Q&A Sessions: George Euvrard, the brains behind our cryptic crossword

You are a professor, a cruciverbalist and a champion for education. Tell us a bit more about yourself.

Sho. Big question. I’ve asked myself repeatedly: “Why am I here and what am I doing?” I’ve been retired for a year from Rhodes University. I have been wonderfully, gloriously, sort of embarrassingly, guiltily happy among all the hardship that so many people are having at the moment, with Covid-19. But then I loved work as well. I was at Rhodes for 34 years from about 1986 until 2019. 

The ’80s were dark days, you know. We were going into the township, undercover, to do teaching practice and being protected by the community. 

What did you want to achieve in the education space?

Another good question. In fact, I used to sit in my office thinking somebody is going to walk in and say, “You’re an imposter as an academic.” I’m not a classic academic: my passion was more for growing people. 

I’m a qualified psychotherapist. I’ve got my doctorate in pure psychology. So that’s my first love. But the part of psychology that excites me is working with people to help them find meaning and purpose in life. And it’s a struggle for all of us because no one has the formula. 

Education was an obvious way that I could do that. And my passion was to help young people find what life’s about and find some meaning and space for themselves. The most important role of a teacher is about inspiring young people and helping them in their journeys.

What are your fondest memories of some of the young people you have worked with? 

Towards the end of one year, a student came to say goodbye after doing his PGC [Postgraduate Certificate in Education]. He had told me that his dream was to become a pilot. But he said he was going to look for a teaching post. 

And I said: “What about your passion for flying? As a young black man in this country, there must be opportunities. Give me a shout if you need anything.” He just looked at me and said: “You’ve already helped me. You’ve helped me find myself.” And that’s the most important thing. 

Now, I want to come to the cryptic crossword puzzles. 

My father was a great lover of cryptic crosswords, and I learned to do them with him. If you look at mine, they are called the JDE original South African cryptic crossword. JDE are my father’s initials.

How did compiling them start?

In 2011, I was working on another project about South Africa. Sort of a pilgrimage. I put a route together to Knysna, 600km away. One day I walked out my front door on a route that I had in my head through the bushes and over the mountains. 

After a week of just walking on my own — no tent, nothing — I got trapped in floods in the Baviaanskloof. I had my pen and paper, and I started putting a crossword together. And that was my first one. 

Then when I was lecturing up in Namibia, I had some time between sessions. I thought, “I wonder if I could compose a cryptic crossword?”After doing about 10, I approached our local newspaper, [Grocott’s Mail] and I offered to create one every week.

How did it become a proudly South African cryptic crossword puzzle?

After I’d done about 10, or 20, I started adding South African parts to them. This was in about 2016 when the whole idea of Africanisation, decolonisation was going on. I thought to myself, “I love cryptic crosswords, but they’re absolutely English-centric, UK-centric, London centric, chauvinist centric, all those things.” I didn’t want to perpetuate this. 

We should be taking pride and joy in our way of looking at the world and seeing things. I wanted to develop a South African crossword. And I didn’t want to be using all the acronyms and various things from the “pretend I’m sitting in London to do a cryptic crossword” perspective. 

So I set about creating South Africanised puzzles — not only in language but also in spirit and place. This is a South African thing that we can take pride in and enjoy.

It must be a lot of work putting them together. 

We are now on JDE 263. Every single one has got an Afrikaans word like braai or sosatie. And each has a Xhosa word as well. I have a strong belief that every South African should have a basic grasp of some of our local indigenous languages. It’s a bit prescriptive, I know. But I feel that this is one small way that I can start helping that process. 

How difficult is it to put such a crossword together? 

Okay, I’ll tell you about my process. First, I make up the grid: all the words that are the solutions. Then I make the clues for those words. 

One of the basic things is that crosswords are a game — they’ve got their own rules. And if you don’t know those rules, you’re going to struggle.

The simplest part of a cryptic crossword is that it usually consists of two parts. We call the first the definition, which is like a synonym, or the thing, which is the answer. 

The other part is what we call the cryptic part. And it shows you how to come to the same answer but in a different way. 

It sounds fascinating. Can you give me an example?

You’ve probably heard of anagrams. So for instance, “late” if you mix it up, you can get “tale” — a story. Here’s a short one I did over Christmas. It says: Bury rolling stone. The actual definition there is stone. Now you don’t know that yet. It’s either the beginning of the sentence or the end. So rolling is an indicator there is an anagram: you need to roll some letters. You need to mix them up. If you play around with those letters, b-u-r-y, you will get your stone. Got it? The answer is ruby — the gemstone. [Click here for a video tutorial and other clues.]

Your love for the Eastern Cape and the Xhosa language: Where does that come from?

There’s a story behind that too. Ndikhulele eMonti and I had a Xhosa mother from the moment I came back from the hospital. She loved me, dearly. We kept in touch over the years; ironically, I never learned to speak Xhosa from her, but I gained a feeling of the spirit and the substance behind the language and the words.

At 19, when I was coming to Rhodes University in 1974, I decided [to study] maths and English. Then I thought, “I live in a province where 90% of the people speak a language I don’t understand; there’s just something wrong.” 

And so I started learning isi­Xhosa from scratch in the language laboratory. From the basics of molo, ­molweni. Kwimbilini, I had something to draw on. I ended up majoring in it and reading the works of SEK Mqhayi, Ityala lamawele and Umzali Wolahleko, njalo njalo. 

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