What links crosswords and a five-letter word that means a sudden, overwhelming terror? The cruciverbalists among us will have already guessed that we are talking about the Crossword Panic of 1944. – Yes, 80 years ago this month, a series of innocuous crosswords in the Daily Telegraph led to a major panic, allegations of spying, and the threatened sacking of a headmaster. That headmaster was Leonard Dawe of Strand School, which had been evacuated from south London to Surrey during the war.
When he wasn’t ensuring that the boys were conjugating their Latin verbs, he compiled crosswords for the newspaper. Two years earlier he had come to the attention of MI5 when Dieppe was an answer to a crossword clue on August 17th. The ill-fated Allied attack on the German-occupied port took place two days later.
It was dismissed as a coincidence until this new series of clues began to run in May 1944. Utah was the answer to one clue and was also the codename for one of the beach landing locations for D-Day. A few weeks later, Omaha, another codeword for a beach, popped up as a solution and was followed by Overlord, the codename for the D-Day operation.
The final straw came on June 1st when the solution was Neptune – the codeword for the naval assault stage. READ MORE Clues of destiny – Alison Healy on the Crossword Panic of 1944 Animal cracker – Frank McNally on “Humanity Dick” Martin and 200 years of the SPCA Balkan diplomacy – Frank McNally on hosting a Bulgarian journalis.