A crossword is a word puzzle that usually takes the form of a square or a rectangular grid of white- and black-shaded squares. The goal is to fill the white squares with letters, forming words or phrases that cross each other, by solving clues which lead to the answers. In languages that are written left-to-right, the answer words and phrases are placed in the grid from left to right ("across") and from top to bottom ("down"). The shaded squares are used to separate the words or phrases.
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, 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.
William F. Shortz is an American puzzle creator and editor who is the crossword puzzle editor for The New York Times. He graduated from Indiana University with a degree in the invented field of "enigmatology". After starting his career at Penny Press and Games magazine, he was hired by The New York Times in 1993. Shortz's American Crossword Puzzle Tournament is the country's oldest and largest crossword tournament.
The New York Times Magazine is an American Sunday magazine included with the Sunday edition of The New York Times. It features articles longer than those typically in the newspaper and has attracted many notable contributors. The magazine is noted for its photography, especially relating to fashion and style.
Games World of Puzzles is an American games and puzzle magazine. Originally the merger of two other puzzle magazines spun off from its parent publication Games magazine in the early 1990s, Games World of Puzzles was reunited with Games in October 2014.
Eugene Thomas Maleska was an American crossword puzzle constructor and editor. He edited The New York Times crossword puzzle from 1977 to 1993.
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.
Wordplay is a 2006 documentary film directed by Patrick Creadon. It features Will Shortz, the editor of the New York Times crossword puzzle, crossword constructor Merl Reagle, and many other noted crossword solvers and constructors. The second half of the movie is set at the 2005 American Crossword Puzzle Tournament (ACPT), where the top solvers compete for a prize of $4000. Wordplay was the best reviewed documentary film of 2006, according to Rotten Tomatoes.
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.
Margaret Petherbridge Farrar was an American journalist and the first crossword puzzle editor for The New York Times (1942–1968). Creator of many of the rules of modern crossword design, she compiled and edited a long-running series of crossword puzzle books including the first-ever book of any kind published by Simon & Schuster.
Merl Harry Reagle was an American crossword constructor. For 30 years, he constructed a puzzle every Sunday for the San Francisco Chronicle, which he syndicated to more than 50 Sunday newspapers, including the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Seattle Times, The Plain Dealer, the Hartford Courant, the New York Observer, and the Arizona Daily Star. Reagle also produced a bimonthly crossword puzzle for AARP The Magazine magazine, a monthly crossword puzzle for the Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI, and puzzles for the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament.
Roger Squires was a British crossword compiler/setter, who lived in Ironbridge, Shropshire. He was best known for being the world's most prolific compiler. He compiled under the pseudonym Rufus in The Guardian, Dante in The Financial Times and was the Monday setter for the Daily Telegraph.
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.
"Homer and Lisa Exchange Cross Words" is the sixth episode of the twentieth season of the American animated television series The Simpsons. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on November 16, 2008. In the episode, Lisa discovers that she has a talent for solving crossword puzzles, and she enters a crossword tournament. Lisa's feelings are hurt when she discovers that Homer bet against her in the championship 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.
David Steinberg is a crossword constructor and editor. At 15, he became the youngest published constructor in the Los Angeles Times and the youngest known crossword editor ever for a major newspaper.
Joel Fagliano is an American puzzle creator. He is known for his work on the New York Times crossword puzzles, where he writes the paper's "Mini Crossword".
Dan Feyer is a crossword solver and editor and the eight-time winner of the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament (ACPT). He holds the tournament record for the most championships ever, with eight total championships, and the most consecutive championships with six. He was described by the New York Times as "the wizard who is fastest of all," solving the New York Times' Saturday crossword in an average of 4:03 minutes each week and the Sunday crossword in an average 5:38 minutes. He is listed in the Guinness World Records for both "Most wins of the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament" and "most consecutive ACPT wins."
Erik Agard is a crossword solver, constructor, and editor. He is the winner of the 2016 Lollapuzzoola Express Division, the 2018 American Crossword Puzzle Tournament (ACPT), a frequent contributor to the New York Times crossword puzzle, a crossword constructor for The New Yorker, the former USA Today crossword editor, and a former Jeopardy! contestant.
