Crosaire

Biography Crozier was born in Dublin and educated at Castle Park preparatory school in Dalkey and Repton School in England. He worked in administration at the Guinness Brewery in St. James's Gate. Soon after, he was introduced by Jack White to Irish Times editor Bertie Smyllie at the paper's 1942 Christmas party in a Dublin pub, where he claimed that compiling crosswords was a longstanding hobby and persuaded Smyllie to commission some, the first printed on 13 March 1943. Initially the Crosaire appeared weekly on Saturdays, with Wednesdays added in 1950, Tuesdays in 1955, and a daily puzzle from 1982.

Crosaire under Crozier and his successors Until about 1988, Marjorie made the grid and Crozier only created the clues. Subsequently, Crozier took three to four hours to compile a puzzle. He retained an idiosyncratic approach to clues, which never came to conform to emerging British standards synopsised by "Ximenes". Crozier's daily puzzles recycled a small number of 15×15 grid patterns, each with fourfold rotational symmetry. The Simplex crossword used four of the same grids, excluding the Saturday Crosaire grid, which had 13-letter answers on the four edges and, latterly, a theme connecting these four.

Crozier's final puzzle, number 14,605 of 22 October 2011, was the first to be analysed on The Irish Times new Crosaire blog. Roy Earle, using the pseudonym "Mac An Iarla", compiled the Crosaire from 24 October 2011 to 9 June 2012.

Earle was succeeded by Paul O'Doherty, pseudonym "Crossheir", who compiled the crossword for a 10-year stint that ended on . O'Doherty was succeeded by a pair of alternating setters: Tony Davis (pseudonym "Dominic") and Niamh O'Connor (pseudonym "Le Corsaire"). Aifric Gallagher (pseudonym "Fidelia") joined the roster of setters on .