Word: constructors
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...came here. This is only my second tournament.RR: Impressive! Wow, how long does it take you to do a Sunday New York Times Crossword?DIG: It depends on if I pick up the theme quickly, but around 10 to 15 minutes.RR: Would you call yourself a cruciverbalist [a constructor or solver of crossword puzzles]?DIG: Yes, but only around people who do crosswords. I’ve never used it as a pick-up line.Kyle A. Mahowald ’09, Secretary of The Harvard Crossword SocietyRoving Reporter (RR): This was a great event. So, Kyle, what?...
...know that Agee, however lauded in his time (he died at 51 in 1955), would in the long run be the white elephant to Manny's termite? No, let's be fairer: Charlie Chaplin, equal parts genius and sentiment, to Manny's Buster Keaton, the deadpan acrobat and scene constructor, who had to wait ages for his star to eclipse Chaplin's in critics' eyes...
Kyle A. Mahowald ’09 is a cruciverbalist who publishes his crosswords in the Times as well as other publications, including the Wall Street Journal. Mahowald’s first Sunday puzzle was published in September 2004; 17 years old at the time, he became the youngest constructor to publish a Sunday Times crossword puzzle. Mahowald remains modest about his achievement. “It was pretty cool. I didn’t know it when I sent it in that I would be the youngest...
After picking a theme and setting the grid, “you start filling the grid with words,” Mahowald says. Even though there are now computer programs that have extensive stores of words and tell the constructor which words can possibly fit, it is still the human touch that separates the ordinary puzzles from the extraordinary ones that are seen in the Times and other respected publications...
...Through some clear, clever graphics, all this is spelled out in Wordplay. What you won't learn in the movie is that the puzzle's constructor, Jeremiah (Jerry) Farrell - a Butler University professor of, what else, mathematics - had submitted a simpler version to the Times for election Day 1980, with CARTER and REAGAN as the interchangeable words. Maleska turned it down, supposedly asking, "What if John Anderson wins?" (I still shake my head in wonder at Farrell's brilliance, and Maleska's myopia.) Sixteen years later, Farrell revived and revised the idea. Though Shortz typically revises about half...