David L. Hoyt is an American puzzle and game inventor and author. [1] He is the most syndicated puzzle maker in America. [2] [3]
David Lawrence Hoyt was born in Waterbury, Connecticut, in 1965. He lives in Chicago with his wife, Claire.
Hoyt is the inventor of numerous well-known puzzles, games and brain teasers including USA Today Word Roundup, USA Today Up & Down Words, Jumble Crosswords, TV Jumble and more. He is the current co-author of Jumble, the most syndicated daily word game in the world. [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]
His print puzzles and games are syndicated by Tribune Content Agency and Universal Uclick and are carried in more than 700 newspapers, including USA Today, New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post. [9] Hoyt’s online games are featured on sites such as Shockwave.com, Yahoo.com, MSN.com and Games.com. [8] [9] [10] Hoyt also develops puzzles and games across a number of other platforms including mobile, casino games, instant scratch-off games, books and calendars. [11]
Hoyt moved to Chicago in 1990 to work as an option and futures trader on the floor of the Chicago Board of Options Exchange. While working there, he began developing various toys, games and puzzles in his spare time. In 1993, he sold his first game, Crossword the Game, to Parker Brothers. Shortly after, in 1994, he started developing games full-time. [1] [9] Two years later, he partnered with Tribune Content Agency (TCA), the owners of Jumble, to develop new versions of Jumble including Jumble Crosswords, TV Jumble and Jumble BrainBusters. The daily and the Sunday Jumble puzzles appear in more than 600 newspapers internationally and across the United States. [6] [7] [1]
In 2002, Hoyt partnered with Jeff Knurek, Tribune Content Agency, and Hasbro to develop the Boggle BrainBuster syndicated daily puzzle. [12] [13]
Hoyt teamed up with Wheel of Fortune legend Pat Sajak in 2004 to create Pat Sajak Games, an online gaming site. Together, they created Pat Sajak's Lucky Letters, Pat Sajak's Trivia Gems, Pat Sajak's Code Letters and Pat Sajak's Code Number Sudoku. [8]
In 2006, Hoyt invented two new popular games - USA Today's Word Roundup and USA Today's Up & Down Words. Over the next few years, he created additional variations of Word Roundup that are played by millions online every day. [14] [15]
Hoyt reached a new milestone in his career in 2011, when with Tribune Content Agency and Jeff Knurek, he replaced Mike Argirion as the writer of Jumble, making him the most syndicated puzzle maker in America. [2] [3] In the same year, he partnered with Graeme Thomson and Steve Bullock to co-create David L. Hoyt's Word Winder board game, online game and mobile games. [4] [16] In May 2012, the Word Winder NOOK app was announced the No. 1 board game app on NOOK Apps. [17] [18]
In July 2013, Hoyt launched his newest word game app, Just 2 Words. [19] The app was highly reviewed and well-received, [20] [21] [22] [23] including being named the Corona Labs Inc. App of the Week on July 22, 2013 [24] and App of the Month in July 2013. [25] [26]
In 2015 David, along with his wife Claire founded the David L. Hoyt Education Foundation located in the Lincoln Square Neighborhood in Chicago, Illinois. The Foundation's mission is to facilitate, enable, and develop play-based learning for students of all ages through programming utilizing expertly crafted games and puzzles. In doing so, the organization strives to make learning accessible, interactive, inclusive, and enjoyable. David and his wife Claire Haasl, understand that play is endlessly important to creating global citizens who can make strategic decisions and think creatively. In order to fulfill their mission the foundation strives to accomplish the following objectives: developing curriculum for the Giant Word Winder and Giant Math Winder games; partnering with existing educational and community organizations; providing educational games and/or play-based tools; and providing fundraising tools for those looking to raise money for games. The foundation officially opened its doors in March 2017.
Word games are spoken, board, card or video games often designed to test ability with language or to explore its properties.
A crossword is a word game consisting of a grid of black and white squares, into which solvers enter words or phrases ("entries") crossing each other horizontally ("across") and vertically ("down") according to a set of clues. Each white square is typically filled with one letter, while the black squares are used to separate entries. The first white square in each entry is typically numbered to correspond to its clue.
A cryptic crossword is a crossword puzzle in which each clue is a word puzzle. Cryptic crosswords are particularly popular in the United Kingdom, where they originated, as well as Ireland, Israel, the Netherlands, and in several Commonwealth nations, including Australia, Canada, India, Kenya, Malta, New Zealand, and South Africa. Compilers of cryptic crosswords are commonly called "setters" in the UK and "constructors" in the US. Particularly in the UK, a distinction may be made between cryptics and "quick" crosswords, and sometimes two sets of clues are given for a single puzzle grid.
Pat Sajak is an American television personality and game show host. Born and raised in Chicago, Sajak began his career in broadcasting at a local radio station, later serving as a disc jockey during the Vietnam War for the American Forces Vietnam Network.
Jumble is a word puzzle with a clue, a drawing illustrating the clue, and a set of words, each of which is “jumbled” by scrambling its letters. A solver reconstructs the words, and then arranges letters at marked positions in the words to spell the answer phrase to the clue. The clue, and sometimes the illustration, provide hints about the answer phrase, which frequently uses a homophone or pun.
A word search, word find, word seek, word sleuth or mystery word puzzle is a word game that consists of the letters of words placed in a grid, which usually has a rectangular or square shape. The objective of this puzzle is to find and mark all the words hidden inside the box. The words may be placed horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. Often a list of the hidden words is provided, but more challenging puzzles may not provide a list. Many word search puzzles have a theme to which all the hidden words are related such as food, animals, or colors. The puzzles have, like crosswords and arrowords, become very popular. Also in common with these latter puzzles, have had complete books and mobile applications devoted to them.
United Media was a large editorial column and comic strip newspaper syndication service based in the United States, owned by the E. W. Scripps Company, that operated from 1978 to 2011. It syndicated 150 comics and editorial columns worldwide. Its core businesses were the United Feature Syndicate and the Newspaper Enterprise Association.
Crosswords DS is a puzzle video game developed by American studio Nuevo Retro games released by Nintendo for the Nintendo DS handheld video game console. It was previously released in Australia as CrossworDS but a new OFLC entry confirmed that Nintendo Australia re-released it with a European localization. Crosswords DS features over 1,000 crossword puzzles that the player solves by using the stylus. Despite the title, it also features word search puzzles and anagram puzzles. It makes use of similar handwriting mechanics that the Brain Age titles make use of. Crosswords DS is included in the Touch! Generations series of titles, which includes such popular games as Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day! and Nintendogs. The background music was composed by Fabian Del Priore.
Timothy Eric Parker is an American puzzle editor, games creator, author, and TV producer.
The New York Times crossword puzzle is a daily American-style crossword puzzle published in The New York Times, online on the newspaper's website, syndicated to more than 300 other newspapers and journals, and on mobile apps.
Tribune Content Agency (TCA) is a syndication company owned by Tribune Publishing. TCA had previously been known as the Chicago Tribune Syndicate, the Chicago Tribune New York News Syndicate (CTNYNS), Tribune Company Syndicate, and Tribune Media Services. TCA is headquartered in Chicago, and had offices in various American cities, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Hong Kong.
Norman "Trip" Payne is an American professional puzzle maker. He is known by many as a three-time champion of the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament (ACPT). With his first victory in 1993, at the age of 24, Payne became the youngest champion ever in the tournament's history, a record he held until 2005.
Uclick LLC was an American corporation selling "digital entertainment content" for the desktop, the web and mobile phones. Uclick operated several consumer websites, including the comic strip and editorial cartoon site GoComics and the puzzle and casual game sites ThePuzzleSociety.com and UclickGames.com.
Wheel of Fortune is an American television game show created by Merv Griffin. The show has aired continuously since January 1975. It features a competition in which contestants solve word puzzles, similar to those in hangman, to win cash and prizes determined by spinning a giant carnival wheel. The current version of the series, which airs in nightly syndication, premiered on September 19, 1983. It stars Pat Sajak and Vanna White as hosts, who have hosted the nighttime version since its inception. The original version of Wheel was a network daytime series that ran on NBC from January 6, 1975, to June 30, 1989, and subsequently aired on CBS from July 17, 1989, to January 11, 1991; it returned to NBC on January 14, 1991, and was cancelled that year, ending on September 20, 1991.
Andrews McMeel Syndication is an American content syndicate which provides syndication in print, online and on mobile devices for a number of lifestyle and opinion columns, comic strips and cartoons and various other content. Some of its best-known products include Dear Abby, Doonesbury, Ziggy, Garfield, Ann Coulter, Richard Roeper and News of the Weird. A subsidiary of Andrews McMeel Universal, it is headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri. It was formed in 2009 and renamed in January 2017.
Words with Friends is a multiplayer computer word game developed by Newtoy. Players take turns building words crossword-puzzle style in a manner similar to the classic board game Scrabble. The rules of the two games are similar, but Words with Friends is not associated with the Scrabble brand. Up to 40 games can be played simultaneously using push notifications to alert players when it is their turn. Players may look up friends either by username or through Facebook, or be randomly assigned an opponent through "Smart Match". Players can also find potential opponents using Community Match.
Matt Gaffney is a professional crossword puzzle constructor and author who lives in Staunton, Virginia. His puzzles have appeared in Billboard magazine, the Chicago Tribune, the Daily Beast, Dell Champion Crossword Puzzles, GAMES magazine, the Los Angeles Times, New York magazine, the New York Times, Newsday, The Onion, Slate magazine, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Washingtonian Magazine, The Week, and Wine Spectator.
Microsoft Ultimate Word Games is a word puzzle game published by Microsoft Studios, first released for Windows Phone as 'Wordament' on April 24, 2012. The game was relaunched in June 2017 with two new game modes, Crosswords and Word Twister.
Jeff Knurek is an American cartoonist, industrial designer, and toymaker. He is the current cartoonist for the syndicated Jumble puzzle, working with David L. Hoyt.
Wordscapes is a word puzzle video game created by the American studio PeopleFun, available on Android and IOS. Wordscapes was a top 100 ranked game on the Google Play Store, and the App Store. As of 2020, over 14 million people have played Wordscapes.