Michael Curl, who has died aged 77, introduced crosswords into the web world. As Orlando, he set tons of of elegantly clued Guardian puzzles over 45 years. He was till not too long ago one of many three setters behind the Guardian’s beloved quicks, however was on no account restricted to those pages.
One of many few to (ultimately) make crosswords a full-time enterprise, he was Cincinnus within the Monetary Instances, operated anonymously on the Instances and, to make use of the native time period, constructed below his personal identify for the Los Angeles Instances. His puzzles appeared in English-language papers in Costa Rica, Turkey and Thailand, however the location his clues most frequently addressed was the north of England.
Early in 1997 he wrote to my predecessor as crossword editor, Hugh Stephenson, asking: “Are there any plans for placing the Guardian crossword on the web?” It took one other couple of years for that to occur; within the meantime, Michael started constructing his personal on-line puzzling sources and questioning what prospects have been opening up within the new medium.
Born in South Shields, Tyne and put on, Michael was the son of Roland Curl, a bricklayer, and his spouse, Theresa (nee Dermody). That marriage was quickly dissolved; Michael grew up along with his mom and stepfather. He took O-levels at a Catholic faculty, St Aidan’s grammar, in Sunderland, and compensated for his schooling stopping there with a lifetime of personal studying.
In 2012, he informed me that he imagined a solver who’s “reasonably effectively educated”; to Michael this meant a familiarity with the names of the composers Delibes, Poulenc and Scriabin and the Dickens characters Micawber, Heep and Peggotty.
His early working life included stints as a bus conductor and a librarian in Sunderland and a clerk at Vauxhall Motors. He met Mary Barnard by way of the Youth Hostels Affiliation; they married in 1970 and had three kids: David, Edward and Rachel.
Michael’s longest stretch as an worker was in software program engineering for Unilever. He noticed this as a method of subsidising his ardour for puzzles: he was within the behavior of shopping for the Guardian on the best way to work and tackling its cryptic over lunch, creating what he described as a reverence for Araucaria – although Michael’s clues would notably show rather more of one in every of cryptics’ conventional values: precision.
He practised his craft and in 1974 despatched a pair of puzzles to the Guardian’s crossword editor, John Perkin, who appreciated them. A near-anagram of Michael’s center identify, Roland, introduced the identify Orlando to the paper’s again pages. This led to commissions for different publications: sufficient that he usually labored till 2am with sturdy black espresso. Mary and Rachel recall with fondness “a complete inside world that household and buddies weren’t at all times aware about”.
Over two years, he went by way of Chambers dictionary 3 times, checking every entry for potential anagrams, which made potential his 1982 e book The Anagram Dictionary. He was a cautious, exact man, and it was Michael’s handwriting that appeared within the options for Araucaria’s wild financial institution vacation specials that might not be produced by machine.
By 2000 the facet job was strong sufficient that Michael was in a position to take early retirement from the day job. He assembled an internet site for American solvers, constructed an viewers, then offered it to a US media company. He assembled Greatest for Puzzles, a reference work about British crosswords and setters that many have come to depend on. It allowed solvers, usually for the primary time, to place names to pseudonyms and to grasp that, say, the FT’s Cincinnus may be the identical particular person because the Guardian’s Orlando.
Extra importantly, although, retirement meant that Michael was in a position to compile puzzles far and huge. His favorite dwelling remained his first, and this paper’s different setters have rushed to say Orlando every time I’ve requested them to call the friends they most respect. Away from puzzles he was mild, modest and devoted to his household (and to birdwatching).
Whereas the entire world was current in Orlando clues, Michael’s puzzles for the Dalesman journal have been extra tightly centered and are collected in eight volumes since 2002 of the Yorkshire Crossword Guide, subtitled Sixty Puzzles That includes England’s Biggest County.
Michael didn’t reside to see the improvements that he imagined may be made potential by puzzles showing on-line. “Simply assume what might be completed,” he questioned, “with crosswords incorporating hyperlinks, sound, footage, video and so forth.” He suspected, although, that there was no demand for “bells and whistles”; he was most likely proper.
When he was recognized with superior oesophageal most cancers, Michael famous two ironies. One was that his different nice pleasure was good meals; the opposite was that the identical prognosis had been given, 11 years in the past, to Araucaria.
Two clues consultant of Orlando’s impeccable model are “A northern metropolis exhibits extreme affection for tales (9)” and “Title recollected by Beatles fanatics, primarily (3,2,2)”. Solutions under.
After we assembled the numbers in 2023 of who had compiled what for the Guardian, regardless of a essentially slower begin than most, Michael was our tenth most prolific cryptic setter. These figures don’t embody the numerous quicks – and the Guardian crossword archive incorporates all his puzzles since 1999, once we ultimately adopted Michael on to the online.
He’s survived by Mary and their kids, two grandchildren, Meg and Sam, and a great-grandson, Ralph.
Orlando (Michael Roland Curl), crossword setter, born 16 September 1946; died 5 July 2024
