Crossword Friends of George Barany

Beneath these introductory remarks, and my own photo, you will find (in alphabetical order) the names, photos (or placemarks for the camera-shy), and brief biosketches of some of the brilliant individuals, ages ranging from 18 (*) to 85, with whom I have had the pleasure of collaborating on crossword puzzle construction and/or on beta testing each others' works [* = one was 16 when we started!] If you click on their names, this might take you to their own web sites. Furthermore, I list their puzzles with me, and—in a few special cases—puzzles for which they are the honorees. A non-trivial subset of the group has current geographical roots in the Twin Cities and environs. Return to our main page—which includes our overarching philosophy—by clicking here. For easy access to this page, use http://tinyurl.com/baranyfriends

GB

Bar for rapid navigation: George Barany // Christopher Adams // Susan Ainsworth // Martin Ashwood-Smith // Jeff Aubé // Steve Bachman // Barbara Barany // Howard Barkin // Evan Birnholz // Marcia Brott // Sabina Brukner // Ralph Bunker // Zhouqin Burnikel // Richard Caldwell // Jeff Chen // John Child // Josh Conescu // Tim Croce // Michael David // Nate Davidson // Charles Deber // Mark Diehl // Sean Dobbin // Marti DuGuay-Carpenter // Noam Elkies // Anne Ellison // Kristen Evenson // Sam Ezersky // Dan Feyer // Jed Fisher // Charles Flaster // Victor Fleming // Lloyd Fricker // Ben Geisbauer // Hayley Gold // Elizabeth Gorski // Todd Gross // Robert Hammer // Michael Hanko // David Hanson // Brent Hartzell // Martin Herbach // Nancy Herther // Theresa Horan // Donna Huryn // Jon Jeffryes // Ben Jones // Karen Kaler // Dan Kantor // Jay Kaskel // Joseph Konstan // Miriam Krause // Meghan Lafferty // Ken Leopold // Peter Leopold // David Liben-Nowell // Sandy Lipsky // Mark Lipton // Paul Luftig // Robert Mark // Christie Martin // Deane Morrison // Jan Morse // Andrew Myers // Jane O'Brien // Jenna Orkin // Tom Pepper // Chris Philpot // Phil Platt // Jim Quinlan // Arlene Romoff // Amelia Rosner // Ellen Ross // Lewis Rothlein // Arthur Rothstein // Marjorie Russel // Tariq Samad // Kurtis Scaletta // Paul Schoenholz // Alayne Schroll // Matthew Sewell // Michael Shteyman // Dan Silversmith // Loren Smith // Rachel Stock Spilker // David Steinberg // Jeff Strickler // Markand Thakar // Jonathan Vaughan // John Verel // Carl Voss // Alex Vratsanos // Ned White // Mark Wieder // Brad Wilber // Tom Williams // Letitia Yao

George Barany (that's me) is the convener of this virtual colloquium. Click on my name (to the left) for biographical information, and on our main page for my crossword bona fides and philosophies. My day job is in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Minnesota, and many of my friendships go back to my time at Stuyvesant High School and at The Rockefeller University [I skipped college, although in 2014, I did receive this honorary degree]. A career highlight was to co-chair the 16^th American Peptide Symposium in June 1999, which saw this crossword puzzle co-constructed with Charles Deber, and the world premiere of Peptide Ångst: La Triviata (see this video) created together with Gary Gisselman. My first published New York Times puzzle was on a Sunday, joint with Michael Shteyman [click here for a picture of me at that time]. Since mid-2013, I have been a member of the National Puzzlers' League (NPL) with a nom of mefistofele [same spelling as the Boito opera]. On the occasion of my Los Angeles Times debut puzzle in January 2016, this interview appeared on C.C.'s Crossword Corner, and this article entitled "How I Work," created for the University of Minnesota library, elaborates further. I have quite a few crossword collaborators who I know only in cyberspace, although I try to look them up whenever there is some flexibility in my professional travel. I hope you enjoy reading some of their stories below.

Christopher Adams (on the right; taken June 2016 in the Twin Cities) is currently a graduate student in mathematics at the University of Iowa. He graduated in 2014 from Cornell University, with a major in mathematics and minors in physics and creative writing, after which he spent a year abroad teaching physics at Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar. Although Chris solved crosswords on and off (but mostly off) during his undergraduate years, it wasn’t until he was in Qatar that he began to do the crossword every day, perhaps as a way to cope with the heat. This led to Chris finding out about this group, by way of the Enigma Variations puzzle contest. When it turned out that GB's son Michael had also been a Cornell math major, a correspondence began; this culminated in a personal meeting at the Minnesota Crossword Tournament, in which Chris won the under 25 division. Chris' first-ever byline was as a contributor to the All-Star team that created Citi-zens United, and he was the driving force a few months later behind Giving T.Hanks for the Holidays. Then, relatively early in 2016, Chris celebrated a personal milestone with a spectacular debut puzzle on the side of a coffee mug. He also created a math-themed puzzle, Complex Fruits, and collaborated with George (and others) on a number of politically themed puzzles based on then-current events, including Supreme Effort, Craftily Rerun Zodiac, Wall in the Family, and 56-Downed-Up Charges. Most recently, his solo effort California Dreamin' was released just before the Indie 500 crossword tournament and California presidential primary, and was appropriate for both occasions. Chris also notes that his solving times have improved quite a bit as a result of learning how to construct, a process that started in the Summer of 2015.

Martin Ashwood-Smith is on a list of the 25 most-published New York Times constructors of the Will Shortz era [> 70 puzzles; click here for a list that even goes back to the Eugene Maleska era], with many more (> 550) puzzles created as part of the Cross Synergy group that is published in the Washington Post, even more (> 400) for Games, the Los Angeles Times, Newday, Dell Champion, Simon & Schuster books, etc., and we're not even counting his five solo crossword books. Martin was born in London, England in 1957, and emigrated to Canada in 1969 when his father, a microbiologist, was offered a professorship at the University of Victoria. Martin himself attended UVic in the late '70s, earning a B.A. in history, but with wide-ranging interests that include astronomy and science in general, skepticism, magic (as in card tricks, not the black kind), music (classical and electronic), and weightlifting. Martin got started with a friend on cryptic crosswords for the student paper, but then became fascinated by the American-style wide-open grids by Mike Shenk, Merl Reagle and Henry Hook. It took Martin many years of practice (on paper) to develop his own proficiency, but once breaking in with a Maleska acceptance in 1990, there was no looking back. Martin likens his signature triple stacks to good magic tricks, and maintains that even in this day where computer programs make such stacks easier to discover, there is still a significant element of art in the process. Click here for a 2009 profile of Martin that appeared in the Globe and Mail (British Columbia). In a blog essay entitled "Notable Puzzles of 2013," Jim Horne says [of Martin] "I have no idea how he does it but I enjoy tackling these huge seas of white." We were proud to welcome Martin to our ranks and to host, on New Year's Eve 2013, his debut to our pages which was a themeless puzzle with an amazing quadruple stack. This was followed two months later by another quad, this time a pangram. Ever since, we've tried to couple either a quad or a double-quad on our site [complete with midrashim], coincident with Martin's MSM published puzzles [two of which are in collaboration with me, with several others accepted for publication], and we've also showcased Martin's flexibility by posting some of his themed puzzles. Please go to our main index and search for "Ashwood." Finally, MAS received the ultimate honor from our group—just try A Lot of Birthday Cake on One's Plate, following which you should have a look at this comic which the aforementioned puzzle inspired.

Barbara Barany is a recently retired high school chemistry teacher in the Saint Paul, Minnesota public schools district (Highland Park, Saint Paul Central, and Harding), and the mother of my children Michael and Deborah. Barbara received a B.A. in chemistry and mathematics at Occidental College and earned a Ph.D. in chemical physics from Brandeis University. I met Barbara in the early 80's while she was doing postdoctoral research in the University of Minnesota Department of Chemistry, and was frustrated by her prowess in Scrabble plus her knowledge of "crosswordese"—more about that later. Barbara previously worked as a scientist at Honeywell where she won the 1993 Sweatt Award for inventing a UV solid state flame detector based on GaN, returned to the University of Minnesota in the M.Ed. program, taught chemistry and astronomy at Edina High School, and was elected to the Roseville Area School Board (term 2002-2005). Barbara was the honoree of This Puzzle's Honoree and George Washington Have Something in Common (be sure to read my "midrash"), the muse for Dedicated to the One I Love ... [released on our anniversary; the story of our courtship and how we balanced our family and professional lives is outlined in this article from the Minnesota Daily], and the inspiration for Cyclops de Mayo. Barbara collaborated with me on All in the Family, Dream Catchers, Raiders vs. Irish, Start Spreading the News!, Barn to Garden, Fast-Breaking News, and Back-and-Forth in Omaha; consulted on these puzzles (click here and here) about our children; and has encouraged me to develop any number of chemistry-themed puzzles [click here for overall index].

Howard Barkin (on left of photo, taken April 2016 in Stamford, Connecticut)is a veteran puzzle solver and multiyear attendee of the ACPT, where he has acted in the role of "Bystander" in the finals several times, earning several bowling trophy-like awards for his efforts. However, he finally broke through to the winner's podium in a stunning upset on April 3, 2016 [see photo with me, taken within the hour of this triumph, and click here for a report, complete with video clips, from Business Insider]. A graduate of Ramapo College of New Jersey with a degree in Computer Science, he uses these skills each day to analyze and assess software development procedures, and sometimes complain about random software bugs. As a constructor, he has had several puzzles published in the New York Times [click here for a list], Los Angeles Times, and the Simon and Schuster Mega series. He has participated in the Pre-Shortzian Puzzle Project as a litzer (transcribing print to electronic puzzle scans) and as a proofreader. In his spare time, Howard learns much about life beyond the grid with his (wonderful!) wife, and playing imaginatively with his preschool and baby daughters. He also plays recreational league ball hockey (like ice hockey, played on foot with a ball instead of a puck). The former activity (slightly) more often involves jigsaw puzzles and tiaras. Howard was one of the winners of the Enigma Variations crossword metapuzzle contest, and as such, honored by a custom puzzle constructed by Vic Fleming.

Marcia Brott (camera shy) is a scientist working in the field of pharmacogenomics in the College of Pharmacy at the University of Minnesota. I met Marcia when she took a refresher chemistry course for which I was the instructor, and patiently amused herself by working through New York Times Sunday puzzle books while awaiting her turn during office hours. She is an expert solver with an eclectic collection of semi-nerdy hobbies and interests, which coincidentally includes sharing my love of opera. Marcia placed third in the expert division of the Second Annual Minnesota Crossword Puzzle Tournament (2013). Several puzzles constructed by Marcia appear exclusively on our pages, including A Summer's Tail, Beasts (and Burdon), and Baby, It's Cold Outside—with more to be added in the near future. Marcia's print debut with me appeared in September 2013 in the Orange County Register, edited by David Steinberg, and she co-constructed Crossing Curing with Caring, which was the centerpiece of a charity benefit on our campus and reprised in the Minnesota magazine of the University of Minnesota Alumni Association (click here for a direct link). Marcia and I constructed a rather clever (if we do say so ourselves) tribute puzzle which also appeared in the Minnesota magazine (see it here or here). January 2015 was a banner month, seeing publication of NoTHing to See Here in the Wall Street Journal, Karat Shtick in the Chronicle of Higher Education, and a birthday tribute, Mixed Company, on our website. Marcia co-constructed Sea Shells, also in the Chronicle of Higher Education, and "Now He Belongs to the Ages" for Natural Selections, and she was interviewed for this photoessay that ran in the New York Times Wordplay blog in March 2015. Marcia's Los Angeles Times debut puzzle, co-constructed with Tom Pepper, appeared in March 2016.

Sabina Brukner is a long-time puzzle enthusiast who I met for the first time at the 37^th American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in 2014. Turns out we have several things in common, including having both grown up in the same neighborhood of Flushing, Queens, and us both being being alumni of Stuyvesant High School. Moreover, Sabina sang in the same chorus [Baroque Artists of Champaign-Urbana = BACH] as Anne Erdmann for two years, and actually knew Anne as a singer before she knew of her crossword prowess! This put Sabina into a unique position to contribute to Rock Star, which also marks her own crossword constructing debut. Sabina speaks Yiddish and loves Yiddish music and culture and loves קעסטל–רעטענישן, i.e., crossword puzzles. Most recently, Sabina got a cool thrill with Klezmer to Your Ears?, which is available only at the aforementioned link, and can be revisited annually on December 22.

Zhouqin (C.C.) Burnikel runs the LA Times Crossword Corner blog, which she initiated in January, 2008.. Starting in 2010, she was mentored by veteran constructor Don Gagliardo, and they've collaborated on over a hundred crosswords for the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times [click here for a list], the Chronicle of Higher Education, the Wall Street Journal, and the Crossword Club. She graduated from Northwest University (Xi'An, China) in 1994, worked in Guangzhou for 6 years, and moved to the United States in 2001 [truth be told, in a Twin Cities suburb not that far from my own, something we didn't figure out until relatively recently]. One of my favorite puzzles by C.C. is this one, which is evocative of a different puzzle and this comment on our own pages.

Richard Caldwell is a cyberfriend who came to my attention through his regular postings as "retired chemist" on the Rex Parker crossword blog. Educated at the University of California at Berkeley where his Ph.D. mentor was Andrew Streitwieser, Richard was on the chemistry faculty at Cornell University before moving to the University of Texas at Dallas where he spent the majority of his career working in the general area of physical organic photochemistry. Richard currently operates the Glengowan Golden kennel. With his wife Patti, he has recently begun to show pugs as well as golden retrievers. They have shown some twenty dogs to their championships and several of both breeds have been nationally ranked.

Jeff Chen (on right of photo, taken March 2015 in Stamford, Connecticut) is a bright new star among crossword constructors, with nearly forty puzzles published in the New York Times since his debut a little less than five years ago [click here for a list, and click on Jeff's name for an interesting profile about his eclectic background]. Jeff graciously agreed with my posting of Chemistry 101, an ingenious puzzle he wrote with his wife Jill Denny, as well as a solo effort entitled 104.5 Degrees of Separation. Jeff has published a book called Bridge Crosswords, which I am pleased to give my highest recommendation; it has (you guessed it) 52 puzzles focused on the classic card game. While I have not had the personal privilege of collaborating with Jeff, note that he has mentored friends Loren Smith and John Verel each to their first Los Angeles Times published crossword. Jeff is also the subject of You Rule!, a tribute puzzle (with an interesting backstory) by another Barany friend. Finally, it should be noted that in the midst of the dog days of summer 2013, the crossword community was alternately saddened by the news of Jim Horne's announcement of plans to phase out xwordinfo.com, and electrified by the news that Jeff would be stepping in as the savior of this invaluable resource [see this October 2013 blog post from Jim Horne for additional perspective on how this is working out]. Jeff's smiling face was featured twice in this photoessay that ran in the New York Times Wordplay blog of April 4, 2015.

John Child grew up on a dairy farm in the Green Mountains of Vermont not far from Middlebury College, where his grandparents were the chef and baker at Le Château, the residence hall for the French language program at the college. He attended Williams College in Massachusetts, just far enough away to provide an opportunity to sow a few wild oats, where he majored in Political Economy with an Asian Studies concentration and graduated in 1977. He then worked in turn for the US Department of Energy as an economist, Boston College and General Electric as a systems analyst, and the now-defunct consulting firm Putnam, Hayes & Bartlett as Director of Technical Operations. In 1995 he moved to Kathmandu, Nepal where he is partner and Director of Sales and Marketing at Friends in High Places, a trekking agency. He is author of Streets of Silver, Streets of Gold, a book of walking tours in the Kathmandu Valley. John is a recent crossword addict (since 2011) and an aspiring constructor. In March 2015, we were proud to be the site of his constructing debuts, an interesting theme called Go Look It Up and a "stealth" tribute called Paws to Consider. John also worked with me on Too Soon?! for a significant historical anniversary, and on Citi-zens United for an auspicious sports occasion. John's creativity was also featured on the October 2015 Crossword Puzzle Mug, at the same time as a bunch of us honored John for his 60^th birthday with Child's Play. Most recently, John offered us the exclusive stumper Mu, collaborated with me on the double-feature of DESERVING IT BAD, AT NINETEEN? and RATED GEE, and helped Phil Platt on Land of 10,000 Beers.

Josh Conescu is neither a scientist nor a resident of the state of Minnesota, and he has yet to create his first crossword puzzle. So how, you may wonder, did he stumble into this august group? Josh’s younger sister Rachel is married to my younger brother Francis, that's how. Josh grew up on Long Island, graduated from The University of Vermont with a BA in Theatre (note the spelling, that’s a giveaway), and also holds an M. Ed. from Lesley University in Arts Education. When not dabbling in crossword puzzle solving, Josh can be found teaching in schools and synagogues around the Boston area. He is particularly interested in helping pre-Bar or Bat Mitzvah celebrants wrestle with their Torah portions (a service he provides virtually anywhere in the cyber-world). He can often be found in a movie theatre, or sitting in front of the television watching old movies (especially anything by Woody Allen). Josh is a huge baseball fan [Yankees, Pirates, Mariners, and Nate Frieman of the A's], and every time we get together at family events, we kick around themes for a joint puzzle in this arena.

Tim Croce is a New Englander born and bred. He holds a bachelor's degree (2005) in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of Connecticut, married his college sweetheart, and took a job in the City of Pittsfield Engineering Department [located in the heart of the Massachusetts Berkshires]. Tim is an avid sports fan, numbering among his favorites the UConn Huskies [this included a 4-year stint in the marching band and pep band, and being present the first time, in 2004, that both basketball teams won national championships, and seeing the football team play in (and win) their first ever bowl game], as well as the Boston Red Sox and Patriots. In terms of hockey, he casually followed the Hartford Whalers as a young kid before they skipped town, and his disillusionment ended only with his move to Pittsfield when he picked up rooting for the Bruins. Tim grew up doing crosswords with his mother, and considers solving them to be in his blood [three of his four grandparents, albeit not his otherwise gifted father]. Tim caught the construction bug after a high school English teacher started assigned the daily New York Times puzzles as homework, and was hooked ever since receiving his first acceptance email from Will Shortz in September 2008 [click here for a list of Tim's > perfect number of published puzzles]. The subject of Tim's debut puzzle to our pages, Ladies and Gentlemen ..., should come as no surprise to any careful reader of this biosketch. His second puzzle for us, Horse Power, was a memorable tribute on a significant sports anniversary, and his third, Look Both Ways ... well, you will just have to judge for yourself! We look forward to many more. Breaking news, Fall 2014: Tim has just launched his own crossword site, called Club 72. Check it out! Updated, Spring 2015: Tim's site is restricted to themeless puzzles, so we're pleased to share A Major Accomplishment, with its timely sports theme.

Michael David grew up in Minneapolis and has been teaching high school math in Portage, Wisconsin since 2004. He is a 2003 graduate of Ripon College, where he majored in Mathematics and French, and holds a 2012 master's degree in Mathematics Education from the University of Wisconsin in Oshkosh. Michael has had three New York Times puzzles to date [click here for a list], and has been profiled here, here, and here [this latter includes a 16-minute audio podcast]. Michael's other hobbies include attending Scrabble tournaments and playing piano.

Nate Davidson joined my organosulfur chemistry research lab at the University of Minnesota in 2010 as an undergraduate directed studies student, picking up a B.S. in Chemistry in Spring 2013, and continued working as a research assistant through mid-2014. Since then, Nate stayed in town as a lab tech for General Mills. Nate's knowledge of HTML and overall computer expertise has come in handy when we're faced with Dreamweaver crises.

Charles Deber (on left of photo, taken June 2013 in Hawaii) of the University of Toronto has been my friend and professional colleague for three decades—we go to the same scientific meetings, serve on the same review panels, visit each other's campuses for seminars, etc.—but most important for purposes of this forum, he was my original crossword mentor [check out ___ to the 16^th American Peptide Symposium]. In the crossword biz, CD is absolutely legendary, having published over 35 puzzles (mostly cutting-edge Sundays) in the New York Times [click here for a list, and check out this for his "virtual" interview with Jim Horne]. I collaborated with Charlie's equally brilliant wife Raisa to create a puzzle in honor of his recent odometer birthday, but you'll have to come to my Minneapolis office to see a framed copy [the framed original is in CD's Toronto office]. On the occasion of the 100^th birthday of the crossword puzzle, Charles was featured in this article in the Toronto Star, and there is a companion 5-min video in which he explains how to construct a Sunday New York Times themed puzzle (140 words). Finally, it is a pleasure for us to host three additional Deber puzzles that have not been previously published, It's Elementary, Science as a Second Language, and All You Need is Love, and to share our most recent collaboration, A Special Construction for a Special Deconstructor.

Mark Diehl (on right of photo, taken April 2016 in Stamford, Connecticut) is a recently retired dentist (after almost 38 years) with the Veterans Affairs Hospital in Palo Alto, California. Mark has enjoyed puzzles as far back as elementary school, which looking back now is apparently a long stretch. He first tried his hand at constructing puzzles after receiving a copy of Crossword Puzzle Compendium by Norton Bramesco and Jordan Lasher as a gift in the early-80s, which led to a lucky acceptance of his first submission to the New York Times, by then-editor Eugene Maleska [click here for a list of his > 60 overall puzzles]. Mark has helped Kevin McCann, on occasion, with the cruciverb.com database, and pitched in with creation of the 21^st Century Crossword Puzzle Dictionary. Mark also assisted David Steinberg with the Pre-Shortzian Puzzle Project [personally digitizing over a quarter of the puzzles therein] and was interviewed on the occasion of being named Litzer of the Month (September 2012). Mark's debut puzzle for our site, He's So Shy, came out on April 1, 2016, concurrent with his writing the Finals puzzle for the 39^th American Crossword Puzzle Tournament.

Sean Dobbin is a teacher in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom, where he lives with his wife and son. A native New Yorker (upstate, apple country, on the lake), Sean is a graduate of two SUNY schools and holds a B.A. and M.A. in English. He became seriously interested in crossword puzzles during his college years, solving between classes or in coffee shops with his future wife. Over time, that interest grew into a minor obsession, then a major one, and eventually evolved into an interest in construction, which he does whenever he can find the time [click here for a list of his New York Times puzzles to date]. Outside of his own private puzzleworld, Sean teaches a credit-bearing class he calls "Cruciverbalism," focused on vocabulary, writing fundamentals and general linguistics, and centered on solving and constructing puzzles [a puzzle his class of 12 worked on was published in the Los Angeles Times on April 14, 2014, as recapped here]. Sean's other hobbies include powerlifting, making the perfect Manhattan, and schooling his 4-year-old on the Nintendo (8-bit, of course). For Sean's birthday in December, 2015, we surprised him with this miniature puzzle.

Marti DuGuay-Carpenter spends her days solving, blogging, and constructing crossword puzzles. Since starting construction just a few years ago [2011; please click here for an interview on the occasion of her debut], she has had more than 40 puzzles published, primarily in the Los Angeles Times. Marti has been skiing since the age of two, and at one time planned to become a professional ski bunny. When that didn’t pan out, she turned to golf, since everyone knows that professional golfers make way more money than ski bunnies. After making her first hole-in-one, Marti concluded that the bar tab at the clubhouse was more than any potential earnings. Dejected by past failures, and needing to put food on the table, Marti now dabbles in exporting biomedical products to Europe. We are proud to feature the previously unpublished Top Bananas, as well as, on the exact 100^th birthday of the crossword puzzle, Think Twice (with its fascinating back-story). Hopefully. 2014 will bring us additional examples of Marti's creativity.

Noam Elkies, whose academic career is at Harvard, followed me on the Stuyvesant High School Math Team by about a decade (graduated in 1982), but stayed in the math field where he has made a number of seminal discoveries [learn more by clicking here]. Noam is a longtime member of the National Puzzlers' League (NPL), where he goes by א. Besides crossword puzzles, our common interests include music and chess. Noam's byline appears on Going Gentile Into That Good Night, The Old Song and Dance, and Coin of the Musical Realm; his fingerprints are all over many additional puzzles found on these pages, and we have several exciting collaborations in the pipeline. Furthermore, please click here for a page of word puzzles that Noam has constructed over the years that we think will be of interest to regular visitors to our site. Finally, please enjoy this 80-minute video entitled "Canonical forms: a mathematician's view of musical canons" (recorded January 2013).

Anne Ellison (on left of photo, taken March 2015 in Stamford, Connecticut) is a geologist at the Illinois State Geological Survey, where she arrived via a biology degree from Caltech and a geophysics degree from the University of Minnesota. Anne has been doing crosswords almost since she learned to read at age 3, and has placed as high as second at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. Unlike most other top solvers, Anne has never constructed a crossword, and is awe of those who do—she can’t imagine filling in something as simple as a 3x3 square on her own, even if you spotted her a couple of words! In her spare time, Anne sings in the Baroque Artists of Champaign-Urbana = BACH, runs, reads voraciously, and travels (more than 80 countries so far). One of her most satisfying overseas experiences was the seven months she spent in Matatiele and Johannesburg, South Africa, doing volunteer work on environmental issues. She also enjoys travel photography. For a look inside Anne’s solving brain, see this interview by Jim Horne of (at the time) the New York Times Wordplay blog, in which all speed-solving secrets are revealed ... well, maybe not all of them. Finally, Anne was the honoree of Rock Star, which we hope you enjoy. Note: Anne officially changed her last name to Ellison in January 2016; she was previously known as Anne Erdmann.

Sam Ezersky, a member of our group since he was age 19, is among the younger constructors getting their name known in the "crossworld" [for the record, his last name was blended subtly in this New York Times puzzle]. Sam has been interested in puzzling since he was six years old, when he would solve and design Fill-In puzzle grids in his free time. At 16 years and 9 months, Sam had his first ever puzzle published by the Los Angeles Times (writeup here); four months later, he collaborated with veteran constructor Victor Fleming on his New York Times debut [a Saturday, as described here; click here for a list of others in the NYT]. One of Sam's puzzles was included in American Red Crosswords, a collection sold to raise money for Hurricane Sandy relief, another appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education, and Sam recently launched an "indie" website, The Grid Kid, that aims to offer a new puzzle every Monday. Outside of his crossword life, Sam is quite the sports nut; originally from Baltimore, Maryland, he is a die-hard Ravens and Orioles fan, and religiously follows MLB, NFL, and NBA games. Also, he has a passion for music, in which he listens to anything from The Beatles to Eminem, has taught himself piano, and "suffers from" self-diagnosed chromesthesia. Sam currently attends the University of Virginia, where he is a double major in mechanical engineering and economics. Sam's crossword achievements were described by the UVA Magazine, as can be viewed here.

Dan Feyer (on right of photo, taken March 2015 in Stamford, Connecticut) is the reigning six-time champion of the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament (ACPT), who can solve our puzzles (even those on esoteric topics outside of his core expertises) in less time than it takes us to fill them in while staring at the answer key. A San Francisco-based musician/pianist by day (recently relocated from New York), Dan has been profiled (click here and here) by the alumni magazine of his alma mater, Princeton University, as well as by the New York Times [click here, and be sure to invest a minute and a half to watch an awesome video clip]. Just like I am of Hungarian origin and have Gustav Mahler dangling off a distant branch of the family tree, Dan is the grandson of the remarkable Hungarian-born composer/pianist/bon vivant György Fejér [1908-2001; name Anglicized to George Feyer]. In addition to his solving chops, Dan has constructed several puzzles for the New York Times [click here for a list]. He runs the minimalist Not a Blog blog, and was gracious enough to crosslist our site. Amazingly, Dan won a random drawing to have his registration for the 2015 ACPT covered by our Enigma Variations crossword metapuzzle contest.

Jed Fisher started at the University of Minnesota Department of Chemistry the year before I did, and we've been close personal friends and scientific colleagues ever since—this includes through his subsequent positions in Kalamazoo and South Bend. Jed spoke at the dedication of the Kate and Michael Bárány Conference Room in July 2012, and it was my pleasure to surprise him with the Celebrated Chemical Cycle puzzle a couple of months later. In December 2013, Jed's byline finally appeared on one of our puzzles, namely Doubly Distinguished.

Charles Flaster (on left of photo, taken August 2015 in Philadelphia) is a native New Yorker, and one of his childhood friends was Warren Choset, father of constructor Kevan. Back to Charles, he earned a B.S. in Mathematics from Brooklyn College in 1967, and an M.B.A. from Drexel University in 1974. Charles taught secondary school mathematics for 42 years in the New York City and Philadelphia suburbs, retiring in 2010. He roots for the various Philadelphia professional sports franchises: Phillies, Eagles, 76ers, and Flyers. For the past two years, Charles has supplemented his long-time interest (since 1960) in solving New York Times crossword puzzles by being a regular commentator on the Rex Parker crossword blog. I was pleased to work with Charles on his debut crossword puzzle, called Even Odds. Later, we teamed up with Brent Hartzell on Rex Sports, also known as Horsefeathers, and with an All-Star team of sports fans on Citi-zens United, and then again just the two of us on Snowed Grass.

Victor Fleming [no relation to the legendary director of Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz] was born and raised in Mississippi, and graduated from Davidson College in 1973 and from the University of Arkansas-Little Rock Bowen School of Law in 1978. Vic practiced law for about 20 years before being elected to the district court of Little Rock in 1996. Since 2003, Judge Fleming has also taught law and literature as an adjunct faculty member at the Bowen School. For much of his career (starting in 1984), Judge Fleming has written a weekly column, now called "I Swear," that covers humorous legal matters and appears in several court and commercial newspapers. Judge Fleming began constructing crosswords in 2004, and his work has been published in all major venues, including the New York Times [click here for a list], Games magazine, and Simon & Schuster Puzzle Books. His "I Swear Crossword" appears in the same papers that run his column. Judge Fleming and his wife, Susan, are the parents of two grown children (Liz, Ted) and the grandparents of two adorable granddaughters (Anna Clary, Josephine). We started collaborating in the Fall of 2014, and our group gave His Honor the ultimate accolade with a puzzle called Strong ConVICtions. In February 2015, Vic returned the compliment with Three-Score Achiever.

Lloyd Fricker (on right of photo, taken March 2015 in NYC) is an eminent peptide biologist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and one of the funniest people I know. He has written two books, How to Write a REALLY Bad Grant Application (and Other Helpful Advice For Scientists) and Succeed in Science and Avoid Getting a Real Job, both of which I recommend highly. His synopsis of Il Destino di Grant Application, which was a sensation back in the late 1990's, inspired Gary Gisselman and me to write Peptide Ångst: La Triviata, which was performed at the closing banquet of the 16^th American Peptide Symposium.

Ben Geisbauer (on left of photo) is my pal in the University of Minnesota Department of Chemistry. Together we constructed the Crossword Puzzle That's the Reel Deal, Mauer's Double, Piano Man, and Let's Make a Deal!, while I constructed Can This Man Still Be Trusted? and Dr. Mericle Worker at Fairview Lakes Medical Center for two momentous occasions in Ben's life.

Hayley Gold (link is to her portfolio) is currently a 4^th year cartooning major at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Her short comic Nervosa won the silver medal in 2014 in the Society of Illustrators Comics and Cartooning Annual and it is her goal to expand it into a graphic novel. She visually blogs about New York Times puzzle in her webcomic, Across and Down, which I recommend with the highest level of enthusiasm. Hayley's print comics can be viewed and purchased at her portfolio and Etsy pages respectively. Follow Hayley's blog, Facebook, or twitter for updates on her work and news of appearances at NYC comics events. Hayley also makes personalized, custom comics as commissions; in this regard, her debut on our pages was entitled C's the Birthday!, which paid tribute to an odometer milestone for another friend. This was followed, on Thanksgiving Day 2014, by Gobbledygook, a "Cryptic 'A Cryptic Tribute' Tribute" that meant a lot to me, and then, in time for the 2014 holidays, by I_call_'eM_AS_I_see_'em, which was dedicated to this friend.

Elizabeth Gorski needs no introduction to the crossword community, insofar as she is one of the most-published New York Times constructors ever [click here for a list], as well as a frequent contributor to the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and numerous other venues. Liz is a four-time winner of Simon & Schuster’s Margaret Award, and was named by Jim Horne as 2013's Constructor of the Year. Gorski invented the modern “Connect-The-Dots” crossword form, the first of which was published in The New York Times in December 2003, and wrote the first ebook devoted to this new puzzle genre. Furthermore, Liz is Managing Editor of Crossword Nation–a premium provider of weekly puzzles for mobile, desktop and print solvers. Her work is commissioned by advertising agencies and private clients. She has created custom puzzles for libraries and museums, including the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in New York, and even contributed commissioned puzzles for the 2009 Sandra Bullock comedy All About Steve. A graduate of Barnard College, Columbia University, Gorski lives in New York City. When she’s not gigging on the viola, she plays the blues guitar and loves to dance the flamenco. For a wonderful recent profile about Liz, please click here.

Todd Gross (on left of photo, taken March 2015 in Stamford, Connecticut) got into constructing crosswords at the suggestion of Bill MacDonald (NPL nom Frivolosaurus Rex), and made his New York Times debut in 2009 with Let's Play Bingo (click here to see the bingo card placed in the center of the grid). Since then, he has reached the ten puzzle NYT milestone [click here for a list], and also been published in the Los Angeles Times, Orange County Register, and Chronicle of Higher Education, among others. Todd also works as a proofreader on David Steinberg's Pre-Shortzian Puzzle Project. Todd got to experience a Minnesota winter while working for IBM in Rochester, in 1998-99 [moving there right before Jesse Ventura was elected Governor] and is grateful to have missed the Deep Freeze of 2014. His impressive debut puzzle on our pages is the Sunday-sized punfest Plastic Surgery, which was followed up by the amazingly interlocked Sunday-sized Literally Labeled Luminaries and the side-splitting quip Limited Engagement. In March 2015, we wished Todd Maazel Tov! for his birthday, which is shared with many well-known folks.

Robert Hammer is currently the Peptide Chemistry Group Leader at Ra Pharmaceuticals and an elected member of the American Peptide Society Council. He received his B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Illinois-Urbana in 1985, his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota with me in 1990, and did postdoctoral research (1990-1992) with Albert Eschenmoser at ETH Zurich in Switzerland. Bob then rose through the ranks at Louisiana State University, where he became the William A. Pryor Professor of Chemistry and was also a director of the LSU Peptide and Protein Facility for 13 years. He was a recipient of the LSU Distinguished Faculty Award in 2003 and recognized as part of the "Scientific American 50" in 2006 for his research related to amyloid peptides. Culminating our history of collaborating on numerous landmark studies and inventions throughout all facets of Bob's graduate, academic, and private sector career, we finally constructed a puzzle together: Mass. Action, at a time when he was head of chemical development efforts at New England Peptide.

Michael Hanko is a 1986 graduate of Princeton University who, beyond his day job described in this puzzle, is an expert crossword solver/analyst, and the author/performer of a recently premiered cabaret-style piece called Platoon Lieder, which explains how he survived as a gay soldier in the pre-DADT ("don't ask, don't tell") era. Michael is currently at work on a new show—tentatively titled Lieder Crisis—about his mid-life crisis, using music from Schumann's Opus 39, Liederkreis. Michael's crossword debut puzzle with me was entitled Debatable Strategy: Carry a Big Shtick which was followed up by The Union Forever, New Year's Eve 2012: A Nation on the Brink, Platoon Lieder: the Official Crossword Puzzle, Going Gentile Into That Good Night, Comparable Worth, A Travesty of Justices, The Old Song and Dance, Elba Was He ..., Doubly Distinguished, A Tribute to N.C. Wyeth: The 40^th Worst Crossword in the Universe, One Who's Old at Heart, Rock Star, Sea Change, and Enigma Variations. We hope to break into the mainstream media in the not-so-distant future. Fans of Michael may enjoy Valvaithankoshtam, which was written to help celebrate a "lucky number squared" birthday that coincided with his visit to the Twin Cities. A year later, we commissioned Hayley Gold to create C's the Birthday!, a comic which paid tribute to Michael's odometer milestone. Michael then honored me with the wonderful Soul Endeavor on my own odometer milestone.

David Hanson grew up, and has spent his career to date, in the Twin Cities, Minnesota. He graduated from Mariner High School in White Bear Lake in 1982 and from the University of Minnesota with a B. Mathematics in 1986, and then worked with the University of Minnesota Physicians (Minneapolis), Allianz Life Insurance Company (Golden Valley), and Fortis Benefits Insurance Company (Woodbury). Dave's current position is Chargemaster Analyst with Gillette Children's Hospital in Saint Paul. Puzzlewise, he has had crosswords published in the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times, and two of his creations were chosen by Will Shortz as the weekly qualifying quiz for the NPR's Sunday Puzzle. Dave has been a member of the National Puzzlers' League since 1997, with the nom rosebud. His debut on our pages was the ingenious Chain, Chain, Chain.....Chain of Fools. Dave and I collaborated on Of Course, which was used in the Third Minnesota Crossword Puzzle Tournament in June 2014, and posted on our webpage in Winter 2016.

Brent Hartzell is the finance director for the City of Allentown, Pennsylvania. Having century-old family roots in Minnesota, Brent earned a bachelor's degree at Gustavus Adolphus College (which also graduated Sherrie, his beautiful wife of nearly 21 years) and a master's degree from the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota before beginning a career in public policy analysis and government budgeting. He has advised Governors Lawton Chiles and Jeb Bush in Florida, served as a George W. Bush Administration appointee at the U.S. Department of Education, and worked as Mayor Dave Bing's final budget director in the City of Detroit, Michigan. Brent enjoys provocative discussions on crossword puzzles [he is a very fast solver; look on the New York Times puzzle applet for his nom de plume of floridaqqq], jazz, soccer, theology, political economy, and all things Golden Gopher. Brent and I have collaborated on numerous sports-themed puzzles since 2012, including Purple All Day, Skol is Out, Irish Miss?, Marooned and Galled, The Final Four, Barn Stormers, Love Forty, Factor of Six, Take It to the Bank!, Chicks Dig the Long Ball, What Do These Great Sluggers Have in Common?, It Was Thirty Years Ago Today, Start Spreading the News!, Barn to Garden, Fast-Breaking News, Go Gophers!, Rex Sports, Citi-zens United, and Back-and-Forth in Omaha. We’ve also collaborated on the history-themed Road to Appomattox and the Princip of the Thing, as well as a tribute puzzle to Brent's mother, Who is She? We first met in person during the Labor Day weekend of 2013 at a Dinkytown bistro, and I created Number 46 for a birthday Brent celebrated that same month in Detroit.

Martin Herbach (on right of photo, with his grandfather) is retired from the software biz after a varied (checkered?) career that included development of supercomputer compilers and an early PC spreadsheet program, and concluded with a decade-long gig at IBM. He lives in Silicon Valley and keeps busy with about 50 crosswords a week, including test-solving the New York Times puzzles, serious cooking [e.g., paella, here as cooked by Martin], volunteer work, travel, a bit of fishing and Japanese flower arranging (ikebana). Martin grew up as a rabid Brooklyn Dodgers fan but now roots for the 2010 and 2012 World Series champion Giants (one-time Polo Grounds rivals, but now ensconsced in San Francisco). Martin and I connected first shortly after this, and have been in regular communication ever since. Martin's byline appears on The Old Song and Dance and Elba Was He ..., and hardly a puzzle of ours comes out without his insightful contributions (especially to our political puzzles). You may enjoy reading this delightful profile about Martin, this interview on the occasion of him being named Litzer of the Month (June 2013) for David Steinberg's Pre-Shortzian Puzzle Project, and note that our hero makes an appearance as 63-Across in The Djerassi Gambit, and Others. With all of these crossworld bona fides, it may surprise you to learn that Martin's MSM debut as a co-constructor (with me, and brilliantly edited by Brad Wilber) came in September 2014, in the Chronicle of Higher Education, for The Ring of Truth.

Nancy Herther received her M.L.S. degree from the University of Minnesota, with a minor in Adult and Continuing Education. After working in the private sector and as a research consultant, she returned to the U in 1985, where she is currently the Librarian for Sociology, Anthropology, American Studies & Asian American Studies. In addition, Nancy is Secretary (2011-2014) and President-Elect (as of Summer 2014) of the local chapter of the scientific research society Sigma Xi. Among her honors are the 2007 Martha L. Stanley award from the Minnesota Association for Adult & Continuing Education (MACAE) and the 2010 Outstanding Reviewer Award from The Electronic Library (Emerald). She enjoys blogging about technology, information and our changing intellectual environment. Nancy loves crossword puzzles and sudoku—but Rubik's cubes drive her up the wall! Nancy's debut puzzle, written for an auspicious anniversary, will have to be embargoed just a bit longer while we await an editorial decision from the mainstream media. In the meantime, her web debut puzzle on these pages was The Confines' Friendliest.

Theresa Horan was born and raised in small town southern Minnesota and grew up doing crossword puzzles. She graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1982 with a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering. Since this was at the start of the Reagan recession, Theresa did not initially get a job in her field; by the time the job market recovered, she had already gone down a different path. Since 1990, Theresa has been the controller at a very small Twin Cities-based company that supports the laundry and dry cleaning industry. She lives in Ham Lake, Minnesota, with her husband, and they have no children. She knits, reads, writes songs, skis, snorkels, runs, and is an avid bicyclist. Until recently, Theresa played the keyboard in a band called Rockthrow [you can find their four albums on Spotify]. She started doing the syndicated New York Times crossword around the turn of the century, and last fall discovered Rex Parker's blog where she frequently dialogues with others in the crossword community under the name teedmn.

Donna Huryn is a distinguished medicinal chemist, currently splitting her effort between the University of Pennsylvania Department of Chemistry and the the University of Pittsburgh School of Pharmacy. Donna and I got to know each other through the American Chemical Society and collaborated on Kelly's Hero. This special puzzle was a tribute to a mutual friend and colleague who was a legend in the peptide field.

Jon Jeffryes is currently an Engineering Librarian at the University of Minnesota. He received his B.A. in English from Grinnell College, and his M.A.-L.I.S. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He started doing the TV Guide crossword as a kid, getting introduced to crosswordese favorites such as EMU, ETUI, and YMA. He moved on to the New York Times puzzle bizarro versions in the Des Moines Register as a study break while at Grinnell, and has done the puzzle daily since. Jon is also a fan of cryptic crosswords and mystery novels. He competed in the 2013 edition of the Minnesota Crossword Tournament sponsored by the Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library. On February 28, 2014, Jon was the subject of One Who's Old at Heart.

Ben Jones is a native North Carolinian currently living in Connecticut and not enjoying the cold winters. A 2012 graduate of Duke, Ben studied Economics (B.S. - pun intended), Finance, and Chinese (B.A.). His main activity apart from class was working as an equipment manager for Duke Football (yes, there are non-basketball sports at Duke), which for the first time ever, will make its second consecutive bowl game in 2013. His interests include marathon running (has run a marathon in 20 of the 50 states), hiking (has highpointed 12 of the 50 states), crossing words, micro-distilling and the two-dollar bill.

Karen Kaler is currently the "First Lady" of the University of Minnesota. A native of Tennessee and holder of a communication design B.F.A. from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, Karen met Eric Kaler—who is now the President of the U of M—back in 1979, while the latter was a Minnesota Chemical Engineering & Materials Science graduate student carrying out summer research at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After stints in the Twin Cities, Seattle, Delaware, and Stony Brook (NY), the Kalers returned to Minnesota in 2011. Among Karen's numerous volunteer and charity activities, she is involved at the University of Minnesota in support of the Masonic Cancer Center, the subject of Crossing Curing with Caring, as well with the Masonic Children's Hospital that inspired the ingenious O Sole Mio. Karen is also a huge Golden Gophers fan, and her fingerprints are all over Take It to the Bank! and (with byline!) The Puck Stops Here (at Ridder), Start Spreading the News!, Barn to Garden, Fast-Breaking News, Back-and-Forth in Omaha, and (of course) Go Gophers!

Dan Kantor is a published author and composer, musician, graphic designer and brand strategist, and the co-owner of the Kantor Group brand consultancy which is based in the crossword-friendly Twin Cities suburb of EDINA. Kantor received a B.A. in music from the College of Saint Thomas, Saint Paul, Minnesota, carried out graduate studies at Hamline University, also in Saint Paul, and has taught in the Fast Trak program at the Opus College of Business at Saint Thomas. Early in his career, Kantor helped launch Finale, one of the world's standards in music notation software. Dan's choral composition Night of Silence, published by GIA, was composed in his college dorm room in 1981. This popular holiday composition has made its way into hymnals, concert settings, and recordings all over the world. Dan has had nine puzzles published in the New York Times [click here for a list], including several fun collaborations with Jay Kaskel (see below).

Jay Kaskel is a freelance advertising writer based in Saint Paul, Minnesota whose work for clients such as Target, BMW Motorcycles, 3M, Snap Fitness, Health Partners, and many more, has appeared in print, as well as on TV, radio, and the web. One of his TV spots for Breathe Right nasal strips appeared during Super Bowl XXX. To see more examples of Jay's work, please click on his name at the beginning of the paragraph. Jay, a Chicago native, and long-time suffering Cubs fan, received a B.S. in Advertising from the University of Illinois. To date, Jay has published six New York Times puzzles [click here for a list], half in collaboration with his friend and colleague Dan Kantor (see above). One of these ran on Christmas eve 2010 and was the subject of this delightful writeup in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. In the "small world, isn't it?" category, Jay's son Carson was instructed in chemistry at Highland Park High School by none other than Barbara Barany, who is related to me by marriage.

Joseph Konstan is another Stuyvesant High School alum (graduated in 1983), current University of Minnesota colleague in a sister Department, and past President of Mount Zion synagogue which I attend occasionally. We collaborated on At Your Service.

Miriam Krause grew up in the Twin Cities suburb of St. Louis Park, then moved around for a while. She got her BA in geology from Pomona College and then taught high school science as a Peace Corps volunteer in Samoa. After returning to the University of Minnesota for graduate school she went on to spend three years in Ohio as an assistant professor in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at Bowling Green State University, but is now back in the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes once more, working as the Director of Education and Outreach for the Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology. Miriam has dabbled in musical theater since childhood and in crossword construction since seeing Wordplay in 2006. Her debut puzzle with me is called Damon's Demons, and is found exclusively on these pages.

Meghan Lafferty received her A.B. in Chemistry from Smith College, followed by 3 years at the University of Georgia working toward a Ph.D. in Chemistry when she recognized that she would rather be in the library than in the lab. After working in the Georgia libraries for a few years, Meghan moved to the University of North Carolina from where she earned an M.S.L.S. degree. Meghan has been the librarian for Chemistry and Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at the University of Minnesota ever since, and as such serves as a remarkable resource to our faculty and students, myself included. On the recreational side of Meghan's activities, she took the initiative, since May 2012, to bring our group's puzzles to students as part of the Science and Engineering Libraries program of "finals week study break" activities. In February 2014, we collaborated on One Who's Old at Heart, a tribute to another Barany friend, which was Meghan's debut effort in crossword construction.

Ken Leopold is currently the Taylor Distinguished Teaching Professor and Morse-Alumni Distinguished Teaching Professor in the University of Minnesota Department of Chemistry. He and his wife Doreen have been among my closest friends and colleagues ever since they joined the staff in the Fall of 1986. Among Ken's many mitzvahs was to emcee the dedication of the Kate and Michael Bárány Conference Room in July 2012. On a momentous personal occasion in Ken's life, Michael Shteyman and I, with behind-the-scenes assistance from Doreen, surprised him with 20-Across Version 2.5. More recently, Ken was one of the stars of What are the Odds? Like his chemistry research (see link to his name at the beginning of this paragraph), Ken's crossword puzzle contributions emphasize quality over quantity, and you will find his impish clue ideas scattered through a number of our chemistry-themed puzzles. Ken has also recently written and recorded an EP entitled Bedtime for a Microprocessor and Other Short Piano Pieces. Copies are available on request.

Peter Leopold is the founder of BioAnalyte Inc., a scientific software company based in Portland, ME. Peter is a graduate of Georgetown University (class of Pat Ewing and Pearl Bailey) and University of California, San Diego Department of Physics where he worked with José Nelson Onuchic and Maurice Montal on lattice models of heteropolymer kinetics and thermodynamics culminating in the protein folding funnel hypothesis. He continued to work in lattice models of protein structure and function as a post-doc in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard before moving to a company specializing in mass spectrometers for protein and peptide analysis. He started BioAnalyte when it became clear that the mass spectrometry world had become balkanized by instrument brands, and a non-aligned entity could help chemists bridge barriers created by proprietary data formats. His company works primarily in statistical inference from noisy data, including multivariate analysis for biomarker discovery. He is also an active WyzAnt tutor of math, physics and statistics, with students ranging from grade school to post-grad. After an ancient familial addiction to crosswords expressed itself in him in 2013, he became a regular lurker in Rexworld, whereupon he e-met George Barany and Ralph Bunker. The Enigma Variations crossword metapuzzle contest by George, Ralph and Michael Hanko, caught his eye. He solved the meta and won a drawing for a vanity puzzle constructed by George Barany, himself. Watching George work, he has become interested in the non-convex optimization problem posed by crossword puzzle construction, itself. Lastly, despite the similarity in name, field of professional engagement, work history, and crossword puzzle enthusiasm, he doesn't think he has any relation to Ken Leopold, but he might be wrong. He and his wife live in Portland, ME and Cambridge, MA.

David Liben-Nowell is a faculty member in the computer science department at Carleton College, whose path to Minnesota went via upstate New York, Cambridge, and Cambridge. David's research focuses on social networks, and he has written about a dozen crosswords for the New York Times [click here for a list], the New York Sun, Games, and Penguin Classics Crossword Puzzle collection. Recently, David has been dabbling with Psychobabble, a kind of network-based word game produced by Ultralingua.

Sandy Lipsky recently retired after more than half a century on the University of Minnesota Department of Chemistry faculty. Look up "mensch" in the dictionary, and you'll find Sandy's picture. He shares my passion for opera, ballet, film, and Jewish humor, but alas, not for crossword puzzles. In spite of himself, Sandy has been a good sounding board for various puzzles that are drawn from topics in math and science.

Mark Lipton is currently a professor of Organic Chemistry/Chemical Biology at Purdue University whose undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral education was respectively at Harvey Mudd, Columbia University, and the University of California, Berkeley. Mark and his wife Jean Chmielewski shared a puzzle-solving prize at the 16^th American Peptide Symposium that I hosted in 1999 in Minneapolis, and our puzzling paths crossed again when Mark edited H-B Oration. The latter effort was lauded in this on-line article [posted May 22 to go with May 27, 2013 issue; use this short URL: http://cenm.ag/puzzle] in Chemical & Engineering News, the official magazine of the American Chemical Society.

Paul Luftig (on left of photo) is a relative-by-marriage who remains active after a remarkable career in the world of finance. We worked together on This Puzzle's Honoree Has Something in Common with Warren Buffett and Ted Williams, Portrait of a Puzzling Lady, The Union Forever, New Year's Eve 2012: A Nation on the Brink, 2 x 1,815 = 3,630, A Novel Puzzle, and Alexander's Ragtime Bandleader: A Quasiquicentennial Tribute. Additional projects are in the pipeline. Paul shares a birthday with a number of very famous individuals, as revealed in Ode to Joy.

Robert Mark is a native New Yorker, who escaped in the mid-1980s after a 3-year stint at Newsday to resettle in Portland, Oregon. Robert holds a B.A. in Creative Writing from Hofstra University and an M.A. in Applied Linguistics from Portland State University. After teaching English at Lewis and Clark College and Portland Community College for a few years, he took a position teaching at Silpakorn University of Fine Arts in Thailand. He taught English and American Literature for 12 years in Japan, first at Shinshu University (in Nagano) and then at Kyushu University (in Fukuoka). Robert and his wife Nassanan now make their home in Phuket, Thailand, where he has been teaching upper school English at the British International School, Phuket for the past ten years. He authored one Thai university textbook and co-authored another in Japan. The Marks return to Portland each summer on holiday, as well as to see their two grown daughters. Robert has been an avid New York Times puzzle solver for most of his life and has only recently dipped his proverbial toe into the pool of puzzle construction. He has had a few published in the local Phuket Gazette newspaper, but has set his sights on getting at least one into a major MSM publication, and we're here to help. In fact, Robert's print debut with me appeared in March 2016 in the Orange County Register, edited by David Steinberg, Robert is an avid film buff, a decent chess player, and a dedicated lap swimmer. He follows the major sports, and is a lifelong fan of the New York (footballl) Giants and (obviously baseball) Yankees.

Christie Martin currently works with me (mostly on things unrelated to crossword puzzles), and helps keep this website up-to-date and is also responsible for setting up and handling our Facebook page. Christie holds a B.A. in Latin American Studies from Carleton College and Master of Public Health in Community Health Education from the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. She recently completed the Leadership in Health Information Technology for Health Professionals Certificate program and started the Master of Nursing program at the University of Minnesota School of Nursing in September. I have known Christie since she took an introductory organic chemistry course with me in 2003, following which she was associated with my research lab for a few years, working on an interesting project in organosulfur chemistry. Christie subsequently took on a myriad of roles in the medical and public health care fields before reappearing to the University of Minnesota Department of Chemistry in the Summer of 2012. My puzzle Peace Out introduced solvers to Christie's background and a subset of her varied interests, and a milestone birthday inspired Perfect Square and Perfect Triangle. Christie's constructing debut, written as part of a class project, is called Physiology Phun!.

Deane Morrison is a highly experienced and accomplished editor and science writer in the Office of University Relations at the University of Minnesota. We met years ago when she did stories about me, both about my research and about my initial forays into crossword construction. Now we are good friends and collaborate on a series of puzzles for the Minnesota magazine of the University of Minnesota Alumni Association. There are: A Puzzle to Gopher (Summer 2012), A Herstoric Gopher Puzzle (Fall 2012), Over the River and through the Grid (Winter 2013), Talking to U (Spring 2013), A Puzzle to Circumnavigate (Summer 2013), and Goldy's Blocks (Fall 2013), with more to come. Deane also co-constructed Crossing Curing with Caring, which was the centerpiece of a charity benefit on our campus and reprised in the Winter 2014 issue of the Minnesota magazine.

Jan Morse is a long-time friend who is a certified mediator and, since 1987, ombudsman and director of the Student Conflict Resolution Center at the University of Minnesota. A graduate of the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, she was responsible for launching the U of M Academic Civility Initiative and currently leads the U of M work group on mentoring and advising graduate and professional students. Jan's fingerprints are on several of my teaching and puzzling efforts of the past decade, and we're still trying to get through our backlog of theme ideas. You may also enjoy watching our collaborative video (10 min) from 2005—entitled "Are You in the Mood for Chemistry?"—in which we taught students in a large entry-level organic chemistry class the principles of various reactions by swing dancing!

Andrew Myers is currently the Amory Houghton Professor of Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University [click on his name to learn more about his distinguished academic background and research contributions]. Andy test solves our math and science-themed puzzles, often during down time at airports while traveling between conferences.

Jane O'Brien is the Associate Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at the University of Minnesota. Her undergraduate degree was in Philosophy and English Literature at the College of Saint Catherine, and her graduate work at the College of Saint Thomas was is in Curriculum and Instruction and English for Speakers of Other Languages. Jane's career path over the decades looks like something one might see on an osciilloscope; points of employment range from community college to health care management to refugee work to the U of M. Hobbies are also a bit disconnected (not BTW a good trait for a budding crossword constructor!) and include running (when the weather allows), knitting, biking, kakuro, and bridge.

Jenna Orkin and I have been friends since a few weeks before my Ph.D. thesis was due on April Fool's Day in 1977, and have numerous common interests including music [she holds degrees from Oxford and was a teaching fellow at Julliard when we met] and politics [she currently runs the news desk at the Collapse Network]. Jenna has authored three books, all of which I recommend highly: The Moron's Guide to Global Collapse, Writer Wannabe Seeks Brush With Death, and Scout: A Memoir of Investigative Journalist Michael C. Ruppert, with Against the Dying of the Light. On the morning of 9/11, Jenna's son was in class at my alma mater, Stuyvesant High School, at its new location four blocks north of Ground Zero, which led directly to her environmental activism [for more information, click here]. Jenna's father Harvey was an agent and novelist who inspired the 1980 film Tribute, and her mother Gisella danced "Too Darn Hot" in the original Broadway production (1948) of Cole Porter's Kiss Me Kate.

Tom Pepper is, by day, Finance Director of the Twin Cities suburb of Eagan, and, by night, a star of our local constructing community [click here for examples of his work]. The Saint Paul Pioneer Press ran a nice article about Tom short(z)ly after his debut New York Times puzzle was published in February 2012. His debut puzzle on our pages was an encore of Executive Decision, an ingenious offering from February 2013, and reprised [spoiler: for obvious reasons] on November 22, 2013. This was followed up by Rhymes with ... in May 2014. Tom contributed to Rock Star (March 2014) and constructed Huh? Could You Repeat That? (February 2015), both of which are birthday tributes to members of our group, had his first Chronicle of Higher Education puzzle, Pet Project, in February 2015, and wrote The Gang's All Here, one of the prizes of our Enigma Variations crossword metapuzzle contest. Then, on April 1, 2015, Tom inspired The Mighty Duck Scores 60. Most recently, Tom contributed to The Confines' Friendliest, created content for the November 2015 Crossword Puzzle Mug, and constructed Goldy Oldie.

Phil Platt was most recently the Executive Director of the Minnesota Craft Brewers Guild, a fast-growing trade association. Prior to that, he was the Marketing and Membership Director of the Campus Club at the University of Minnesota. His checkered career has included street singing in Europe and real jobs with the United Arts Council (now Springboard for the Arts), Minnesota Public Radio, Twin Cities Public TV, and the Minnesota High Tech Council. Phil recently retired from The Eddies, a local musical ensemble. For fun, Phil does a lot of crosswords while attempting to analyze the constructors' twisted minds. He claims that he could quit solving crosswords any day, but hasn't yet and is unlikely to. Let's raise a glass for Phil's debut construction Land of 10,000 Beers, which came out in Winter 2016.

Jim Quinlan (on left of photo, taken March 2015 in Stamford, Connecticut) Jim Quinlan is currently a middle school teacher in the Pine Bush Central School District in (slightly) upstate New York where he teaches English really good. He attended school at New Paltz University. He is also a semi-professional piano player and has played for many cabarets, including Don’t Tell Mama (Manhattan) and The Bradstan (upstate NY). He has also performed at Bethel Woods, and with bands such as The Temptations and Larry Chance and the Earls. He is a theater aficionado and directs and performs in community theater where he earned Best Director of the year. He got into puzzles as a youngster, and never became a speed solver as evidenced here. Jim's first MSM puzzle appeared in the Los Angeles Times on April 3, 2015 (as blogged here), and he collaborated with Evan Birnholz on a bizarre puzzle which can be found here. Jim also has a cat.

Arlene Romoff [on right of photo—do you recognize who she is with and where the photo was taken?] is a devoted advocate and author in the area of hearing loss. She gradually lost all her hearing as an adult over a period of 25 years, and regained it through the miracle of cochlear implants. Her popular books on the subject include Hear Again: Back to Life with a Cochlear Implant (Sterling, 2002) and Listening Closely: A Journey to Bilateral Hearing (Charlesbridge/Imagine, 2011). Her advocacy initiatives have led to unprecedented access in the arts and at public events, garnering her many awards. Particularly meaningful were the New Jersey Legislative Resolutions honoring her advocacy work, and a Humanitarian Award bestowed by NYC theater producers for innovating live theater captioning. Arlene, who like many of my friends is an avid crossword solver and opera lover, came to my attention through her friendship with Paul Luftig, a business colleague of her late husband, Ira, and her story inspired me to write Hooked on Bionics. Her debut puzzle with me should strike our solvers as Haguely Familiar, and our Puzzle to Play With was the first one to appear in print after a very long delay. Recently, Arlene spear-headed efforts to bring our pages into the world of social media, and located among her personal papers this hand-written correspondence about this Saturday January 5, 1991 puzzle with Eugene Maleska, one-time crossword editor of the New York Times. We are also proud to share unusual announcements of the births of Arlene's first granddaughter, first grandson, second granddaughter, and second grandson. It was my pleasure to spend a Sunday with Arlene, as we first watched the finals of the 2014 American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, and followed by writing Rock Star (click here for a photo souvenir). Finally, it should come as no surprise that granddaughter Evie is a budding constructor (photo taken March 2015).

Amelia Rosner has known me since we were both on the Wagner Junior High School Math Team [1967-1968; in the linked photo, focus on middle row far right vs. front row far left], and then we lost touch for over three decades. Our reacquaintance was catalyzed by the publication of this puzzle which came out just as New York City was coming to grips with Hurricane Sandy, and we subsequently established numerous common interests including puzzles, opera, progressive politics, and the stories of lives well led. In fact, Amelia was (until the end of 2013) the diva of this fascinating website, which I recommend highly, and was featured in Marilyn Johnson's book The Dead Beat. That's the weird stuff. The more normal stuff? Amelia has a husband, Richard Hyfler, a self-described semimath and the writer of the Bury the Lead blog on the Forbes website, and two grown children, and lives in the same apartment that she grew up in. She has made her living writing ads for cough cough years. Some examples: explaining junks bonds for Drexel Burnham, introducing the world to the real Sara Lee, working with Joe DiMaggio for the Bowery, and torturing you for the past 8 years with Cymbalta's Depression Hurts campaign. In March 2014, Amelia made her debut on these pages with Who's Got the Last Laugh Now?, and followed that shortly thereafter with Rock Star.

Ellen Ross hails from Winnetka, Illinois, is a graduate of Goucher College, and currently writes a biweekly blog called Letter from Elba, which I recommend highly. In fact, our "meet cute" was the direct result of this post with its hilarious punchline, that Ellen had shared on a Facebook page associated with the National Puzzlers' League (NPL) of which we are both members. Ellen is the proud mother of a daughter, Natasha, and a son, Nick. For ten years, she wrote "Social Studies," a weekly humor column for the Illinois-based Sun Times Pioneer Press. During an unscheduled detour to Aspen, she skied and hosted "The Ellen Ross Show," a one hour weekly talk show for Grassroots Television. She loves, in no particular order, dogs, crossword puzzles, roses, Gone With The Wind, and John le Carré, and is a member of the National Trivia Bowl Hall of Fame [search for her name in the link, and click here for Ellen's personal perspective]. Ellen's crossword puzzle constructing debut in June 2014 was called Give Our Regards to a Broad ... , followed up a few months later with A Nephew for Nick, Levi, and Shaina, and then, just in time for the New Year 2015, a word-search puzzle called Break a Leg! To demonstrate Ellen's versatility, she collaborated with me on Over the Moon, Spread Out!, The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance, and Dot Dash ... (more coming!). On November 14, 2014, Ellen made crossword puzzle history by being both a co-constructer and subject of You're So Vain (you probably think this crossword's about you).

Lewis Rothlein considers himself a Gator and a Tar, as he received a BA in Journalism from the University of Florida and a Masters in Elementary Education from Rollins College, respectively. His career has taken a wandering path: journalist, nationally syndicated newspaper columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle (back in the 80’s, The Nuclear Age, a column about the nuclear arms race and nuclear power, a flashpoint issue back then), magazine editor (Waterski and the now defunct Windsurfing), elementary school teacher (seven years), yoga studio owner (10 years), and now Ashtanga yoga instructor. Lewis and his wife Susan live in Asheville, NC, and have three children who no longer live at home; no grandkids yet but they are hopeful. Lewis started doing crosswords after seeing the movie Wordplay (2006). At first, he thought that Saturday puzzles were a joke that no one actually solved, but he reached the point of being able to solve many, though certainly not all, of them. Lewis had his New York Times debut puzzle on June 11, 2015, and aspires for more. He also is a regular commentator on the Rex Parker blog; in addition to commenting on the puzzles, he posts a "factoid" and "quotoid" of the day based on words in the puzzles. In October 2015, we surprised Lewis with It's a Stretch.

Arthur Rothstein (on right of photo) was co-Captain of the Stuyvesant High School Math Team the year before I was. While our career paths have diverged, we have stayed in touch all these years on any number of subjects of mutual interest. He and I specialize in politically-themed crosswords that are "ripped from the headlines" but do not always have a long shelf-life. You may also enjoy trying the crossword puzzle that appeared in the Summer 2012 newsletter of the Stuyvesant High School Alumni Association, this tribute that appeared in July 2013 in the Orange County Register, or this homage to technology that we self-published in September of 2013.

Marjorie Russel first caught the crossword bug as an undergraduate student at Oberlin College, but then went cold turkey for years until she reappeared as a faculty member at The Rockefeller University. It was there, as well as at the neighborhood swimming pool, circa 1977, that my brother Francis and I first got to know Marjorie and her daughter Sascha, a friendship cemented further when Marjorie married one of my all-time favorite scientific mentors, Peter Model (who BTW took the photo shown to the left). Since retiring from a productive research career in filamentous phage genetics, Marjorie has found time to indulge in any number of amateur activities, like writing her first (and only published) travel essay, which appeared in the New York Times Travel section just over a decade ago, and writing a Princess book for her 4-year-old Princess-obsessed granddaughter that didn't offend Marjorie's feminist sensibilities. Marjorie and Peter have also enjoyed bird-watching, from the American Northeast to Ecuador to Tanzania; snorkeling from Barbados to Fiji; and finding and identifying increasingly rare and endangered plants that grow un-noticed in the woods and streams around the cabin that they share in Upstate New York during the summer. Marjorie's debut puzzle with me is called They Zoomed In On Life, and we continued our collaborations with RU Familiar with RU? and Doubly Distinguished.

Tariq Samad was born in England and grew up in Pakistan. His undergraduate education began at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey, and ended with a B.S. in Engineering and Applied Science at Yale University. Subsequently, he earned a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, and has lived in Minneapolis more-or-less ever since (though he travels a lot). Samad is currently a Corporate Fellow with Honeywell Automation and Control Solutions, working on clean energy and systems engineering, and also serves as president of the American Automatic Control Council and as editor-in-chief of IEEE Press. He has had an interest in crossword puzzles from his childhood, focusing on cryptic crosswords. As a sideline to his role as editor-in-chief (1998–2003) of IEEE Control Systems Magazine, Tariq regularly produced control-engineering-themes cryptics for that publication, and as general chair for the American Control Conference (Montreal, 2012), he composed a cryptic for the conference program book. When we first met through the Enigma Variations crossword metapuzzle contest, Tariq was creating a cryptic crossword quarterly for Honeywell's internal technical magazine. He got right to work with our group, being a co-constructor of The Confines' Friendliest, and we look forward to more contributions.

Kurtis Scaletta is a Minneapolis-based children's book author and learning technologist. Back in the early 2000s, Kurtis worked at the University of Minnesota and helped me with a classroom management suite called WebCT, whereupon we discovered a mutual love for baseball and crosswords. Kurtis's debut puzzle on our pages is entitled Covert Operations, and marks a remarkable anniversary in a truly unique manner.

Paul Schoenholz is the husband of Deb Schoenholz who works in the University of Minnesota Department of Chemistry and helped me with They Have Chemistry and the Minnesota Chemistry Anagramacrostic. Actually, it turns out that Paul is the true crossword buff in the family, and I have benefitted amply from his astute and humorous commentaries. Paul retired about a year ago, and is busier than ever [gigs as a saxophonist with some jazz groups, grandparenting, oenophilia, volunteer activities], but he somehow found time to collaborate with me on Cross This Puzzle When You Get To It. It was my pleasure to construct One Who Cannot Be Shut Down in Paul's honor.

Alayne Schroll (on right of photo) was my first graduate student at the Department of Chemistry at the University of Minnesota. After completing her Ph.D. in 1986, Alayne took a temporary teaching position at SUNY Plattsburgh. She next moved across Lake Champlain to Saint Michael's College in Colchester Vermont, where she rose to the rank of Full Professor and holds the Leavy Family Endowed Chair in Chemistry. Schroll served as Chair of the Chemistry and Physics Department for 7 years, and was Coordinator of the Biochemistry Program for 15 years. She was happy to pass these administrative duties onto younger colleagues, and is currently focusing on teaching, including the development of a new course in biochemistry, and research. She and I still publish papers together, and get together at both professional and social venues. For a landmark birthday, Alayne was the focus of a puzzle called Doubly Perfect, and she made her constructing debut by working with me on Not Your Garden-Variety Birthday Present, for a colleague of hers.

Matthew Sewell teaches literature and film at Minnesota State University, Mankato, and has had puzzles published in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Newsday, the Orange County Register, and the Wall Street Journal. We are delighted to share his extraordinary Crawl Space puzzle, a collaboration with Brad Wilber originally published on Andy Kravis's Cruciverbalist at Law site; be sure you check out the accompanying interview and midrash.

Michael Shteyman is a one of the real stars of the crossword biz, with over 40 puzzles published in the New York Times alone [click here for a list, and note that he is one of less than a dozen constructors to have "hit the cycle" threefold, meaning published every day of the week at least three times!], with more in other outlets [click on his name for more of his remarkable "back-story"]. A number of our joint efforts are summarized on the main page, most notably (spoiler) our Sunday tribute for the 250^th birthday of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and a never-published commemoration of 11/11/11. Several of these were also wonderful enrichment opportunities for the undergraduate chemistry classes that I was teaching. While Michael's crossword productivity has tapered off with his increasing responsibilities as an M.D., we continue to work together, and I also had occasion to help him celebrate a milestone birthday with Three_Cu-bed_Fellow.

Daniel Silversmith is a lifelong fan of the Baltimore Orioles who spent a good part of his childhood in his second home, the great Memorial Stadium, and even now thinks daily about Earl Weaver and the Robinson Brothers. Dan and I have been friends since 1999, when he helped me in the aftermath of the 16^th American Peptide Symposium, and we discovered any number of areas of common interest. Dan works currently as a clinical psychologist at the Minneapolis Veterans Administration Medical Center, and lives with his wife Janet and children Joey and Ellie in Saint Paul, Minnesota (in fact, Joey took a chemistry class from my wife Barbara). Dan's father Ernest is a long-time chemistry professor at Morgan State University and co-author of "The Name Game," a cherished copy of which is in my office, and his sister Ann is a professor of physics at Hamilton College where one her students was my daughter Deborah [Dan's other siblings are Ruth, a biochemist at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine and Ed, an engineer in Rockville, Maryland]. Dan is convinced that the 1969 World Series was fixed, as was Super Bowl III, since both occurred after Nixon was elected president—enough said. Each June 22^nd, Dan celebrates "Doug DeCinces Day," the start of Orioles Magic. Our first collaborative puzzle, a Sunday-sized offering called, fittingly enough, Cheer Ye O's, came out in May 2013 and was reprinted by the Baltimore Post-Examiner in November, 2014. We then collaborated on another Sunday-sized puzzle called Checkers Mate!, which appeared in Natural Selections to mark an important 40^th anniversary.

Loren Smith has an undergraduate degree in French and German from Georgia Southern University and a graduate degree in linguistics from UNC-Chapel Hill. In addition to being the event planner at a West Virginia country club, she teaches a college level English course at a maximum security prison and also gives seminars in business etiquette and dining skills. A regular commentator to the Rex Parker crossword blog, Loren has recently extended her love of puzzle solving to the construction arena, with her debuts appearing in the Chronicle of Higher Education (click here) and the Los Angeles Times (click here; co-constructed with Jeff Chen). Loren is a self-described avid musher and a snazzy dancer, and shares a birthday with several luminaries as revealed in this puzzle. We are proud to bring you, exclusively, a Recreational Crossword Puzzle of the sort you are unlikely to ever find in a mainstream publication, as well as a Constricted Crossword that was a stepping stone to Loren's New York Times debut.

Rachel Stock Spilker has served as cantor at Mount Zion Temple in Saint Paul, Minnesota since 1997. She grew up in Pittsburgh and received a B.A. in Religious Studies from the University of Pittsburgh and a Masters degree in Sacred Music and investiture as cantor from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Jerusalem and New York. Cantor Spilker is married to Rabbi Spilker who was one of the subjects of my puzzle with Joseph Konstan entitled At Your Service. On the occasion of Minneapolis serving as the host city for the national convention of the American Conference of Cantors, Rachel approached me about a crossword collaboration, the result of which is the Sunday-sized Ta'amei Tashbetz—this has to be among the most specialized puzzles I have ever had the pleasure of working on. Cantor and Rabbi Spilker have three great kids—Eiden (16), Mirit (14) and Liam (9)—none of whom do crosswords.

David Steinberg (no relation to the comedian) is my youngest friend. Now a student at Stanford University, David has published nearly 200 crosswords in The New York Times and other publications [further information, including list of venues in which his puzzles appear, can be found by clicking on his name at the beginning of this paragraph; click here for a list of his NYT puzzles]. David leads The Pre-Shortzian Puzzle Project, for which he was awarded a Davidson Fellows Scholarship in 2013 and won first place in Quill and Scroll's 2014 International Writing and Photo Contest; is the crossword editor for the Orange County Register and Riverside County Press-Enterprise weekly associated newspapers; and was named the 2012 Person of the Year by Jim Horne. He also creates custom crosswords and has been a member of the National Puzzlers' League since 2011, with the nom Xword Guy. One of David's collaborative puzzles inspired me to write What's the Difference?. In the Fall of 2013, David was the subject of this wonderful interview with PuzzleNation, and in June 2015, he was profiled in this article in the Palos Verdes Peninsula News, both of which I recommend highly. Outside of crosswords, David enjoys playing table tennis and all sorts of games. David and I collaborated on Definitely Defined, which appeared on August 12, 2013 in the Wall Street Journal, and on a very tricky puzzle for the Orange County Register. For an important personal event in November 2015, David was the honoree of a double-feature of DESERVING IT BAD, AT NINETEEN? and RATED GEE.

Jeff Strickler is a reporter for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, where he has served as movie critic, reported on religion, and currently is focusing on a wide array of general-interest stories. He particularly enjoys writing about people who have a passion for what they do, be it their jobs or their hobbies. That interest, combined with his love of wordplay, drew him to the crossword puzzle community. His first crossword, They Sure Managed, was constructed with me to accompany this article.

Markand Thakar is Music Director of the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra (BCO), Co-Director of Graduate Conducting at the Peabody Conservatory, and Music Director Emeritus of the Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra. Former Assistant Conductor of the New York Philharmonic, he holds degrees from The Juilliard School (BM in composition and violin), Columbia University (MA in music theory) The University of Cincinnati (DMA in orchestral conducting), with additional studies at The Curtis Institute, the Ciprian Porumbesco Conservatory of Music in Bucharest, Romania as a Fulbright Fellow, and the International School of Bartending (diploma … a music student's gotta make a living). He has appeared as guest conductor of some 40 orchestras across the US and Canada, and has authored three books: Counterpoint: Fundamentals of Music Making (Yale University Press, 1990), Looking for the "Harp" Quartet: An Investigation of Musical Beauty (University of Rochester Press, 2011) and the forthcoming On Conducting. Recordings for Naxos, CRI Records, and Cedille Records. After stops in North Carolina, Bucharest, Cincinnati, State College PA, Athens OH, and Denver, Markand has settled in Baltimore with his wife, violist Victoria Chiang. And he only very occasionally, and with debilitating pangs of guilt, checks the "reveal current letter" button. I am pleased to be reacquainted with Markand after over forty years [see if you can spot us both on the far left side of this photo] and to co-construct his crossword debut, Concerted Reaction. Finally, it was a pleasure to collaborate with Markand's wife on this special surprise for an odometer birthday.

Jonathan Vaughan (on right of photo) was the James L. Ferguson Professor of Psychology at Hamilton College, and mentored my daughter Deborah's research activities while she was an undergraduate there. Jon and I collaborated on The First Continentals' Congeries, and a sequel was on the drawing board. Updated September, 2014: It is with a heavy heart that we share the news of Professor Vaughan's passing.

John Verel is a long-time consultant on computer issues for several East coast clients. He graduated with a B.A. in Economics from the State University of New York at Buffalo, an M.B.A. with an emphasis in Finance from the School of Management also at SUNY-Buffalo, and an M.S. in Computer Science from Pace University. We "met" after Arthur Rothstein tracked down a pro-Gail Collins comment that John posted on the Rex Parker crossword blog, on which John is a regular contributor. Recently, John collaborated with another joint friend, Jeff Chen, on his debut published puzzle, this gem that appeared in the Los Angeles Times. We look forward to more great puzzles from him. Finally, we were pleased to observe one of John's personal milestones with Connecticut Transfer.

Alex Vratsanos (on right of photo, taken August 2015 in Philadelphia) is one of the youngest members of our august company, and already has had several puzzles published in the New York Times [if you have privileges to xwordinfo.com, click here for a list]. He was also honored by inclusion in the Twenty Under Thirty compendium. Click on his name for the story of one of his great triumphs, a puzzle that scooped another one that Michael Shteyman and I had in development for 10 months. Alex grew up in Allentown, Pennsylvania, roots for the Yankees and Eagles, started crossword construction in 2006 at age 13, and is an avid chess player (username: chessnut237) and tournament Scrabble player. Having completed four semesters studying chemical engineering at the University of Delaware, Alex graduated summa cum laude from Lehigh Carbon Community College in May 2015 with an A.A. in Business Administration and is at this moment taking classes in business and psychology at Kutztown University. We are delighted to present Stan(d by) the Man, a previously unpublished puzzle with a sports theme, along with Everybody Loves Christopher Raymond, a nerdy tribute to a favorite professor, You Rule!, a tribute to another Barany friend, For Every Eager Donor, a fundraiser for a community-based economic development project, and He's Number 2!, a tribute to a favorite athlete constructed on the eve of a much-chronicled retirement. The first puzzle that Alex and I constructed together, Great Dane, was appeared on September 20, 2013 in the Chronicle of Higher Education. A few months later, Alex interviewed Will Shortz as a part of a school assignment that you can find here. Alex is proud to have litzed over 150 puzzles for David Steinberg's Pre-Shortzian Puzzle Project. With respect to the latter, you may enjoy this interview on the occasion of Alex being named Litzer of the Month (February 2014). On his 21^st birthday, Alex was honored in A Tale of Two Crossword Prodigies. At the end of 2014, Alex collaborated with Tom Williams on the nerdy They've Got Class, and following the 2015 World Series, collaborated with me on Mighty KC, and the closely related They "Met" Their Waterloo. I also draw your attention to Say Cheese!, a previously unpublished puzzle from Spring 2012 that was offered as a prize for our Enigma Variations crossword metapuzzle contest.

Ned White was an English major at Yale (Class of '68), editor of the Yale Literary Magazine, and Scholar of the House in Creative Writing—all of which has helped define his adult life as a writer, though he did use his wasted time effectively to become a better pool player. He taught high school English for five years, then moved into writing full-time: proposals and several shows for PBS, a movie and docudramas for HBO, several musical plays for young adults, and even a pre-school puppet show series for local television. He transitioned to corporate and institutional videoscript writing in the 1980s, took two years off to launch a competitive, interactive, serialized mystery-by-mail enterprise, then returned to corporate writing for trade shows, sales meetings, product launches and the like. He published a critically well-received mystery novel, The Very Bad Thing, with Viking Penguin in 1990 (out of print now), then returned yet again to corporate, where, though now "retired," he still does occasional work. Crossword puzzles caught his attention in 2008 as yet another diversionary tactic, and he's since published in the New York Times [if you have privileges to xwordinfo.com, click here for a list], Los Angeles Times, Patti Varol's Uptown Puzzle Club, and three in the American Mathematical Society monthly magazine notices—all solo efforts. He enjoys physics and math, music, photography, good food and decent wine, and life on the midcoast of Maine where he lives with Carla, his wife of 15 years. Ned has traveled through 49 states and has lived in the Boston area, Florida, Taos, NM, Decatur, GA, Olympia, WA, and wishes to move no more. He writes Journeys Over a Hot Stove, a regular blog for the Bangor Daily News featuring roadtrip travel stories throughout the U.S., food, recipes, humor, eminence gris insights, but absolutely not a word about crossword puzzles. Ned's debut on our pages was Faulty Construction, and we look forward to more.

Mark Wieder graduated from Stuyvesant High School in 1968, just before I started, so our long friendship dates back to our overlapping time at The Rockefeller University in the 1970's. There, I ran the chess club (RUCC, pronounced "rook") while Mark was our strongest player.

Brad Wilber originally hails from Oneida, NY in the Mohawk Valley. He holds a Masters in Library Science from Syracuse University, and since 1997 he has been a reference librarian at his undergraduate alma mater, Houghton College, near Buffalo. After spending most of the 1990s constructing crosswords chiefly for Simon & Schuster and for Dell magazines, Brad expanded his horizons, and at last count, has had over 150 puzzles published in the New York Times [if you have privileges to xwordinfo.com, click here for a list], Los Angeles Times, and Newsday. In 2014, he became the crossword editor for the Chronicle of Higher Education, and he also joined the rotation of constructors at CrosSynergy. One of Brad's librarian specialties is classical music; for 15 years he maintained a popular blog on future seasons' repertory at the Metropolitan Opera [read more about this fascinating situation by clicking here]. Brad's other hobbies include book collecting, movies, and watching favorite sports like baseball, golf, and particularly tennis. We are delighted to share his extraordinary Crawl Space puzzle, a collaboration with Matthew Sewell originally published on Andy Kravis's Cruciverbalist at Law site; be sure you check out the accompanying interview and midrash. An earlier interview with C.C. Burnikel also makes fascinating reading.

Letitia Yao is my friend and colleague in the University of Minnesota Department of Chemistry. She received her B.A. in chemistry from the College of Wooster and her Ph.D. from our Department. After Letitia completed a postdoctoral stint at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF*), we were lucky to be able to convince her to return in 1997 as an NMR research associate . When Letitia is not helping me and my students with our NMR issues, or serving as the staff advisor for the department’s Women in Science and Engineering chapter, she carefully test solves our puzzles on a myriad of topics reflecting her own eclectic background and interests.

* Amazingly, UCSF is unrepresented as an answer word in the xwordinfo.com database. However, solvers of New Year's Eve Blinkmanship will recognize 24-Down.

Bar for rapid navigation: George Barany // Christopher Adams // Susan Ainsworth // Martin Ashwood-Smith // Jeff Aubé // Steve Bachman // Barbara Barany // Howard Barkin // Evan Birnholz // Marcia Brott // Sabina Brukner // Ralph Bunker // Zhouqin Burnikel // Richard Caldwell // Jeff Chen // John Child // Josh Conescu // Tim Croce // Michael David // Nate Davidson // Charles Deber // Mark Diehl // Sean Dobbin // Marti DuGuay-Carpenter // Noam Elkies // Anne Ellison // Kristen Evenson // Sam Ezersky // Dan Feyer // Jed Fisher // Charles Flaster // Victor Fleming // Lloyd Fricker // Ben Geisbauer // Hayley Gold // Elizabeth Gorski // Todd Gross // Robert Hammer // Michael Hanko // David Hanson // Brent Hartzell // Martin Herbach // Nancy Herther // Theresa Horan // Donna Huryn // Jon Jeffryes // Ben Jones // Karen Kaler // Dan Kantor // Jay Kaskel // Joseph Konstan // Miriam Krause // Meghan Lafferty // Ken Leopold // Peter Leopold // David Liben-Nowell // Sandy Lipsky // Mark Lipton // Paul Luftig // Robert Mark // Christie Martin // Deane Morrison // Jan Morse // Andrew Myers // Jane O'Brien // Jenna Orkin // Tom Pepper // Chris Philpot // Phil Platt // Jim Quinlan // Arlene Romoff // Amelia Rosner // Ellen Ross // Lewis Rothlein // Arthur Rothstein // Marjorie Russel // Tariq Samad // Kurtis Scaletta // Paul Schoenholz // Alayne Schroll // Matthew Sewell // Michael Shteyman // Dan Silversmith // Loren Smith // Rachel Stock Spilker // David Steinberg // Jeff Strickler // Markand Thakar // Jonathan Vaughan // John Verel // Carl Voss // Alex Vratsanos // Ned White // Mark Wieder // Brad Wilber // Tom Williams // Letitia Yao

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