We have our winner…
I’m delighted to announce that the winner of a bottle of red wine, book of Guardian Crosswords by Rufus and the stunning Torquemada collection is Sil van den Hoek. As mentioned in a previous post I contacted a friend (who has no connection with crosswords) and asked him to randomly select a sequence of numbers. The first ‘hit’ in the sequence was Sil’s entry number. Below are a couple of screencaps – the Word document with the numbers I assigned, and the exchange of emails with random numbers.
PLEASE NOTE – IMAGES REMOVED BY REQUEST
Congratulations Sil (and thanks to all for taking part). I’ll email you to arrange delivery of the prizes.
Anaxcrosswords 
Thanks Anax for providing the challenge, Roger for the excellent prizes and well done Sil. May I also throw some Kudos to your numericologist for the use of the word Futumpch – Don’t anyone say it again!
Well done Sil – just don’t go copying Torquemada in your clue-writing! The “narrative” puzzles are the only Torquemada’s I’ve ever finished.
PS: Big fan of random.org – I use it every week to do the draws for the Sunday Times competitions. With plenty of entries by e-mail, pulling envelopes out of a mailbag is now stone-age technology.
Yay! – I just notined that I snuck myself in twice at #25 AND #27 – best I could do and still didnt win! – (I thought I only entered once via email)
*&^%$#@ – What A Surprise!
I am well aware that All You Out There managed to do the same thing as I did.
Solving this magnificent crossword.
And you know what, I didn’t even see The Old Contemptibles theme until the very end ….. In fact, initially we were very annoyed by another warlike theme. So, where was I that day?
Anyway, I feel like the lucky one.
In fact, we are the lucky two [Beth – my mysterious (is she?) PinC – was surely part of it too].
Therefore, I do not really understand why Eileen & her boys were removed from the list (or did they ask for it?).
I am sure they would have found a way to decide who gets what and why – probably, a way much more complicated than yours [although it’s always nice to contact a friend, isn’t it?]
Dean, I already told you that it isn’t me that deserves the bottle of wine, but that it’s you (for reasons we both know).
Yes, I am very happy with the ‘Torquemada’, especially knowing that it is a personal gift by the much admired (and currently by some, at fifteensquared, disregarded) Roger Squires.
The first time in my life I ever won a prize, was when I was 8 years old. In the village where I lived at that time, I ‘won’ the title 1959 Champion in a crossbow contest. Not that I was the best, in fact no one hit the ‘romp’ (which was the trunk of a wooden bird), so they decided to count the number of contestants, multiply it by 3, then ………