Word: shortz
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...When you imagine Crossword Guy," says Jon Stewart, "you imagine he's 13 to 14 inches tall, doesn't care to go more than five minutes without his inhaler - and yet [Shortz is] a giant man. He's the Errol Flynn of crossword puzzling...
...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...
...Enter Shortz, nearly 40 years younger than Maleska, and eager to revive the Times' most carefully studied page. A John XXIII to Maleska's Pius XII, Shortz embraced the modern: slang, hipper pop references, more devious wordsmanship. He also instituted a sliding scale of difficulty for the puzzle week: the easiest one on Monday and Tuesday, the most challenging on Friday and Saturday...
...Into the stale Times stable Shortz brought both the best of the old guard, including Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon, who had been 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...
...innovations didn't please every Times solver. "You are sick, sick, sick," goes one of the letters Shortz reads aloud in Wordplay. Another correspondent is polite but perplexed: "This kvetching thing that's going on, I can't seem to get a grasp on it. 'The kvetcher's cry': 'Oy vey'? I don't get it. How is it used? Is it a Northern thing?" But most puzzlers I know are pleased with his work. More than that: he has given fresh life to their daily preoccupation...