Araucaria obituary

I will miss his puzzles enormously. One of my life goals was to get drawn as one of the winners of one of his Saturday puzzles. Despite submitting a few hundred completed puzzles over the years, I was never drawn out of the hat (perhaps there's a moral here about making your goals dependent on random events over which you have no control). There were clearly lots of other people who also enjoyed completing his puzzles.

I remember spending many enjoyable Saturday mornings attempting the Guardian crossword - more often than not set by Araucaria.

These things have an interesting way of marking the passage of our lives.

I managed about half of his final puzzle, from November 16th. Even solved the "nil by mouth" one without making the connection. Now I am sad.

Another fan here. How gratifying and unexpected to find such a niche story on the HN front page, won't last.