Sandy Balfour ©Lesley Lawson, Crimson Rose Ltd. 2002

We do them in planes and trains, in the doctor's waiting room, over a cup of tea in a café, in our own living room. Anywhere, in fact, that offers space to unfold a newspaper. The crossword is generally regarded as a British institution, if not a British 'disease'. It has even been described as 'the unacknowledged conscience of our time.'

Since moving from his native South Africa to Britain, writer and television producer Sandy Balfour has come to love crosswords, particularly that class of cryptic puzzle found in the British broadsheet press. Falling in love with crosswords has mirrored the process of falling in love with the country which he now calls home.

In this programme he meets the newspaper editors who publish the puzzles, the ordinary folk who do them with almost religious fervour, and the people who compile the cryptic crosswords, giving us clues like 'Potty Train' = 'Loco' - and of course 'Pretty Girl in Crimson Rose', the answer to which is 'Rebelled' - what else?

Crosswords are compiled all over the world. In the United States they are immensely popular but are more literal and less quirky than they are here. In France, on the other hand, crosswords rely on elaborate puns and word-play. Puns - very often weak puns - do play a large part in British crosswords but because there are so many more words in the English language than in any other, the opportunities afforded crossword setters are limitless. The richness of our vocabulary is very much part of who we are as a nation.

Crosswords inform and reflect our cultural references. Today there's a body of received knowledge very different to that of fifty years ago. Classical references still loom large in crosswords but so do clues like: 'Victoria's favoured berth' (4). The answer? 'Posh!'

Contributors to the programme include Sunday Times puzzles editor Barbara Hall, columnist David Mckie, translator Anthea Bell, and compilers Araucaria, Shed, Paul, Enigmatist and Spurius.