Crosswords

I grew up in a game-playing and puzzle-solving family and have enjoyed word games and crosswords since I was a kid. In my early, pre-computing teens, I constructed a few crossword puzzles the hard way — graph paper and lots of pencil eraser, see the image at the top of this page — but then gave up the habit for a few decades.

In late 2021, I decided to try constructing again with the ultimate goal of getting published. As a native born New Yorker, I’ve been doing The New York Times puzzle for most of my life and have been a fan of Will Shortz since his Games magazine days. No question it would be coolest to get one of my puzzles onto that site but I’m realistic as to how competitive that has become. As of May 26, 2023, I am now officially published in the LA Times, something I’m very excited about!

Below is a list of my most recently published puzzles; see this page for a list of all of them. My favorites are Themeless #2, Themeless #6 and For Smarties. At the bottom of this page, you can search for puzzles by tag based on size or themed/themeless.

I have also been constructing alphabetically focused minis and built a separate microsite for those puzzles.

I hope you enjoy my efforts, I’ll post puzzles here as I develop them and welcome any feedback you have. Expect about one puzzle a month and if you use a news reader you can subscribe to an RSS feed here.

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  1. First Published Puzzle

    When I started constructing again in late 2021, I set out to get published in a major news site and I’m happy to announce that...

  2. Ooh... A Midi

    I built this midi because I had a couple of phrases that I wanted to use that sort of had a theme, but not really....

  3. DEF AlphaMinis

    I am on a pace — which I will undoubtedly not keep up — of adding one AlphaMini to the microsite a week. I’ll post...

  4. Themeless (April 2023)

    This is my first 15x puzzle of 2023 — I’ve been more focused on minis and other crossword projects of late. But it is good...

  5. Three Minis - C

    I ended up building a microsite for the AlphaMinis, I’m keeping this page so the old URLs don’t break. To do the AlphaMini C puzzle,...

15x15s - All Crosswords - Larger than 15x15 - Midis - Minis - Published Elsewhere - Themed - Themeless