Which four letter crossword compiler's name is derived from a torturer in the Spanish inquisition?

sequoianoir

Jonathan Crowther compiles the crosswords for the Observer. He writes under the name AZED ! This came about because: His predecessor went under the pseudonym of Ximenes and he in turn followed a crossword setter, another of the legendary figures, who took the pseudonym of Torquemada. Now both Torquemada and Ximenes were grand inquisitors in the Spanish Inquisition so the nicknames were quite appropriate, as a form of torture, and when Ximenes died and Jonathan took over, he had to think of a pseudonym which would follow on the sequence. Unfortunately he couldn't find another grand inquisitor with a name that worked, they were all things like 'Garcia' which doesn't have any kind of resonance as far as crosswords are concerned. But he did come across a chap called Don Diego de Deza who was a particularly nasty piece of work and sent all sorts of people to be tortured or burnt, and he just reversed his name into Azed and that seemed to have nice alphabetical connotations and it sort of preserved the sequence, albeit in a rather roundabout way. Ooops - punctuation corrected ! Dec 18 02, 1:09 AM