18 down of the 19

Damn.  Araucaria—John Galbraith Graham—has made a cipher of his own mortality, encoded it for us to solve.  Since 1958, he's set the crosswords for The Guardian, and I'd hoped he was immortal.  His puzzles are a thing of beauty, elegant and witty, with a sort of Mozartian, Twelfth Nightian cross-dressing playfulness. (Azed, heir to Ximenes and Torquemeda, is a fiend.)  And what a lovely chap!

For a few years, like so many English scholars, he taught thankless boys.  I love this tribute by his former Principal:   Graham "squandered his sensitive taste and knowledge of Classics on 1B Greek with unfailing patience enlivened by rare expressions of nausea."

Nine