Word: shortz
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...What might give Sudoku brain cred to a veteran puzzle-solver like me? Two things. About a dozen of the book versions of the game carry the august authorship of Will Shortz, editor of the New York Times crossword, and star of the spiffy new documentary Wordplay, which opens this weekend in select cities. And among Sudoku's greatest fans is my sister-in-law, Pat Thompson Corliss...
...leader both in mass-market paperbacks and in comic books, especially those produced by Disney). I was hooked, instantly and eternally, not so much by the crosswords as by the number and word games that filled out the Dell pages. So I figured I owed her, and Shortz, a grudging attempt to get with the Sudoku program...
...Number Place (whose unacknowledged constructor, Shortz later determined, was Howard Garns, a retired architect from Indianapolis) ran once in a while in the Dell magazines, as well in the much slicker, savvier Games magazine, of which Shortz was an editor. The puzzle also ran in the magazines of Penny Press, a Norwalk, Ct., outfit that had the smarts to hire as editors some of the bright young folks from Games. The Penny Press magazines contained a more attractive mix of posers, and I found myself spending much more time with each issue of, say, Variety Puzzles, than with Pencil Puzzles...
...SHORTZ HISTORY OF CROSSWORDS...
...Shortz, who boasts a degree in "enigmatology" from Indiana University, a special concentration he says is historically unique, has been responsible for bringing up to date what many perceived as a stodgy puzzle. He began adding in clues from television (He's from Ork) and pop culture (Singer Sonny____) with the more traditional references to the Apostles and the dates of Nero's reign. Shortz explains his perspective on the crossword's evolution: "In the early days, puzzles were just words in a grid, definitions were basically out of a dictionary--bookish sounding. Today's puzzles usually have themes, generally...