In May 1971, I submitted half a dozen crosswords to Tantalus Features in Cheltenham in reply to an advertisement in the Sunday Telegraph inviting freelance crossword compilers to submit samples for a new monthly magazine. Well over a year later, I learned from the director of Tantalus Features that some of them had been selected to appear in the first issue of that magazine, which was called the Puzzler.
The founding editor of the Puzzler, Alfred Guttman, was a Swiss-born businessman who wanted to start a wholly new kind of puzzle magazine to the British market. From secretive beginnings, he commissioned work from a small band of compilers and introduced some new crossword formats, reflecting similar magazines available in France and especially Germany.
The Puzzler’s first issue was published in November 1972. Since then my puzzles have appeared in every issue; this month I completed work for its 640th. To date, I have compiled almost 2,900 puzzles for the magazine.
Throughout my early days of working for him, Guttman invited me to set a vast range of different crosswords and other puzzles: standard British definitional puzzles on 13 by 13 grids, Jig-a-links, Continuity puzzles on 17 by 17 barred grids in which every letter cross-checked across and down, Numberjigs, Jigwords, Backwards and the occasional thematic puzzle. His editorial diktats and red lines were quirky. In a standard 13 by 13 puzzle, he banned: the use of plurals and verb forms ending in “s”; past participles, especially all those ending in “ed”, even when they could be interpreted as everyday adjectives, such as “tired”; adverbs ending in “ly”; and all foreign words, even if they had been long been part of standard English vocabulary.
My correspondence with Guttman was conducted almost wholly by post. The only exception was one occasion when my envelope of puzzles was returned to me, undelivered. Panicking, I took the unprecedented step of telephoning him to attempt to explain what had happened. A gruff voice at the other end of the line told me to please re-send them the same day, and the line went dead; the call lasted no more than 10 seconds. That was the one and only time I ever heard his voice.
Many of my puzzles appeared in print unedited. Feedback, when offered, was invariably to the point. I remember one time Guttman rejected a definitional puzzle by reminding me never to include past participles in my crosswords. I returned the puzzle to him unchanged, pointing out that “quadruped” was in fact a noun.
If feedback was rare, praise was short-lived. Once Guttman invited me to compile a fully thematic horticultural Jigword puzzle which, unexpectedly, elicited a grateful comment. In the next issue, however, I seemed to have transgressed once again, as once again my puzzle was returned to me with another curt note, this time castigating my inclusion of “azalea”—he said that I had become too fond of flora, because “last month you offered a thematic puzzle on the same theme”. A few issues later, he rejected a standard definitional crossword because he had never heard of “crocus”.
Early in 1974, I devised a new style of puzzle grid in which six-letter words were entered in a circle around the clue-number, reading alternately clockwise and anti-clockwise. I called it “Honeycomb” and submitted a sample version to Guttman, who immediately commissioned more and paid me a bonus fee for the idea. The very first Honeycomb appeared in the issue dated August 1974. For many months thereafter, I compiled a Honeycomb for every issue. It is still very much “my baby” and it remained unique to the Puzzler for over 10 years.
I later read in a magazine article that Guttman was a “Rolex-wearing, Armani-suited megalomaniac fop” who owned a gun-metal Range Rover and primrose Jaguar, both of which he regularly parked outside his inner London office acquiring daily parking tickets. Apparently, he was one of the few holders of a platinum American Express card. He personally attended the photo-shoots of the “girl-next-door” cover pictures which became “sexier and more naff” (his words) over the years. He was proud to claim that the Puzzler made millions without any employees at all—apart from the very few freelance compilers like myself.
During the 1980s Guttman became even more of a recluse, going out just once a month to visit his publisher in Brixton. Then one day, on 29th September 1987, he failed to attend a monthly editorial meeting; this had never happened in all fifteen years of the magazine’s existence. The following Tuesday he was found dead by his cleaning lady at his home in Kidderpore Gardens in Hampstead. No-one had known much about his work ethic, and even less about his haunts. By chance, unpublished puzzles by his few compilers were discovered in his flat, and I was invited to provide a rushed job of puzzles for the missing issue. In this way my association with the magazine remained unbroken despite his sudden death.
In June 1988, the Puzzler title was bought by BEAP and the magazine has since passed to other owners, but is now happily in the hands of Puzzler Media Ltd. Alfred Guttman was among the oddest of oddballs, but he pioneered a genre of magazines which continue to be enjoyed by so many.
