Joel Fagliano | |
|---|---|
 Fagliano at the 2024 American Crossword Puzzle Tournament | |
| Born | 1992 (age 31–32) |
| Alma mater | Pomona College |
| Occupations |
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| Known for | The New York Times mini crossword puzzle |
Joel Fagliano (born 1992 [1] ) is an American puzzle creator. [2] [3] [4] He is known for his work at The New York Times , where he writes the paper's Mini Crossword. [5] On March 14, 2024, Fagliano became the interim editor of The New York Times Crossword due to editor Will Shortz being on medical leave. [6]
Fagliano grew up in the Mount Airy neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in a Jewish family [7] with two brothers. [8] His mother is a grant writer and his father is a chairperson at the Drexel University School of Public Health. [8] He enjoyed puzzles as a child, began completing the New York Times crossword puzzle regularly during his freshman year of high school [2] at the Masterman School, [8] a magnet school, and began making his own crosswords in his sophomore year. [1] For college, he moved to Southern California to attend Pomona College, where he graduated in 2014 with a degree in linguistics and cognitive science. [8]
Fagliano started submitting standard-length crossword puzzles to the New York Times in 2007. His first puzzle was accepted in September 2009 and ran the next month, when he was 17 years old. By the time he finished high school, he had had four puzzles accepted and published by the Times and two accepted and published by the Los Angeles Times Syndicate. [8] He interned for three summers with Will Shortz, the Times' crossword puzzle editor. [1] [7] After graduating from Pomona College in 2014, Fagliano began working for him full-time. [8] At the Times, Fagliano creates and edits the "Mini Crossword", a 5 × 5 (or sometimes slightly larger, often on Saturdays) puzzle released daily, originally envisioned by product director Matt Hural. [1] [9]
Fagliano lives in the Upper East Side in Manhattan, New York City. [1] His hobbies include playing chess [1] and basketball, watching sports, and jogging. [8]
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.
William F. Shortz is an American puzzle creator and editor who is the crossword 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.
The Julia Reynolds Masterman Laboratory and Demonstration School is a middle and secondary school located in Philadelphia. It is a magnet school, ranked the 4th best high school in the nation, located in the Spring Garden neighborhood. Prior to 1958, the school building was used by the Philadelphia High School for Girls and the building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places under that name in 1986.
Eugene Thomas Maleska was an American crossword puzzle constructor and editor. He edited The New York Times crossword puzzle from 1977 to 1993.
The New York Times crossword is a daily American-style crossword puzzle published in The New York Times, syndicated to more than 300 other newspapers and journals, and released online on the newspaper's website and mobile apps as part of The New York Times Games.
Jeremiah Farrell was an American mathematician and academic who was professor emeritus of mathematics at Butler University in Indiana. He constructed Will Shortz's favorite crossword puzzle, the famous 1996 "Election Day" crossword in The New York Times. He wrote puzzles for various books and newspapers including Scott Kim's puzzle column for Discover magazine.
Wei-Hwa Huang is an American puzzler, member of the US Team for the World Puzzle Championship, and game designer.
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 book of any kind that Simon & Schuster published (1924). She was described the Los Angeles Times as "the grand dame of the American crossword puzzle."
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 crossword puzzles for AARP: The Magazine and the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament.
Helene Hovanec is a former elementary school teacher who has authored 66 puzzle books, 59 of which are for children.
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Anna Shechtman is an American journalist and crossword constructor. Shechtman is the film editor for the Los Angeles Review of Books and constructs crossword puzzles for The New Yorker and The New York Times.
Dan Feyer is an American crossword puzzle solver and editor. He holds the record for the most American Crossword Puzzle Tournament (ACPT) championships, with nine wins, 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 Times's Saturday crossword in an average of 4:03 minutes each week and the Sunday crossword in an average of 5:38 minutes.
Michael David Sharp, known by the pseudonym Rex Parker, is an American blogger known for writing about the New York Times crossword puzzle on his blog, Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle. Sharp teaches English at Binghamton University in New York.
Patrick D. Berry is an American puzzle creator and editor who constructs crossword puzzles and variety puzzles. He had 227 crosswords published in The New York Times from 1999 to 2018. His how-to guide for crossword construction was first published as a For Dummies book in 2004. One of the most revered constructors of his time, Berry has been called the "Thomas Pynchon of crosswords".
Mike Shenk is an American crossword puzzle creator and editor. He has been the editor of the Wall Street Journal crossword puzzle since 1998. He is considered one of the foremost crossword constructors of his time.
Wyna Liu is an American puzzle creator and editor of the New York Times game Connections.
The New York Times Games is a collection of casual print and online games published by The New York Times, an American newspaper. Originating with the newspaper's crossword puzzle in 1942, NYT Games was officially established on August 21, 2014, with the addition of the Mini Crossword. Most puzzles of The New York Times Games are published and refreshed daily, mirroring The Times' daily newspaper cadence.
Sam Ezersky is an American puzzle editor and crossword constructor who is the editor of The New York Times Spelling Bee. He has worked for the New York Times games department since 2017.