Shortz and Newsday’s Crossword Puzzle Editor Stan Newman agreed to be editorial advisors.įormer New York Times crossword blogger Jim Horne is posting all the converted crosswords on his website and recently added a feature that lets fans solve them. They’re nearly a third of the way through. In short order, he was supervising 31 constructors and enthusiasts, two in India. More than 15,000 old Times puzzles still needed to be converted, more than he could handle. Even better, he got to meet Reagle and his other idols and play pingpong with Shortz.Īfter returning home, David created the website and posted a shout-out to enlist other crossword enthusiasts in his massive undertaking. He placed 357th out of 592 who competed against the clock to solve seven puzzles. “My parents have been really supportive of my crossword career,” he says. That same month, David’s parents flew him to the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in Brooklyn. The project won the Mu Alpha Theta National Mathematics Honor Society award last March for “the most challenging, original, thorough, and creative investigation of a problem involving mathematics accessible to a high school student.” Shortz and Newsday’s Crossword Puzzle Editor Stan Newman agreed to be editorial advisers. For his science research course, he set about digitizing all New York Times crossword puzzles pre-Will Shortz, from 1942 to the end of 1993, typing every clue and answer into a database. Last fall, as a freshman at Palos Verdes Peninsula High, David decided it was an art form that must be preserved. In “Wordplay,” Shortz reads some of the more entertaining missives he’s received:Frogs hop, sir, toads do not.īut the crossword puzzle is more than just a brain teaser, it’s a “historical record of the times in which it was written,” David says, a snapshot of current events, pop culture, classical music, art, film, even cartoons. Those are just some of the words Times crossword fans toss around in letters they have fired off to Shortz. Tower of London, for instance, contains rofl (rolling on floor laughing).Ĭrossword clues can be tricky and misleading, which is what puzzlers both love and hate. One of his favorites involved hiding text message abbreviations in longer answers. Since then, David has had five more puzzles published in theTimes. (The youngest is Ben Pall, who was also 14 at the time, but younger than David by a few months). His puzzle ran June 16, 2011, making him the second-youngest person to have a crossword puzzle in theTimessince Shortz took over in 1993. He didn’t, and on his 17th try, when he was 14, David got the letter he had been waiting for and a check for $200. New York Times Crossword Puzzle Editor Will Shortz rejected it but told him not to give up. When he was 12, he constructed his first crossword puzzle (the theme was puns on the game Clue) on graph paper with a pencil and eraser and sent it to theTimes. It didn’t take long, though, beforedoingpuzzles wasn’t enough for David. His best time is three minutes flat for a Monday puzzle. if it’s Sunday or Monday) for theTimespuzzle to post. TV talk-show funnyman Jon Stewart admits in the documentary that he will do the crossword in USA Today, “but I don’t feel good about myself.”ĭavid is not a puzzle purist, he will solve the occasional Los Angeles Times puzzle, but he does wait at his computer every night at 7 p.m. Loyal fans who make appearances in “Wordplay” include President Bill Clinton, filmmaker Ken Burns and former Major League Baseball pitcher Mike Mussina. This is perhaps a good place to pause and explain that The New York Times crossword is the gold standard of crossword puzzles, an American icon. Sundays are the longest and as hard as a Thursday puzzle. At one point in “Wordplay” (which came out in 2006), former New York Times Public Editor Daniel Okrent compares putting one of Reagle’s puzzles in the Tuesday paper to putting Barry Bonds in Little League.įor the uninitiated, The New York Times crosswords get harder as the week goes on. Reagle is considered one of the most prolific and creative puzzle constructors out there. He is so hungry for this.Īnother former champ, Trip Payne, confides to the camera that he had to leave New York for Florida to get away from “the puzzle scene.”īy the time David finished watching the documentary, he wanted to be just like Merl Reagle. In another scene, a former tournament champ named Ellen Ripstein talks about the danger of a young up-and-comer named Tyler:Tyler is just like a tiger. The excitement is palpable, the man on camera says as competitors hunch over their crossword puzzles, furiously scribbling.
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