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People often say that doing a crossword is mere proficiency in a limited new language. It is true that a new language is required, even at the basic level of flower in a clue meaning "river". But the new language is only called into being in order to perform more satisfying paronomasia.

Paronomasia is, at bottom, punning: using a word with two meanings. It annoys some people. John Dennis was a critic in the days of Pope and Addison, when men of letters stabbed one another with vitriol-tipped satire. He is now known for only two things: complaining that someone had stolen his thunder, and stalking out of a tavern when someone else made a pun, declaring that a man who made a pun would not scruple to pick his pocket.

The latter exhibition of temper explains the sad sector of humanity that can't abide crosswords. They think them wrong, à rebours, against nature, as though every word had one meaning and it were evil to use it in another sense. The opposite tendency is to rejoice in equivocation, to play with words as dolphin play with shoals of sprats.

It is a very English virtue. The first man to use the word paronomasia in English was Bryhtferth, a monk of Ramsey Abbey, Huntingdonshire, who around the time of the millennium, the first millennium not the one just gone, wrote a book called the Enchiridion, which, before getting on to word-play, included a section on setting the date of Easter. If you have ever tried seriously to set the date of Easter, you will recognise the kind of mind.

Foreign crosswords are, frankly, pathetic, simply eliciting synonyms or factual answers. It is the cryptic element that makes British crosswords great. Later this year, in solstitio brumalis, the very dead of winter, we celebrate the centenary of the crossword (actually called a word-cross), published in America. Its first clue was "What bargain hunters enjoy." The answer was: sales. Feeble.

The Daily Telegraph was the first British paper to carry a daily crossword, from July 20 1925. To tell the truth it didn't begin promisingly. 1 Across was: "Author of Childe Harold" (Answer: Byron). Things perked up a little with 2 Down: "A seat of learning is the key to this." The answer was Yale. The elements of crypticity are there, but the syntax is creaky.

A favourite clue of Elgar (in civilian life John Henderson), a setter of the Telegraph Toughie, is: "I say nothing (3)". The syntax is perfect. The clue contains a definition ("I"), and the two other words give the components of the answer: say = E G; nothing = 0 or rather O, Answer: ego.

The pleasure here is the pleasure of seeing a joke. It is the same kind of pleasure as breaking the Enigma code. One of the men who did that was Dilly Knox. It was he that came up with the question: "Which way does a clock go round?" All the Knoxes thought like that. His brother Ronald, while convalescing at Mells, tested the patience of his fellow guest Evelyn Waugh (an easy task) by solving all the Acrosses, then filling in the Downs without even consulting the clues.

But, like any joke, crosswords are a pleasure best enjoyed rapidly. They should be sharpeners not suet puddings. There should be no such thing as a shaggy-dog crossword, laborious and endless. And speed comes with practice. Just do it.

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