The era of PG Wodehouse was the era of the dawn of the crossword.

While his stories largely inhabit an abstract universe of cow-creamers and prize pigs, crosswords appear as a modern touch and offer something bordering on observational humour, as with Aunt Dahlia's inner thoughts in Much Obliged, Jeeves:

There was a time when this worthy housewife, tackling the Observer crossword puzzle, would snort and tear her hair and fill the air with strange oaths picked up from cronies on the hunting field, but consistent inability to solve more than about an eighth of the clues has brought a sort of dull resignation and today she merely sits and stares at it, knowing that however much she licks the end of her pencil little or no business will result.

Puzzles in Wodehouse, like those in the real world, feature words with conveniently placed vowels - the god RA, the prophet EMU and the prophet ELI - more often than everyday life tends to. The emu pops up time and again, either stumping characters or as part of a perfect simile; Reader Chastelordarcher nominated The Code of the Woosters:

'But I had a communication from Gussie, more or less indicating that you and he were p'fft.'

She looked at me like someone who has just solved the crossword puzzle with a shrewd 'Emu' in the top right-hand corner.

'So that was why you came! You thought that there might still be hope? Oh, Bertie, I'm sorry... sorry... so sorry."

We also get some full clues, like those bothering Lord Uffenham in Something Fishy:

'Ever do crossword puzzles?'

'Sometimes.'

'Don't happen to know what the answer to "Tree gets mixed up with comic hat in scene of his triumphs" would be, do yer?'

'I'm afraid not.'

'Thought yer probably wouldn't. Well, what the hell?'

'But don't bother me now, my dear girl. I'm doing my crossword puzzle, and it's a stinker this morning. Run and ask Keggs what the dickens 'Adventurer goes in for outrageous road-speed' is supposed to signify.'

Answers below, by the way, and here's another clue and some criticism of our sister paper:

'Do you do the Observer crossword puzzle by any chance?'

'I solve it at breakfast on Sunday mornings.'

'Not the whole lot?'

'Oh yes.'

'Every clue?'

'I have never failed yet. I find it ridiculously simple.'

'Then what's all that song and dance about the measured tread of saints round St Paul's?'

'Oh, I guessed that immediately. The answer, of course, is pedometer. Dome, meaning St Paul's, comes in the middle and Peter, for St Peter, round it. Very simple.'

'Oh, very. Well, thank you. You have taken a great weight off my mind,' said Aunt Dahlia, and they parted in complete amity, a thing I wouldn't have thought possible when Ma McCorkadale was one of the parters.

(Shouldn't that then be PEDOMEETER?) Wodehouse himself preferred his puzzles on the "ridiculously easy" side. The MP Austen Chamberlain had written to the Times in 1934 boasting of finishing that paper's puzzle in 41 minutes and said that the Provost of Eton, better known as MR James...

...measures the time required for boiling his breakfast egg by that needed for the solution of your daily crossword - and he hates a hard-boiled egg.

The tale - now a commonplace among crossword fans - galled Wodehouse, who wrote his own letter:

Sir, on behalf of the great race of rabbits, those humble strivers who like myself have never yet succeeded in solving an entire Times crossword puzzle, I strongly resent these Austen Chamberlains and what not flaunting their skill in your columns. Rubbing salt in the wounds is what I call it. To a man who has been beating his head against the wall for twenty minutes over a single anagram it is g. and wormwood to read a statement like that one about the Provost of Eton and the eggs. In conclusion may I commend your public spirit in putting the good old emu back into circulation again as you did a few days ago? We of canaille know that the Sun-God Ra has apparently retired from active work - are intensely grateful for the occasional emu.

He gifted that same g. and wormwood to some of his characters, like Freddie Widgeon in Ice in the Bedroom to whom came "the feeling he had sometimes had when trying to solve a Times crossword puzzle, that his reason was tottering on its throne" and Gally Threepwood in Sticky Wicket at Blandings:

Gally left alone, lit another cigar and turned his attention to the Times crossword puzzle.

He found it, however, difficult to concentrate on it. This was not merely because these crossword puzzles had become so abstruse nowadays and he was basically a Sun-god-Ra and Large-Australian-bird-emu man.

Wodehouse features in our crossword top ten not only for detail, but also because of his positive portrayal of puzzles. Crosswords are typically social. Husband and wife may team up to solve, as in Summer Moonshine...

Lady Abbott lay on the settee in her boudoir with her shoes off - her habit when at rest. She was doing a crossword puzzle. Through the open window at her side, the cool evening air poured in, refreshing to a brain which had become a little heated as it sought to discover the identity of an Italian composer in nine letters beginning with p. She had just regretfully rejected Irving Berlin because, despite his other merits, too numerous to mention here, he had twelve letters, began with an i, and was not an Italian composer when there was a sound outside like a mighty rushing wind and Sir Buckstone came bursting in. [...]

He picked up the paper and scanned the crossword puzzle which his Toots had been trying to solve. [Bringing] to the problem the full force of his intellect, he took the pencil and in a firm hand wrote down the word 'Pagliacci.'

Each helping each, was the way Sir Buckstone looked at it.

...or a puzzle may bring shy lovers together. The crossword which makes number nine is nominated by reader Fishworld: one tackled by George Mulliner and Susan Blake in The Truth About George.

George was always looking in at the vicarage to ask her if she knew a word of seven letters meaning 'appertaining to the profession of plumbing,' and Susan was just as constant a caller at George's cosy little cottage - being frequently stumped, as girls will be, by words of eight letters signifying 'largely used in the manufacture of poppet-valves.'

The consequence was that one evening, just after she had helped him out of a tight place with the word 'disestablishmentarianism,' the boy suddenly awoke to the truth and realised that she was all the world to him - or, as he put it to himself from force of habit, precious, beloved, darling, much-loved, highly esteemed or valued.

A list cribbed from Richard Soule's Dictionary of English Synonymes and Synonymous or Parallel Expressions and a valuable antidote to the misconception that crosswords are a solitary activity. Last time, we looked at Brief Encounter, where crosswords nearly ended a marriage; kudos to Wodehouse for redressing the balance.

For The Truth About George, then:

Accuracy of portrayal of crosswords: 3/10
Positive attitude regarding crosswords: 9/10
Importance of crosswords in plot: 2/10

It's not too late to nominate other crosswords in fiction below. The solutions to the clues cited from Something Fishy are DESPERADO and THEATRE. And the reason for the low score on accuracy? A rare lapse from Wodehouse. What grid is large enough to have DISESTABLISHMENTARIANISM as an entry?