A riddle wrapped up in a mystery – An Irishman’s Diary about Alan Turing, the Enigma code, and crossword-solving

The usual thing, when you've seen an interesting film, is to want to read the book. But after a screening of The Imitation Game over Christmas, I had a terrible urge instead to do the crossword.

As readers may know, The Imitation Game is about Britain's wartime attempts to break the Enigma code, a fiendishly impenetrable language in which Germany's military communications were disguised. And it so happens that a crossword was central to the plot, although of course the movie-makers had to simplify the story.

The real-life version had its origins in the perception of Daily Telegraph readers, circa 1942, that the paper's cryptic crossword was getting too easy. So a harder-than-usual puzzle was set, for a prize, with a preliminary competition held in the Fleet Street newsroom, before the crossword was shared with the general public.

Unbeknownst to those involved, including the newspaper, the British War Office took a strong interest in this contest. And some time later, a number of those who entered received letters inviting them to an interview “on a matter of national importance”.

The upshot was that several of the crossword solvers were subsequently hired for cryptological work in a place called Bletchley Park, where they joined maths genius Alan Turing, the film’s main subject, who was building a machine to crack the code.

In 1942, it was expected that the best brains could do the Telegraph's special puzzle in 12 minutes, and they did. So no doubt insensitive readers will sneer when I admit that it took me about 40, and that I had to cheat by checking several of the answers (which the paper reprinted, along with the original grid, when the film came out.)

But in part mitigation, I plead the cultural and chronological divide that separated me from the setters. It took longer than it might have, for example, to work out 1 Down: "Official Instruction not to forget the servants (8)". In the Telegraph-reading England of the 1940s, I would just have asked my butler, and we would quickly have arrived at "tipstaff".

And that, at least, was a standard cryptic clue. But others were disarmingly straightforward. Faced with 3 Down: “Kind of Alias (9)”, I expected a cunning twist on the other meaning of “kind”. But that’s what they wanted me to think. The answer was “pseudonym”.

Anyway, if the film is to be believed, I have had my crossword-solving butt kicked by Keira Knightley, of all people, or at least by the character she played – another Bletchley Park operative, Joan Clarke.

Not only does the film imply that Clarke/Knightley sailed through the original, 12-minute puzzle, but she is then seen to trump an otherwise all-male field in a follow-up test, set by Turing, for which six minutes is declared the limit.

I might normally issue a plot-spoiler alert here. But in truth, the scene in question is one of several cringingly obvious plot developments that mar the film.

It has Turing (played by Benedict Cumberbatch) quietly admitting to a colleague that, never mind six minutes, the puzzle is impossible, and that the real point is to observe the processes by which the candidates attempt it. Just then, naturally, he is interrupted by an innocent-faced Clarke/Knightley, who has solved it in 5½ minutes.

Crossword obsessives aside, the film’s critics have included those annoyed about the way it plays down Turing’s homosexuality, which was central to his life and death.

Indeed, you got the sneaky feeling watching it that the film-makers were trying to insinuate Clarke/Knightley as a love interest. And in the circumstances, that would be almost as wrong, morally, as putting straight clues in a cryptic crossword.

In any case, the Knightley subplot reminded me (it's never far from thoughts, to be honest) that I once did The Irish Times cryptic crossword in 6½ minutes. It was many years ago now, admittedly, when I was in peak condition and living a very clean life. I was regularly averaging sub-10 minute finishes then, whereas these days I'm often out of breath after three or four clues.

Around the same time – the late 1980s – the paper held a public crossword competition. So I entered, full of confidence, and made the finals. We had to do four specially set puzzles, all fiendish. And suffice to say I didn’t win. But of course now I can’t help wondering if those who did were subsequently hired by the Irish Secret Service, and if they’ve been doing mysterious but important work in the national interest ever since.

@FrankmcnallyIT