is checked (i.e. occurs in an across answer and a down answer). The only trouble is that there are a few 2-letter entries. But remember that I was working to a pretty tight constraint; each thematic entry had to come from a Holmes-related word with an M. That gave me a pretty small stock of words, from which I had to make a highly-checked crossword with about 90 of them, and avoid duplicates.

I could do crosswords using grids of the British style, which will give medium and long answers (say 5 or more letters) a chance to appear.

What sort of crossword do Pipers prefer?

Ron: What do you think is the appeal crossword puzzles have for so many solvers?

Richard:
Why are crosswords *so* popular? One factor is surely that the crossword is nearly a century old; crosswords have had a long time to get popular.

There are other sorts of puzzle, of course. Solving logic puzzles entails organising many pieces of information. A chess column is for those who can play chess well, but we all know how to do crosswords.

Going in the other direction, there are puzzles easier than crosswords. A newspaper or magazine with puzzles might have other sorts (e.g. Trackword). However, these need to be explained, but we all know how to do crosswords.

And some daily broadsheets in the UK (I don't know about the USA) carry crosswords, but not the other, easier, sorts of puzzles - perhaps the other sorts are seen as too downmarket?

Then again, the crossword is so adaptable to people of all abilities. There are quick crosswords with plain definition clues, cryptic ones, general knowledge quizzes in the form of crosswords, and quizzes on any particular subject -- such as the Holmes stories, of course!

Thank you, Richard!