The Guardian Quick Crosswords 1: A collection of more than 200 entertaining puzzles (Guardian Puzzle Books)

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July 2003 22,893: Araucaria becomes the first (and to date only) setter to reach 2,000 credited puzzles. To put this achievement into context: if even Paul continues at his current rate he will get there some time in 2047. December 2017 27,383, the 1,325th and final puzzle set by Rufus before his retirement (which was a repeat of his first, 16,398). He sits in second place on the Guardian list, and the Guinness Book of Records named him the most prolific cryptic setter of all time. Of his Guardian puzzles, 1,018 were published on Mondays, with a further 184 on Thursdays in the 1980s and 1990s. But he never set a Saturday prize puzzle; it wasn’t his style. Here, crossword editor Hugh Stephenson says goodbye. Hm. Maybe I should stop asking other setters that, as I’m drawing a blank. Actually, some setters do offer up corkers. Anto and Carpathian did recently; likewise Vulcan and Vlad. I’ll keep the question without answering it myself. October 2003 22,965, the debut by Imogen (Richard Browne; Meet the Setter) who due to duties elsewhere will not return until 2014. February 2018 27,442, the debut by Vulcan (former Times crossword editor Richard Browne; Meet the Setter).

September 2014 26,367, the 221st and final puzzle by Logodaedalus. An old-school setter fond of rhyming clues and acrostics, his total places him 20th on the all-time list.January 1976 14,361 is the last we’ll see of Logodaedalus for more than 12 and a half years: after the death of his wife, he won’t provide another Guardian crossword until September 1988. The only comparable gap is between Imogen’s first and second puzzles (10 years, three months). January 2002 22,420, the 181st and final puzzle by Hendra (only five of which came in the online era; obituary).

Two hundred puzzles feels enough to have bedded in. And the 4,000th Everyman is coming next year, which I hope will be a moment for celebration; remaining pseudonymous for that would risk seeming attention-seeking rather than conveying the intended diffidence, if you see what I mean. August 2005 23,545, an interesting one-off by Omnibus: the puzzle was compiled using clues sent in by readers. October 1996 20,793 is the final puzzle by Custos ( obituary). He wasn’t there right at the beginning of the Guardian’s pseudonym era, but was very well known by his 1974 debut. In a little over 22 years he provided 949 puzzles and is fifth on the all-time list. In his heyday he would set more or less one cryptic puzzle every week, the vast majority on Fridays (485) and Saturdays (344), providing a foil to Araucaria during his most prolific years. If a solver has read the rest of the paper, he or she should know everything he or she needs, which is another way of saying that there’s a pleasure in including some placenames and surnames in spots where I might have been tempted to put what Hemingway called “the 10-dollar words”.

I have a lot of admiration for the more prolific setters like Paul and (in their day) Araucaria and Rufus. I can’t sit down with a blank sheet of paper and know that in two or three hours I’ll have a puzzle, and I won’t start one until I know that I have at least three or four ideas for clues that will establish a theme. That definitely slows me down. February 1997 20,898 and the last one-off before the online era, this was set by Joke (a collaboration between Enigmatist and Fawley).