When the UK went into the first coronavirus lockdown in the spring of 2020, the producers at BBC Radio Newcastle asked Haggard Hawks wordsmith Paul Anthony Jones if he would come up with an on-air word game to give their listeners something to take their mind off the current situation for an hour or so. The Haggard Hawks Brainteaser, as it became known, soon proved a hugely popular feature both on the radio and online, and that initial one-off quiz was quickly upgraded to a weekly—and now twice-weekly—feature, played live every Tuesday and Thursday lunchtime on BBC Newcastle. 

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Not long before the first lockdown, however, both Paul Anthony Jones’ mother and father passed away within only a matter of weeks of one another. Determined to do something to help the hospital that had seen them through their final illnesses, in 2023 he self-published The Haggard Hawks Book of Brainteasers—a compendium of word puzzles and games just like those played live on the radio every week.

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Available exclusively online, at least £1 from every sale of The Haggard Hawks Book of Brainteasers goes to the Sir Bobby Robson Foundation—a cancer research charity partly based at Newcastle’s Freeman Hospital, where both Paul’s parents had received treatment. Featuring 1,000 games and puzzles divided into four levels of difficulty, to date The Haggard Hawks Book of Brainteasers has since raised just over £1,000 for The Bobby Robson Foundation.

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For more information on the charity and its work across the northeast of England and beyond, take a look at Foundation’s website here.