Word: crossworder
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...Shortz is indeed a tall, genial fellow and the best salesman crosswords could have. A puzzler from youth, he took a doctorate of Enigmatology (in a course of study he invented for himself) at Indiana University, was named the fourth crossword editor of the Times in 1993. That was the year of Shortz's 40th birthday and crosswords' 80th. The first one, devised by Arthur Wynne, appeared in the New York World on Dec. 21, 1913, and made the game an immediate sensation. But it was the achievement of Margaret Farrar, who became the Times' first crossword editor in1942...
...management of the crossword franchise was severely traditional as well. On Sundays, for example, the Times devotes an entire page to puzzles. Maleska's selection of puzzles never varied. On top was a large, stately crossword, as imposing and exciting as Queen Victoria's bustle. Beneath it was one of three puzzles: an acrostic (twice as much work for half the fun), a diagramless crossword (you're given the clues but not the grid - why?) and, once in four weeks, Mel Taub's Puns and Anagrams - sort of a kindergarten cryptic. You never saw the features that made Games magazine...
...creating cryptic puzzles for The Atlanticsince 1976, and some of the young geniuses, like Henry Hook and Patrick Berry, who had made their names at Games. And for the first time, the Times gave credit to the authors of the daily puzzles, who had previously been anonymous. (The daily crossword was the one place in the paper where the cult of personality bypassed the author and resided only with the editor...
...Sunday morning news show. ("I'm blessed," he says, "to work for the two greatest news organizations in the country: the New York Times and National Public Radio.") He occasionally contributes puzzles to Games. And since he was 25 (he's now 53), he has run an annual crossword puzzle tournament at the Marriott in Stamford, Ct. He founded it in 1978, mostly out of an urge - a strange one, considering the solitude in which crosswords are constructed and solved - to meet other puzzle people. At the first tournament, the guest of honor was Margaret Farrar. And in 2005 filmmaker...
...aegis has some famous fans, and Wordplay has tracked down most of them. Stewart, attacking a Tuesday puzzle, says, "I'm so confident, I'm gonna do it in glue stick." Dan Okrent, a former TIME executive who was the New York Times' Public Editor, notes that the best crossword solvers are mathematicians and musicians. (This applies especially to cryptic puzzles, a British refinement of the form that was imported to America when Stephen Sondheim created 40 or so for New York magazine in the early '70s. A few years later the cryptic became a regular feature of Harper...