In Memoriam: Charles Gersch, Will Weng's Submission Guidelines, Robert Guilbert Update, and More

In Memoriam:  Charles Gersch, 1930–2017

Photo by Don Christensen.

It is with great sadness that I report the recent passing of another crossword great, Charles Gersch.  His son Jonathan, also a Times crossword constructor, contacted me with this news in August.  Charles was the beloved husband of Marianna and devoted father of Alan, Jonathan, and Jennifer.

I was honored to interview Charles four years ago for this blog; he published 47 puzzles in The New York Times and continued his impressive constructing by hand, even after computer software became available.

On August 21, Will Shortz posted the below reminiscence on Cruciverb.com:

Passing of Charles E. Gersch

Jonathan Gersch, the son of Charles E. Gersch, has asked me to post the sad news of his father's passing.

Younger constructors may not know, but Charles was one of the greats in crossword history.  His first puzzle appeared in the old New York Herald Tribune on Feb. 21, 1944, when he was just 13 years 6 months of age.  This made him the youngest known crossword constructor for a major newspaper in history — until that record was broken, narrowly, earlier this year in the Times.

I published 17 of Charles' puzzles between 1994 and 2010.  He had 30 more under my predecessors, going back to 1953, and many more in other venues, including the Herald Tribune, Newsday, Simon & Schuster books, Games magazine, Crossworder's Own Newsletter, etc.

In one memorable 1996 Times puzzle, Charles had GEORGE BURNS and GRACIE ALLEN stacked near the top, OH GOD BOOK II and CENTENARIAN stacked near the bottom, THE SUNSHINE BOYS running across the middle, and CIGAR SMOKER and COMEDY TEAMS reading down, crossing the central entry — all in a pretty solid construction.  That's fancy puzzlemaking.  It ran, appropriately, around Burns' 100th birthday.

David Steinberg published an interview with Charles here (scroll down to Aug. 23, 2013).

My condolences to Jonathan and everyone who knew his father.

—Will Shortz

Although Charles is no longer with us, he and his puzzles will continue to have a celebrated place in crossword history.

Will Weng's Submission Guidelines

This summer while helping Will Shortz with crossword submissions, I came across a page of guidelines for constructors written by none other than former New York Times crossword editor Will Weng!  There were no other pages, but this one was a copy, which Will Shortz let me keep (thanks again, Will!).

"The Crossword Puzzle Information Sheet" (see below) was sent to a constructor and has this handwritten note by Weng at the top:  "Your puzzle looks pretty good.  But— please follow the format."  An arrow points to details on "Mechanics in general" and "Particulars."

Perhaps the most interesting thing about these guidelines is Weng's philosophy on what puzzles should be.  He preferred their difficulty to come from clever clues and lively words and phrases, rather than from obscurity.  This philosophy was ahead of its time and foreshadowed the "new wave" and today's "golden age of crosswords."

Robert Guilbert Update:  The Crossword Puzzle Hall of Fame

Several weeks ago I received an email from Jon Guilbert, whose older brother, Rob, had written to him about following up on previous coverage on their father, Robert, in this blog.  Beginning in 1988, Robert Guilbert spearheaded an effort to create a Crossword Puzzle Hall of Fame.  (For more details, see the posts of November 21, 2014;  December 5, 2014; December 19, 2014; and May 22, 2015.)  Jon had written previously about his father in a blog comment, which you can read here, and offered more details about this enterprise and his father's fascinating life:

He was a remarkable man—as are all/most fathers I would think—and this was his last "big project and idea" before his death in October of 1990.  In the [below] photo he can be seen working on a puzzle that he designed as a "Moebius Strip"—an "Infinity Crossword Puzzle"—a puzzle without a beginning and an end. He was going to have this game manufactured and marketed under the name "Pago Pago," I believe.  I also think his work on this crossword game of his was the genesis for his wanting to create an institution recognizing and honoring the "greats" within the crossword world. . . . [O]ur Dad . . . was also the original "Don Winslow of the Navy" playing the lead character in the late 1930s NBC coast-to-coast radio thriller and an advertising executive with J. Walter Thompson.  The luncheon meeting—the first and last of the Institute—was held at the Harvard Club in NYC.  Dad had made a connection with one of the members of the Club, who offered it as a meeting place.  I know Dad was very pleased to have this "blue ribbon" venue [in which] to gather.

Guilbert working on an "Infinity Crossword Puzzle." 

Thanks so much again, Jon and Rob!  I wish I could have met your father.

Joli Quentin Kansil, aka Joel Dennis Gaines:  Another "Unknown" Constructor Found

Recently Will Shortz received an email from Joli Quentin Kansil, who had published six crosswords in the Times during the 1970s under two names:  Joel Dennis Gaines, for the earlier puzzles; and Joli Quentin Kansil, for the later ones.

Will asked Joli for the dates of those puzzles, and with that information, Jim Horne of XWord Info and I were able to add names to some of the previously "Unknown" constructors in our databases.

Joli mentioned that he'd also designed three word games—Knock-on-Word, Montage, and What's My Word—and that Joli's first boss, Albert H. Morehead, was the Times's first bridge editor and an early designer of puns and anagrams puzzles.

We're grateful to Joli for this valuable update and hopeful that more currently anonymous pre-Shortzian constructors surface in the future.

Jim Page's Puzzle Count

Some time ago renowned constructor Jim Page sent me a copy of an email he'd sent to Jeff Chen at XWord Info.  Because there were two pre-Shortzian constructors with the last name of Page—Jim and Christopher—and many bylines in what records we do have list only the constructor's last name, determining which puzzles were built by Jim has been difficult.  (And, as I've often mentioned, thousands of daily puzzles remain anonymous, with no record of their constructors.)  Here's what Jim wrote:

I'm currently working on puzzle number 1,232.  That 1,232 total number includes puzzles published in The New York Times, NY Post, NY Daily News, NY Sun, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, LA Times, Newsday, Chicago Tribune Syndicate, Crossword Puzzle Club, USA Today, Simon & Schuster.  That 1,232 figure includes puzzles accepted for publication, some works in progress and some puzzles rejected.  Some lost to history, as well.

Here's the NY Times breakdown on published puzzles:

Will Weng

19 dailies (uncredited)  2 Sundays (credited)     total        21

Gene Maleska

48 dailies (uncredited)  23 Sundays (credited)   total        71      

Will Shortz

68 dailies (credited)     10 Sundays (credited)    total        78

                                                                                                                                                                                        (170)

He added:

[T]his is as accurate as I'm able to be, give or take some puzzles lost to history.  I've credited myself with 3 Maleska Sunday puzzles that Gene had accepted for publication in the Times and that Shortz rejected upon his appointment as editor. Those 3 puzzles got published elsewhere.

Thanks so much, Jim—at least we have this information now, which is more than what exists on many other pre-Shortzian puzzles whose authors will likely remain anonymous.

More Todd Gross Finds:  Audrey Joy Koch, Bob Lubbers, Melvin Kenworthy, and Robert Doll 

This summer I received an email from crossword constructor and historian Todd Gross informing me of an obituary of Audrey Joy Koch.  Koch passed away in 2011 at the age of 91 and published at least five crosswords in The New York Times.  To read more about Audrey, click here.

A couple of weeks later, Todd found an obituary of cartoonist and New York Times crossword constructor Bob Lubbers, who'd recently passed away.  Lubbers, who published at least one pre-Shortzian puzzle in the Times and four Shortz-era puzzles.  According to this obituary, Bob won an award for the best Sunday crossword in 1995, which was reportedly his first constructing attempt.  This 1995 date, though, may be a mistake, since Lubbers's earliest published puzzle in The Times was published on April 13, 1975, and was his only Sunday publication there.  To read more about Bob, click here.

Todd emailed me again about other finds:  an obituary of Melvin Kenworthy, who published at least 23 pre-Shortzian puzzles in The New York Times; and an obituary of Robert Doll, who published 6 Shortz-era crosswords in the Times.  Todd noted that although Doll passed away in 2011, his final Times puzzle didn't appear until 2013.

Thanks again, Todd, for all this great research!

George Rose Smith

Solver Nick Harvey wrote to me some time ago about George Rose Smith, constructor of at least 10 pre-Shortzian puzzles published in the Times.  Nick had been working his way through the Sunday puzzles from 1969 to the present and noted, "This allows me to watch the evolution of the NYT puzzle unfold as I go through the Weng, Maleska, and early Shortz eras."  He became curious about George Rose Smith and wrote the following:

I had finally thrown in the towel after finishing most of the November 2, 1980, puzzle, "Nickname Dropping," but not being able to get that last themer figured out.  Try this puzzle—it has quite a tricky theme, especially for its time.  Similar "substitution" themes have appeared in the Maleska and early Shortz period of the 80s/90s, but this is one of the earliest, and I would imagine that solvers back in 1980 could have had a lot of trouble with this.  I still appreciate the genius into coming up with this theme, and finding ten examples to work symmetrically into the grid—not an easy thing to do in a time when very few people had access to a computer (and probably not even a VCR or microwave oven—vinyl was still the main format for recorded music).  Weng and Maleska really rolled the dice on trying out some groundbreaking theme ideas on the solving public, and Shortz has of course continued on that tradition.

Anyway, I found this on Mr. Smith.  It turns out that, just like Victor Fleming today, he was a judge in Arkansas.  One wonders if he was the one who got Mr. Fleming into solving (and ultimately constructing) the NYT crossword puzzle.  I can certainly imagine that Justice Smith and Justice Fleming may have been colleagues at one time, serving together for Arkansas's judicial system.

George Rose Smith passed away in 1992, during a period in the early '90s that saw an unusually high number of deaths in the top echelon of puzzlemaking (Luzzatto, Lutwiniak, Maleska, and Weng, to name a few).  I can only hope that the constructors who have moved on from this world, are looking down on me from Heaven and watching me whenever I am working on one of their creations. :-)

Links:

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=19657

http://lrculturevulture.com/tag/judge-vic-fleming/

Constructors of the past may be long gone, but they are immortalized by the legacy of their puzzles to be enjoyed by generations to come.

Very interesting stuff, Nick—thanks for sending this, and happy solving!

Judson G. [Gordon] Trent, aka Gordon S. Trick?

A while back I received an email from Julie (Trick) Munsterman, who'd been doing genealogical research and come to the conclusion that pre-Shortzian constructor Judson G. Trent—possibly Judson Gordon Trick/Trent—was her great-uncle.  Julie noted that census documents suggest he was born Gordon S. Trick, which might explain some of the difficulty in tracking down his history online.  She added that Trick's father was a Presbyterian minister and suggested that this could explain the theological studies.

Thanks for this genealogical sleuthing, Julie—this seems like an especially "tricky" trail!

Wrap-up

That does it for the time being, since school is about to start up again.  But I do have some other interesting things to go through that I hope to write about at some point in the future!

Todd Gross on Alexis P. Boodberg, Patterson Pepple, and Charles B. Waffell

Now that I'm on break from college, I've been working on a post I'd been planning to write for a while.  Yesterday morning, though, I received an email from crossword historian and litzer Todd Gross, who sent an amazing end-of-year olio on three pre-Shortzian constructors:  Alexis P. Boodberg, who published at least four puzzles in The New York Times during the pre-Shortz era; Patterson Pepple, who published at least 37; and Charles B. Waffell, who published at least three (and one in the Shortz era).  I've decided to publish Todd's findings first as a grand finale to the year and then follow them with another post in a week or so.  Enjoy—and thanks so much, Todd!

Alexis P. Boodberg

I knew nothing about this constructor before I started searching recently.  First, I tried entering this name in Google and it suggested Peter Boodberg as an autocomplete, which led to this Wikipedia page.

So Peter Alexis Boodberg taught in the Oriental Languages department at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1932 until his death in 1972, first as an instructor and then later as a full professor (and department chair).  He was born in Vladivostok in 1903 to an aristocratic family from Estonia.  Estonia was annexed by Russia in the 18th century, the family became soldiers in the Russian army, and Peter’s father was sent to Vladivostok as commander of the Russian forces there.  When World War I started, Peter was attending a military school in St. Petersburg; his father sent him to Harbin in China, and later he returned to Vladivostok and studied at the Oriental Institute there.  By 1921, with the Bolsheviks being in control of Russia and the family being aristocrats in imperialist (czarist) Russia, they emigrated to San Francisco (with Peter actually arriving in 1920).

I have a fair amount of information on Dr. Boodberg; alas, none of it mentions crosswords.  Still, this might at first seem to be our constructor:  Not only do the names match (and Boodberg is a rather uncommon surname), but our professor clearly had the sort of mind that could have created such puzzles.  Besides his clear intelligence and facility with language(s), he apparently composed verse in English and Russian.  Also, VLADIVOSTOK appears in Boodberg’s second New York Times puzzle, "WITH CLUES FROM THE NEWS."

Alas, I can’t be 100% sure this is the right person, because there is a Paul Alexis Boodberg (almost certainly Peter’s brother) who was born in Vladivostok and emigrated to San Francisco.

Paul was born in 1900 and became an Electrical Engineer.  I’m also finding an Alexander Boodberg, who taught Mechanical Engineering at UC Berkeley, was born in 1906, and passed away in 1952.

And finally there’s also Alexis Paul Boodberg who was born in 1869 and passed away in 1945 in San Francisco.  This matches the Wikipedia article’s dates for Peter’s father, Baron Alexis von Budberg, so I’m confident that’s who this is.

Well, this name fits the New York Times constructor name better than Peter Alexis Boodberg.  And Boodberg’s final puzzle was published in 1944, just before Alexis’s death.  Also, a lengthy obituary for Dr. Peter Boodberg in the Journal of the American Oriental Society (thanks, David, for getting a copy for me!) makes no mention of crosswords.

So I’m leaning toward Baron von Budberg being the actual author.  I thought it would help if I could find out more about him than references as Peter Boodberg’s father (and that very brief obit)—maybe something actually written by him, to see if he was erudite and literate like his son.  I was in luck:  I found an article written by him not long after he arrived in the United States—and in The New York Times, no less!  More specifically, it was in the October 1921–March 1922 issue of Current History, a monthly magazine of The New York Times:

So he was already using Alexis P. Boodberg as his name in 1922 and already writing English at a pretty proficient level (though of course, I don’t know how much of that is the editor vs. the author).  And Boodberg’s first puzzle (titled "WITH CLUES FROM THE WAR MAPS") is right up the Baron’s alley, with references to Russia and the Asian Pacific.  His second puzzle, another Sunday ("WITH CLUES FROM THE NEWS"), is even more telling.  Its 1-Across entry is REVAL, clued as [German name for capital of Estonia].

Peter was born in Russia and lived for a while in China before the family emigrated from Russia to the United States.  It’s certainly possible that Peter would know REVAL, given that his family was originally from Mainz and lived for centuries in Estonia.  But even if he did, he’d been an educator in the United States for long enough by 1942 to know that most solvers would never have heard of this.  It seems far more likely that someone like Baron von Budberg would not just know REVAL but feel comfortable placing it at 1-Across.

So at this point I’m betting that Baron Alexis Paul Boodberg is our constructor.

Patterson Pepple

In a 2012 post, David wrote that he thought Patterson Pepple might be an alias for pre-Shortzian editor Eugene T. Maleska; in a later post, he had come to believe that Pepple was a real person.  I can confirm there is a real Patterson Pepple and can even show you a picture of him.  He began life as Allen Patterson Pepple in 1920 but at some point dropped the Allen.

As you can see, he passed away in 1994, at the age of 73.  His last New York Times crossword was in 1991, but his first was in 1984 when he was 64 years old!  I don’t know why he decided to make crosswords then or even what he did for most of his life.  But I did find a picture of Mr. Pepple from the 1938 yearbook of Central Catholic High School in Lima, Ohio:

Photo courtesy of Lima Central

Catholic High School, Lima, Ohio

I also know he got a B.B.A. degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 1942, because he was mentioned (in memoriam) in the UT Austin alumni magazine, The Alcalde:

Note that this shows Mr. Pepple living in Columbus, Ohio, at the time of his passing.  I haven’t found an obituary for (Allen) Patterson Pepple, but I have one piece of data that ties the Ohio resident UT graduate to crosswords.  It's from Simon & Schuster's Super Crossword Book #8, published in 1994:

Mystery solved.

Charles B. Waffell

Here's another example of someone who legally changed his name.  Mr. Waffell started out life as Chuck Baker Waffel in Deadwood, South Dakota (yes, that’s where Wild Bill Hickok was shot and killed while holding the famous dead man’s hand).

As you can see, Mr. Waffell passed away in 2004 (in Brevard County, Florida, near Melbourne) on his 68th birthday.  But he spent a lot of his life in Colorado, including going to high school there.  I have two pictures with him from the 1953 Cañon City High School yearbook.  (Cañon City is about 40 miles west of Pueblo.)  In the first, he’s in the bottom row, second from the left:

Photo courtesy of Cañon City High School, Colo.

In the second, he’s in the bottom row, third from the left:

Photo courtesy of Cañon City High School, Colo.

Again, I don’t have an obituary for Mr. Waffell, and I don’t have any documents that tie him to crosswords.  I do, however, have a record that showed him living in La Jolla, California, in 1994, the year his final New York Times puzzle was published (which is weird, because about six years later I lived in an apartment in La Jolla that was a short walk away from him!).  I’m pretty sure he was in Florida by then.

But the three pre-Shortzian puzzles were probably constructed while he was living in Denver—he lived a lot of different places, didn’t he?—which means, thanks once again to the fine folks at Simon & Schuster, we can tie our Deadwood-born man to the dead wood paper crosswords he constructed.  In this case, Simon & Schuster’s Super Crossword Book 9: The Biggest and the Best (1996).

Actually, we can do better than that.  While doing this research, I found out that Simon & Schuster sometimes published special forewords to their crossword volumes.  One of them says Mr. Waffell was a manager for a Denver gas-and-electric utility.  Note that it also mentions other constructors I’ve written about before.

I don’t know if I’ll be publishing any more reports on pre-Shortzian constructors . . . but if I do, these forewords might very well help me find some of them.

Thanks so much again, Todd, for all this great research!  It's always a fascinating journey into the past and really helps bring long-gone pre-Shortzian constructors back to life.

I thought Todd's Alexis P. Boodberg findings were especially intriguing because of the difficulty in deciding whether Peter Alexis Boodberg or his likely father, Baron Alexis Paul Boodberg, was the constructor of those four New York Times crosswords.  I agree with Todd that it was probably the latter.  Not only did Alexis Paul die a year and a half after the last known Boodberg puzzle appeared in the Times, but if his son Peter Alexis had been the constructor, Peter would have lived for 28 more years after that final puzzle's publication, and it seems odd that he wouldn't have published any more puzzles during that time.  I also question whether Peter Alexis would have used his father's name instead of his own as his byline, though it's possible he might have if he wanted to keep his cruciverbal publications separate from his academic ones.

Another piece of evidence that Peter Alexis was indeed Alexis Paul's son is his (Anglicized) middle name, or Russian patronymic.  The patronymic also supports the supposition that Paul Alexis was another son of Alexis Paul and the brother of Peter Alexis.

If anyone has further information corroborating that Baron Alexis Paul Boodberg was the constructor, please comment below or write to me directly.

Todd Gross: Christy Ridley Male, Not Female—Plus a Major Report on Early Female Constructor Helen Pettigrew

Christy Ridley Male, Not Female

Photo courtesy of Ancestry.com

Crossword researcher and historian Todd Gross reported a major discovery yesterday:  Pre-Shortzian constructor Christy Ridley, who published at least 54 daily puzzles under editor Eugene T. Maleska between 1981 and 1993, was male, not female.  Christy was one of several pre-Shortzian constructors with ambiguous first names and about whom we had no additional information.  Todd's finding is important both because Christy was originally erroneously coded as female in my files and because of the relatively large number of puzzles involved.

Two years ago at the 2014 American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, I reported the results of statistical tests I had done on constructor gender in the pre-Shortz and Shortz eras.  That report was a brief summary of my findings, which were detailed in a paper I wrote for a science research course.  I ran many statistical tests, some of which involved limited portions of the complete data set.  The smaller the data set, the more likely the results are to be skewed by individual data points.  Although I have not rerun the tests with this change in one constructor's gender coding, certain tests within the Maleska era would likely turn out differently enough to significantly affect some results—most notably, the proportion of puzzles Maleska published by women would have been less than the proportion published by Will Weng, but probably still not as low as in the Farrar and Shortz eras.  It is worth keeping in mind that my data set is incomplete and that the constructor names (and, consequently, genders) of many puzzles are still unknown.

In addition to the above photo, which Todd found on Ancestry.com, Todd discovered this obituary reprinted on Legacy.com:

Courtesy of The Daily News-Journal

Thanks so much again, Todd, for this very important discovery!

Early Female Constructor Helen Pettigrew

Todd also contacted me recently about his efforts to find out more about pre-Shortzian constructor Helen Pettigrew, who, according to my (incomplete) records, published one puzzle in The New York Times.  Here's Todd's report:

Helen Pettigrew was the first constructor I decided to research.  I saw the following puzzle, published in the Los Angeles Times on Sunday, July 15, 1928.

Image courtesy of the Los Angeles Times

The crossword is titled "Down in Arkansas," but there's nothing about Arkansas in the puzzle.  I asked [New York Times constructor] Joe Krozel about it (he'd mentioned an interest in crossword history); he thought maybe the constructor was from Arkansas. So I went on Ancestry.com to try to find her . . . and find her I did.  And indeed, she was born and raised, and lived nearly her entire life, in what is now Charleston in Franklin County, about 25 miles east of Ft. Smith.

Ancestry.com has a pretty thorough history for Helen:   She was born in 1894 in what is now Charleston but was unincorporated at the time.  In the 1920 Census she's listed as a teacher.  But in the 1930 Census she's listed as a sketch writer for magazines.  In the 1940 Census, she's listed with no occupation . . . but living with her father (now 83) and her mother's sister (91), so likely taking care of both of them.

Alas, I don't have any examples of her work in magazines . . . but I found some puzzles from the early 1950s published in newspapers.  I'm including two of them here, the first from November 1951; the second from April 1953.

Image courtesy of the Lethbridge Herald

Image courtesy of the

Independent Record   

I also have a couple of her crosswords from the early '70s, which fits with her one known puzzle in The New York Times published April 15, 1974.  But I'm pretty sure she was published in Simon & Schuster in at least the late '20s to early '30s, and I have a New York Herald Tribune puzzle of hers from Sunday, March 25, 1928 (the Los Angeles Times puzzle was syndicated from the New York World).

She also published several books of Bible-themed crosswords (and other puzzles) in the 1960s and '70s.  Google has links to various books; here is the cover of one published in (I believe) 1963:

Over the years (I first saw "Down in Arkansas" in 2009), I uncovered a lot of information about Ms. Pettigrew.  But I couldn't answer the question I've been pondering since I first saw that crossword:  What inspired a woman living in central Arkansas in the 1920s to try her hand at crossword construction, sending puzzles to editors thousands of miles away in New York?

Last month (April 2016), I decided to try going to Charleston for myself to see what I could uncover there.  I flew to Little Rock for Arkansas Puzzle Day and made a weeklong trip of it, including visiting Charleston.  Helen never married, and I believe there are no living Pettigrews left there.   But I did find the local library, which had a genealogy room.  And in that room, I found a book that didn't answer that question . . . but it did answer another question I'd had since I started:  What did Helen look like?

The book, titled Franklin County (Images of America) was written by Lola Shropshire and published in 2000.  Among images of various people and places in Franklin County, I found one of Helen Pettigrew, with a nice explanatory paragraph below.  It may not have answered all my questions, but it gave me nice closure.  I took several pictures of the page, to be sure I got it right.  But I needn't have bothered:  The book is in Google Books, and here is the picture of Helen with the accompanying paragraph:

Image courtesy of Arcadia Publishing

So perhaps I didn't need to make the trip.  But before I left Charleston, I took one picture that isn't in any book.  Helen passed away in 1977, about three years after the New York Times crossword was published.  She passed away in Booneville but is buried in the local cemetery in Charleston, near her father and other family members.  It isn't large, and in about 15 minutes I found her grave.  And I propped a copy of her "Down in Arkansas" puzzle next to the headstone and took this picture.

R.I.P., Helen Lyle Pettigrew (1894–1977).  You may have died alone, but you are not forgotten.

Thanks again, Todd, for all your amazing research and for the lovely picture of Helen's puzzle on her grave.

Grace Fabbroni on Her Crossword Career—Plus More Todd Gross Finds and His Interview on the L.A. Times Crossword Corner

Grace Fabbroni on Her Crossword Career

Photo courtesy of Grace Fabbroni

Recently I heard from crossword historian Todd Gross, who'd been in contact with pre-Shortzian and Shortz-era constructor Grace Fabbroni on LinkedIn.  Grace wondered why her byline had been listed as "Mrs. John Fabbroni"—a name she never went by—instead of "Grace Fabbroni."  I explained to Todd that we'd just used whatever name had been listed with the puzzles but that this new information was very helpful and we'd change all her bylines.

Todd also noted that Grace planned to send something about her crossword career, which she did—here it is:

Thanks so much again for letting me know about this, Todd, and for this wonderful reminiscence, Grace!

Frances Hansen

A couple of months ago, Todd also told me about a 2004 article (and photo) he'd found on pre-Shortzian and Shortz-era constructor Frances Hansen, who passed away some six months later.  The link worked then but unfortunately has since disappeared.  I've listed the article on the Pre-Shortzian Constructors page, though, so you may be able to track it down through your local library.

Obituaries:  Eugene T. Maleska, Alex F. Black, Terry Healy, Maurice J. Teitelbaum, and Jack Jumonville

Todd also found some fascinating obituaries for editor/constructor Eugene T. Maleska and constructors Alex F. Black, Terry [Teresa] Healy, Maurice J. Teitelbaum, and Jack Jumonville, all of which you can see by clicking on the individual links here or on the Pre-Shortzian Constructors page.  The Alex Black obituary also contained this photo taken by his family:

Alex F. Black (photo courtesy of the Black family)

Todd did some additional research on Jack Jumonville—here's his report:

Jack Jumonville

I went to Ancestry.com to see if I could find more about Jack Jumonville.  There's a fair amount there, including pictures from his college yearbook.  He was a member of a fairly elite club at LSU called Samurai, which means a larger than normal picture.  I'm enclosing what I found . . . the picture of young Mr. Jumonville not quite what I expected. . . . There's also a private story and a private picture of him.

Here's the earlier photo of Jack from the Louisiana State University yearbook that Todd found, along with some information about the Samurai organization Jack belonged to:

Jack Jumonville in college (photo

courtesy of the Louisiana State 

University yearbook)

From the Louisiana State University Yearbook

Thanks again, Todd—it's always great to learn more about the lives and careers of these early constructors, who, in addition to their crossword talents, often had successful unrelated careers and other wide-ranging interests!

Todd Gross's Interview on the L.A. Times Crossword Corner

Finally, Todd was recently interviewed for the L.A. Times Crossword Corner!  In his interview, which you can read by clicking here, he mentions the Pre-Shortzian Puzzle Project and talks about his interest in crossword history and career as a constructor for The New York Times and other top publications.  Congratulations, Todd!

J. A. Felker (and Another Puzzle Identified), Warren W. Reich, and James E. Hinish Jr.

J. A. Felker (and Another Puzzle Identified)

Photo courtesy of Janet Felker, from 1983

Back in January, Jim Horne and Jeff Chen of XWord Info received an email, which Jim subsequently copied me on, from Janet Felker, the daughter of pre-Shortzian constructor J. A. Felker (1911–91).  Janet wrote that her mother, whose full name was Josephine Ann, had had crossword puzzles published in The New York Times (as well as Bantam Books and Pocket Books) between 1971 and 1977.  Will Weng had published 11 of her diagramless puzzles and four of her regular Sunday puzzles (as well as what turned out to be a previously anonymous Friday puzzle!).  Janet noted that she had files of her mother's submissions to the Times that were accepted, as well as of some submissions that had been rejected.  "Perhaps of most interest to crossword puzzle enthusiasts," she wrote, "are the original memo notes from Will Weng regarding some of the puzzles, including his rationale for those he rejected."

I wrote to Janet expressing interest in these and other items, and she soon sent along the above photo of her mother, taken in 1983; a 1991 Miami Herald obituary, "Josephine Felker, N.Y. Times crossword puzzle composer"; a 1980 note from Will Weng (see below) about her mother's name; and a copy of the original clipping of her mother's August 27, 1971, daily puzzle, along with the original clues (or "definitions," as they were called then), some of which Weng subsequently edited for publication.  I've posted the obituary and clipping plus clues on Scribd; to see them, click on the links above.

Janet also mentioned that she remembered why her mother had used just her initials when submitting puzzles:

I have a vague memory of my mother explaining that she intentionally used "J.A." as she began submitting crossword puzzles to the NYT because she felt that her puzzles might receive more equitable treatment than if she were to submit under "Josephine."  It's interesting to me that in his note, Will Weng admits that he assumed that J.A. was a male and was "astonished" to learn that she was a female.

Here's the note Weng sent:

Janet also reported that her mother had two large puzzles published by Bantam Books, for which she won cash awards for fourth prize and fifth prize in The Bantam Great Master's Crossword Puzzle Hunt, which was where Janet thought Weng had discovered that "J. A." stood for "Josephine."  She had documents for those two puzzles, along with a folder of six rejected large puzzles, each of which included her mother's clues, as well as a blank and handwritten completed grid.  Several puzzles had Will Weng's memos attached, with an explanation of why he was returning them.

In addition to her regular crosswords, J. A. Felker also had 12 diagramless puzzles published in the Times between 1971 and 1977; Janet sent the note below from Will Weng—addressed to "Mr. Felker"—accepting J. A.'s first diagramless puzzle, which was published on August 29, 1971.

Janet also noted:

I don't know if you are interested in more background on my mother, but she was quite educated (for a woman of her time) and talented in other ways as well.  She earned a bachelor's of art from Carnegie Tech and a master's of art from Penn State College in 1936.  She was quite artistic and continued to sketch and paint through much of my childhood. She was also an accomplished seamstress (her master's thesis was on the history of women's dress) and sewed many of her own and her children's clothes, often designing her own patterns.  A few of the outfits (sewed with fabric from Europe) are now part of the collection for students to study in the Fashion Institute of Salt Lake Community College.  As the Miami Herald article indicates, mom also learned several languages as a result of living abroad (Brazil, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Mexico, Italy, Belgium, Japan, Hong Kong)  due to my father's work, between 1946 and 1972.  She was an avid reader and loved not only doing crossword puzzles but also jigsaw puzzles.

Thanks so much again for writing and telling us about your mother, Janet!  Thanks to this information, we were able to identify one more previously anonymous daily puzzle and to provide an illuminating look not only into one of the rare female constructors of the pre-Shortz era but also into the mind of editor Will Weng!

Warren W. Reich

Photo courtesy of the Times Union

Shortly after my recent post containing an olio of Todd Gross pre-Shortzian constructor research appeared, I received an email from constructor Jim Modney, who wrote that there had been an obituary of Warren W. Reich in his local paper, which you can read here and which also contained the above photo.  Jim noted:

I met Warren once in the early 1980’s, after Eugene Maleska noticed that Warren and I were both in the Albany, NY area.  By that time I had begun my 30 year “hibernation” from crossword constructing, so Warren and I never crossed paths again.

Jim's email was followed by one in early January from crossword historian Todd Gross, who also sent a link to the Times Union obituary and mentioned that he'd received an email from Warren Reich's daughter, who'd said some nice things about her father.  Thanks so much again for letting me know about this, Jim and Todd!

James E. Hinish Jr.

  Photo courtesy of the Williamsburg York-
  town Daily

A few days later, Todd wrote that another pre-Shortzian constructor, James E. Hinish Jr., had died and sent a link to an obituary, which had the above photo and which you can read here.  James published at least 16 puzzles in the pre-Shortz era.

Thanks again, Todd!

Stay tuned for more updates and commentary coming soon!

Interview with Mary Virginia Orna—and Maleska's Edits of One of Her Puzzles

Mary Virginia Orna

It's New Year's Eve, and I have a special end-of-the-year treat:  an interview with pre-Shortzian constructor and chemistry professor Mary Virginia Orna!

I first wrote about Mary Virginia Orna back in May of 2014, after project historian Todd Gross had uncovered some interesting information about her and a number of other constructors.  According to my (incomplete) records, Mary Virginia published 28 pre-Shortzian puzzles between 1979 and 1988, and I'd been meaning to try to contact her for some time.  I finally did recently and was delighted when I heard back from her!

A professor of chemistry at The College of New Rochelle in New York, Mary Virginia has had a lifelong interest in languages.  To learn more about her, first read her fascinating article on crossword construction, "Always a Cross(ed) Word," which I've posted on Scribd, and then my interview with her by clicking on the Pre-Shortzian Constructor Interviews tab above or here.

I've also posted Eugene T. Maleska's edits of Mary Virginia's "Mayhem" puzzle, which was originally published on May 12, 1985.  Will Shortz showed them to me a couple of summers ago when I was researching pre-Shortzian constructors and let me make a copy (thanks again, Will!).  Enjoy!

Happy Holidays! A New Puzzle, Plus an Olio of Todd Gross Pre-Shortzian Constructor Research: The Sequel

Project Update

Happy Holidays!  One of the more interesting things that's happened since the previous post is that we seem to have discovered a new, previously unlitzed pre-Shortzian puzzle!  Here's how it all went down.  Earlier this week, Jim Horne and I were trying to straighten out exactly how many missing puzzles there were.  Jim noticed a discrepancy in our records for the August 13, 1978, puzzle—the first Sunday during one of the strikes.  Barry Haldiman's records indicated that a puzzle had been published that day ("Putting on Airs," by Louis Sabin [see more on Lou below]), but I hadn't been able to find the PDF on ProQuest.  I shot Barry an e-mail about this puzzle, which he apparently had added to his records after his original microfiche search of The New York Times Magazine.  Barry speculated that the puzzle might have come from microfilm that carried a different version (international or West Coast) of The New York Times, though why just this one strike puzzle turned up is a mystery.  Nonetheless, this discovery gives the missing puzzle quest a new ray of hope!  Barry sent me pictures of the puzzle and solution from a book preview on Amazon, and I litzed it yesterday.  Kristena Bergen proofread the puzzle, and then I sent it off to Jim.  So expect to see a new puzzle on XWord Info in the not-too-distant future!

This seems like the perfect time to publish another amazing olio of pre-Shortzian constructor research from historian, litzer, and proofreader Todd Gross!  This is such a wealth of information that I've decided to divide it into two sections:  The first contains several individual updates Todd sent to me, and the second features a collection of constructors he grouped together, which I've dubbed "The Sequel."  Thanks so much again, Todd, for all your tireless research!

Charles J. Matonti, Elio Desiderio, Jack R. Harnes, Betty Jane Cometa, and Lou Sabin

In mid-November, Todd sent me these photos of three constructors, whom he thought were all still alive and living in the New York City area.  Todd noted, "If I'm right, Charles Matonti turned 80 this year, Elio Desidario recently turned 89, and Jack Harnes turned a very respectable 93 a couple of days later."

According to my (incomplete) records, the first, Charles J. Matonti, published eight pre-Shortzian puzzles between 1980 and 1988 in The New York Times.  Here's a 1964 photo from the Cathedral College of Brooklyn, along with some information that accompanied it:

Elio Desiderio, whose middle name was Phillip, published 11 (or more) Times puzzles between 1974 and 1991.  This photo is from the 1944 Niagara Falls High School yearbook:

Elio Desiderio

Finally, Jack R. Harnes published at least 6 Times puzzles between 1982 and 1993.  The below photo and information are from the 1943 Harvard yearbook:

A few days after sending the above, Todd wrote me that while researching crossword-related obituaries, he'd come across an obituary for Betty Jane Cometa, which you can read here.  Betty Jane published 5 (or more) puzzles in the Times between 1982 and 1989.  Todd's discovery was particularly important because previously we hadn't been able to determine the gender of the constructor known only to us as "Cometa."  Todd reported that Betty Jane was born on September 11, 1932; according to the 1940 Census, lived in Nassau County, N.Y., when she was 7; and passed away this October at the age of 83.

Betty Jane Cometa

The next day, Todd sent me a link to a delightful article on Lou Sabin, which you can read here.  According to my records, Lou published 109 Times puzzles between 1955 and 1993 and so far has published 29 more during the Shortz era, the most recent appearing in 2009. Todd said that as far as he knew, Lou and his wife, Francene, were still alive.

Lou Sabin

Finally, at the end of November, Todd mentioned that he had been compiling a list of crossword constructors' birthdays (and, where applicable, dates of constructors' deaths).  His list includes pre-Shortzian and Shortz-era constructors, as well as a couple of constructors who published before the Times crossword began.  The file, too big to reproduce here, also contains information on constructors' cities and states, where available.

Todd Gross Olio:  The Sequel (Judith C. Dalton, Anne Fox, Judith Perry, Warren W. Reich, Judson G. Trent, and Thomas W. Underhill)

And now, here's Todd's opus!

Judith C. Dalton

Usually, when I’m researching a constructor, what I’m aiming for is (1) an article that mentions they constructed crosswords, and (2) a picture of them as close to their constructing age as possible.  I usually feel lucky if I can get both of these.  In this case, thanks to Ancestry.com and a few fortuitous newspaper articles, I can actually give a pretty complete history of Judith Dalton.  [Ed.:  Judith Dalton published at least 8 Times puzzles between 1981 and 1993.]

She was born Judith Carol Kuta on 25 Dec 1943 (Christmas Day!) in Amsterdam, Montgomery County, New York.  I have a picture of her at Mont Pleasant HS in Schenectady, NY in 1961.

She then attended SUNY Cortland (in Cortland, NY), where she served as a co-editor of the Hilltop Press.  I have a picture of her from 1965 in that role.

She married Thomas Dalton on 3 July 1965 in Schenectady.  I was able to “screen scrape” the relevant info from Newspapers.com, which allowed me to confirm I had the correct person.

Crosswords don’t enter the picture (as far as I know) until she and Thomas move to Saginaw, MI.  I don’t know when they moved, but this article says Thomas was Saginaw’s City Manager from 1978–1986.  It also says Judith (Judy) Dalton constructed puzzles for the New York Times (her first puzzle in XWordInfo is from 1981).

And thanks to the article about Mary Cee Whitten (which I actually found because I was working on Ms. Dalton) you link to, we know Judith Dalton was “public affairs co-ordinator  for a television station WNEM-TV in Flint-Saginaw-Bay City.”

And thanks to this article, I unfortunately can confirm that Ms. Dalton passed away on 8 Jan 1999 at the age of 55 in Indialantic, FL.

Finally, let me include a picture of just her from SUNY Cortland in 1965.  You may want this to be her XWordInfo gallery picture.

Anne Fox

Just a month or two ago, all I knew of Anne Fox’s biography was basic facts: she was born 9 Jul 1911 and passed away 21 Nov 1983 in Short Hills, NJ, and she had a husband named Charles.  I didn’t even know if Fox was her maiden or married name.  But I went back and looked in Maleska’s book Across and Down, which gives some nice tidbits about her life—including living in Tuxedo, NY and attending Cornell.  Well, with those facts, I resumed my search and was able to find more.  Not as much as for Judith Dalton, but interesting nonetheless.  [Ed.:  Anne Fox published 46 (or more) puzzles in the Times between 1964 and 1983.] 

She was born Anna McCreery Lamouree to John E Lamouree and Mary McCreery.  I don’t know where she was born, but probably somewhere near Tuxedo, NY, where she was raised, as her father’s family has deep roots in the area, as discussed in this article, which mentions Anna as a junior at Cornell.

As the article mentions, John was a co-owner of the drug store firm Paret & Lamouree, which had stores in Tuxedo and in Suffern, NY.  I was lucky to find an old photograph of the Suffern store.

Anne/Anna (I’ve also seen Ann in some places) did attend Cornell, but alas she didn’t graduate.  In her 3rd year she met Charles Fox and married him, and they moved in with Anne’s family in Tuxedo (according to the 1940 Census).  So no class picture of her as with Judith Dalton.  However, I did find a picture from her junior year (1931) of the sorority she belonged to (Sigma Kappa).  Here is the picture.

I’ll tell you which one is Anne in a bit, first I want to mention other tidbits I found about Ms. Fox.  First, an obit notice in the Apr 1984 Cornell Alumni News that makes the connection to crosswords clear.

Finally, an article from the Feb 1937 issue of The Alpha Delt, produced by the fraternity Charles Fox belonged to (Alpha Delta).  It shows that Charles wasn’t just freeloading off his new wife’s family.

As ETM noted, at the time Charles Fox “recently retired from a position as sales executive in the textile business.”  So Charles was certainly successful in his own right.

OK, now let me tell you which of those sorority women is Anne Fox.  She’s in the second row from the top, 3rd from the right, wearing a pearl necklace.  Here’s a grainy enlargement I made of Anne.

Judith Perry

Unlike Judith Dalton’s story, Judith Perry’s story is short and sweet.  In fact, you get pretty much everything you need to know from her obituary.  [Ed.: Photo below; Judith Perry published at least 22 pre-Shortzian Times puzzles between 1985 and 1993, plus 3 during the Shortz era.]

Photo courtesy of The
Barre Montpelier Times-
Argus.

Judith Perry was born in Barre, VT on 8 Apr 1920, she graduated from the University of Vermont with a music degree in 1943, never married, taught and played piano and organ, created crossword puzzles, and passed away in Northfield, VT on 3 Mar 2011 at the age of 90.  As far as I can tell, she lived in Vermont her entire life.  I don’t know when the picture in her obituary was taken, I’m guessing well before she turned 90.

I only have one more thing to add.  There are several pictures of her from the U of VT.  I’m enclosing the one that looks best (in part because she’s in the smallest group): the Bluestockings Club of 1943.  I note bluestocking is defined as an intellectual or literary woman, though it’s not meant as a compliment.  I’m glad to see the label taken as a badge of honor, like other pejoratives (e.g. queer).

Warren W. Reich

Thanks to the Simon & Schuster book series (Super Crossword Book 9 – 1996), we know that Warren W. Reich lived in Albany, NY.  [Ed.:  Warren W. Reich published 13 (or more) pre-Shortzian puzzles in the Times between 1982 and 1993, plus 1 during the Shortz era.]

In fact, Warren W. Reich (sorry, don’t know what the middle W stands for) served as a professor in the Slavic and Germanic Languages department at SUNY Albany.  This picture from 1964 (when the dept. was founded) shows Mr. Reich, professor of German, on the far left.

I know this Warren Reich is our constructor because of an article about his wife Nina, who studied with another faculty member in the above photo (Madame Catherine Wolkonsky).  Most of the article, taken from the Spring/Summer 2009 edition of the SUNY Albany LLC News . . . is about Nina, but the last sentence mentions Warren and crosswords.

Image courtesy of the LLC News.

I can tell you a bit more about Mr. Reich.  He was born 26 Jun 1923, probably in or near Erie County, NY.  The 1940 Census shows him living in Tonawonda, and in 1943 he enlisted in the Army from Buffalo.  His occupation at the time was cabinet maker, so I’m guessing he got his education after WW II.

And I’m reasonably sure Mr. Reich is still alive.  Besides not finding an obituary, and having what appears to be a current address for him, I have this article from 2011 about a student reconnecting with him…a student from when he taught German at Mont Pleasant HS in Schenectady (sound familiar?).

If Mr. (Dr.?) Reich is fine with reconnecting with an old high school pupil, I’m hoping he won’t mind an interview with a fellow NYT constructor he’s never met before.

Judson G. Trent

[Ed.:  Judson G. Trent published at least 51 puzzles in the Times between 1978 and 1989.]

This one is a doozy.

Let’s start at the end, with an obituary in the Washington Post. . . .

The obituary appeared on 19 Oct 1989.  So it looks like Mr. Trent was born in 1914 (or late 1913) in Essex, CT, a pretty small community.  And I found him in two of the locations mentioned here: Sacramento [City Directory] in 1955 (working as a proofreader)

and in Boston in 1964 (working as a composer apparently for the Boston Globe).

One could ask how Mr. Trent could have been working full time in Washington since 1962 and be working in Boston in 1964, but we’re going to overlook that for now.  The tale gets a lot more interesting when we look at this Social Security claim for Mr. Trent.

Note the birth date and place match our obituary, so Mr. Trent was born Judson Gordon Trick, and changed his name to Trent in the early 1950’s, when he was 36 or so.  This name pops up in a few places.  First of all, I couldn’t find a connection to Muskingum College as mentioned in the obituary.  But I did find a Judson Gordon Trick attending Oberlin College (in Oberlin, OH) in 1937.

There’s a picture of him (the only picture I have) with a group called Theologians in this annual volume.

Mr. Trick is in the “third row,” wherever that is exactly.  So no, I can’t tell you which of these people is Judson Trick-or-Trent.  I also didn’t find this name connected to Yale University…but I did find a Reverend by that name living in New Haven in 1942.

Well, being a Reverend makes sense connected with the Theologians group at Oberlin…but the obituary mentions psychology, not theology.  And what does all this have to do with proofreading/printing, which is what he was doing when he started constructing (lots of) crosswords?  Could these be two different people?  Maybe…or maybe not.  All I can say is, I have several unanswered questions, and I wish I was as good at solving tricky puzzles as your average ACPT attendee.

Thomas W. Underhill

With Judith Perry, the obituary told you everything you needed to know.  For Thomas Underhill, the following obituary was posted by the Harvard Law Bulletin . . . and [was] surprisingly brief:

Fortunately, I have other sources to tell me more.  He was born Thomas Westlake Underhill on 6 Apr 1924.  [Ed.:  Thomas W. Underhill published 11 (or more) pre-Shortzian Times puzzles between 1986 and 1993, plus 1 during the Shortz era.]  I’m not sure where he was born, but probably in or near northern New Jersey, as I have a picture of him from 1941 at Summit HS in Summit, NJ.

I also have a picture of him from 1944 at the College of New Jersey in Ewing, NJ.  Mr. Underhill is the second from the right.

This picture is the school’s Charter Club…actually, the group was large enough to need two pictures.  I was lucky Thomas sat in the front, so I could include the legend without making everything too small.

He went on to get a bachelor’s degree from Princeton, then a degree from Harvard Law School (hence the obit above).  But we haven’t mentioned crosswords yet.  We also haven’t mentioned that Thomas was a mystery writer.  He wrote a novel called The Cambridge Caper, which was published posthumously by his children.  Here is the introduction written by his daughter Sarah, which gives a nice overview of her father, including mentioning he constructed crosswords.

Sarah Wisseman isn’t just a mystery writer, she’s also an archaeologist who published “five books of non-fiction on ancient Greek vases, Greek archaeology, scientific methods in archaeology, and Egyptian mummies.”  This is from the About page on her personal website . . . , which I enclose a part of below.

Her website also has a Contact page, where one can e-mail Sarah. . . .

Finally, I want to mention another obituary I found, this one from Princeton University.  As you can see, they published a more thorough biography, including details I wasn’t aware of.

Score: Princeton 1, Harvard 0.