Roger Squires

Roger Squires (22 February 1932 – 1 June 2023) was a British crossword compiler/setter, who lived in Ironbridge, Shropshire.

He compiled under the pseudonym Rufus in The Guardian, Dante in The Financial Times and was the Monday setter for the Daily Telegraph.

Squires served 15 years in the Fleet Air Arm, in which he trained as an observer and gained commission as its youngest ever officer and visited 44 countries, including being in the first aircraft to land in Port Said in the 1956 Suez Crisis.

His first published puzzle appeared in 1963, the year that he left the Navy and briefly worked as an entertainments manager for Butlin's,[1] in the Wolverhampton Express & Star.

He has set crosswords under pseudonyms including Rufus, Dante, Icarus, Hodge and Bower.

[1] In 1977 Squires's first marriage foundered and he gave up professional acting and magic to work from home so that he could look after his two pre-teenage sons.

[11] His death was cryptically announced by means of the Guardian’s prize crossword, partly set by his colleague John Halpern ("Paul"), on 10 June 2023.

This echoed the paper’s late solver Araucaria announcing his cancer diagnosis in a crossword grid.