Miriam Raphael's Maleska Stories, Helene Hovanec's "Creative Cruciverbalists," May Litzer of the Month Vic Fleming, Herbert L. Risteen Article, Another Litzing Script, Over 9,300—and in 1968 and the Farrar Era!

Several weeks ago I received an e-mail from master solver and crossword editor Miriam (Mimi) Raphael (whose National Puzzlers' League nom is Ditto).  Mimi won first place in the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in 1979 and first place in the Seniors Division 18 times between 1988 and 2011.  She had some Maleska stories she thought I might be interested in—and I was!  With her permission, they appear below, followed by a photo of the Fairfield County Puzzlers:

Back in the 1980s and '90s, there was a group of puzzle people—Will Shortz and a number of constructors and others interested in crosswords—in this area that called themselves the Fairfield County Puzzlers, after Fairfield County, Connecticut, where most of them lived.  I was actually just across the border in Westchester, New York, but I was a member, anyway.  Will Shortz was our leader—he was not puzzle editor of The New York Times in those days.  Norton Rhoades, who had been a school principal in Stamford, Connecticut, was a member, as was Stephanie Spadaccini, Maura Jacobson, and a few others whose names you might be familiar with.

We met every other month, as I remember, and one time decided to have a Maleska Roast (to which he was not invited).  Everyone was encouraged to bring a nasty letter they had received from Eugene.  I had one.  Through a strange combination of circumstances, I was editing a series of puzzle books—Champion Crosswords, for Simon & Schuster.  There were eight books published in the series before it died.  When Margaret Farrar found out about it, she was very helpful.  One of the best pieces of advice she gave me was to be gentle with constructors when I had to refuse their puzzles.  This was their "baby," she reminded me, and they sent it to me with many hopes and misgivings.  I took her advice seriously and once even received a thank-you note for a letter I had written to a constructor explaining why I couldn't use her puzzle—it wasn't very good, but I didn't say that in so many words.

Maleska, on the other hand, returned Maura Jacobson's early effort with, "You have a long way to go before you're ready to submit to the NY Times."  I received a letter from Maleska saying, "It has come to my attention that you are editing Crossword Puzzle Books for Simon & Schuster.  What are your credentials to be a crossword puzzle editor?"  I responded (and this was my letter in full) that "my credentials were sufficient for my publisher to offer me a contract," and I didn't hear from him again.

Just about everyone at that Fairfield County Puzzlers meeting at my house had a similar nasty letter from the great Eugene M.  We had a great time!

The Fairfield County Puzzlers on Miriam Raphael's front porch.  Front row:  Miriam Raphael, Stan Newman, Mark Oshin, Robert Carroll, Unknown.  Second row:  Doug Heller, Nancy Schuster, Bonnie Sirower, Unknown, Grace Frary, Will Shortz.  Back rows:  Unknown, Norman Landis, Halloween Man, Mike Shenk, Evie Eysenburg, Robin Landis, Ted Fishman, Unknown, Unknown, Unknown, Ed Snarski. 

Thanks so much, Mimi!  (And thanks, too, to Will Shortz and Stan Newman for helping to identify some of the people in the photo!  If anyone else knows who the remaining "Unknowns" are, please contact me.)

Coincidentally, I've been reading a wonderful book I recently found out about that offers a few quite different impressions of Maleska.  Helene Hovanec's Creative Cruciverbalists contains fascinating profiles of many pre-Shortzian constructors, and the one for Karen Hodge notes that "Hodge submitted several puzzles to Maleska, who although rejecting them, kept on encouraging her for he felt that she showed a flair for constructing."  When he finally accepted one of Hodge's puzzles, Hovanec writes:  "His congratulatory note, which elated her, began:  'Your avian opus is certainly not for the birds.'"

Similarly, the profile of Henry Hook shows another side of Maleska, who was so impressed with Hook's initial submission that he offered "to critique his crosswords and send him a style sheet (which Hook hadn't known existed)."  In fact, Hovanec writes, as "Hook developed under Maleska's tutelage, Maleska further assisted him by sending his work to other editors."

And the profile of Maleska himself is truly amazing.  Maleska's own puzzles did not meet with immediate acceptance.  His first efforts, which he sent to the Herald Tribune, were repeatedly rejected:

Maleska remembers the route he traveled:  "First I bought the newspaper every day and studied the style of the puzzle very carefully.  Months later I submitted my first professional effort—and held my breath.  I had enclosed a self-addressed stamped envelope, but did not bother to write an accompanying letter.  I had too much amour propre to plead.  My bubble of self-esteem burst abruptly.  Not even a formal rejection slip!  I was tempted to give up right then and there.  But persistence emerged to take the place of pride. . . .  I set some sort of record for initial failure—over forty rejections from a silent editor in a two-year period!"

Even more surprising to me was learning that Maleska actually tried to "jazz up" the clues in his puzzles:

He vividly remembers the first puzzle in which he "broke the log jam."  "'Nest' was defined as 'Nutcracker's suite' and the clue for 'noon' was 'When both hands are up.'  For 'ironer' the solvers were confronted with 'He has pressing problems.'"

And the first stepquote Maleska published, under Margaret Farrar, created a furor, with very polarized reactions on the parts of solvers.

Maleska seems to have been someone with many different sides—he could be arrogant and harsh with some constructors but was also apparently very encouraging to others.  And although the "educational" aspect to his puzzles could be stifling, some of his innovations, such as with cluing and stepquotes, were very creative.

In other news, I'm delighted to announce that Vic Fleming is the May Litzer of the Month!  To read about "Judge Vic," click here or on the Litzer of the Month tab above.

Also, I was thrilled to get an e-mail from litzer and proofreader Todd Gross on Wednesday about an article he'd found on pre-Shortzian constructor Herbert L. Risteen.  Todd had been reading the interview with Litzer of the Month Vic Fleming, who mentions the entry VIC SEIXAS, and remembered that he'd seen Vic Seixas mentioned in an article he'd read about Risteen.  I've now linked to this article from the Pre-Shortzian Constructors page; to read it, click on the link there or go directly to the Risteen article here.  Thanks so much, Todd!  If anyone else comes across articles on pre-Shortzian constructors, please let me know.

Herbert L. Risteen.  Image courtesy of
The Milwaukee Journal.

Last week I wrote about the litzing script Martin Herbach had sent me, and today I just received some additional information from him::

fyi, the following one-line sed script merges any line that doesn't begin with a number, with its previous line:

sed ":a; $!N;s/\n\([^0-9]\)/ \1/;ta;P;D" fromfile >tofile

It took a bit of messing with before I got it working.  It's for gnu sed on windows.  Other sed versions will take some syntax  changes.  I'm not an osx expert, so I have no idea what sed is built-in or available.

As you can tell, I hate doing something manually that can be automated.  I run it right after the ocr.

Thanks again, Martin!

It's been a very busy week on the litzing front, with some huge puzzle shipments!  On Sunday, Mark Diehl sent in 21 puzzles; Jeffrey Krasnick, 7; and Todd McClary, 7.  The next day, Mike Buckley sent in 6, and then on Wednesday, Martin Herbach sent in five batches totaling 33 puzzles.  Early today, Mark sent in 35 puzzles—putting us over 9,300 on the litzing thermometer!—and then three hours later, Martin sent in another five batches totaling 35 puzzles!  And on the proofreading front, Tracy Bennett, Todd Gross, and Kristena Bergen all sent in lots of proofread puzzles.  Thanks so much, everybody—awesome job!

One final piece of news:  We're now in the Margaret Farrar era, where we'll remain till the very end!  We're also now in 1968, a very eventful, dark time in history.  On the lighter side, here's a photo from the sketch comedy TV show Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, which debuted on January 22, 1968:

Image courtesy of sixties60s.com.

Today's featured pre-Shortzian puzzle (constructor unknown) was edited by Will Weng, litzed by Mark Diehl, and originally published on August 11, 1972.  It features a mind-blowing 11 symmetrically interlocking theme entries . . . based on the entry NUDIST CAMP!  The theme clues are a riot—here are a few of the wackier ones:  NUDIST CAMP [15 Across] (clued as "Mosquito heaven"), NUDES PAPER ("House organ of 15 Across?"), RAW DEAL ("Poker round at 15 Across"), CLOTHES ("Eyesores at 15 Across"), GAZA STRIP ("Locale of 15 Across?"), and BARE HANDS ("The help, at 15 Across").  This puzzle exemplifies Weng's sense of humor and willingness to publish surprising, bizarre-but-awesome themes!  Unfortunately, we don't have the constructor for this outré masterpiece; however, based on all the authored Weng puzzles I've seen, I'm guessing this puzzle was by master cruciverbalist A. J. Santora.  A. J. Santora was known for his ability to fit an incredible amount of theme entries into a daily-sized grid.

Regardless of who the constructor was, he or she did a great job filling around the 11 theme entries, and I noticed that even the ordinary clues feel a bit more playful than normal.  Some of the more interesting nonthematic entries include I'M GAME, the combination of CAESAR and CESAR, and the combination of DARNS and DAMNED; interesting nonthematic clues include "Taffy event" for PULL and "Wields a needle" for DARNS.  There are some clues and entries that elicited a "Sound of anguish" (GROAN) from me:  BLS ("Beer containers: Abbr."), ORDU ("Turkish army corps"), IRAK (Baghdad's land: Var."), APAR ("Armadillo"), PLUVIAL ("Showery"), SMUT clued as "Plant disease," BRUH ("Macaque of East Indies"), ASEM ("Old gold alloy"), and ACCA ("Old silk brocade").  Nevertheless, this is a brilliant and fun pre-Shortzian puzzle!  The answer grid (with highlighted theme entries) can be seen below:

Today's featured pre-Shortzian clue is almost as risqué as the featured puzzle!  It originally appeared in the March 27, 1976, puzzle by H. Hastings Reddall, which was edited by Will Weng and litzed by Nancy Kavanaugh.  The clue for TOPLESS read "Like some waitresses."  This clue feels slightly off-color—I'm pretty sure that, of all the pre-Shortzian editors, Will Weng would've been the only one to allow it!  I can see that Maleska used much less suggestive clues for this entry ("Extremely high" and "' . . . ___ towers of Ilium': Marlowe."  Below is a picture of the seemingly topless Mt. Everest:

Image courtesy of Mount Everest Summit Climb.

Mel Rosen Interview, Periods after Clues, Over 9,200, Mark Diehl Litzes 2,500 Puzzles, Martin Herbach's Litzing Script, Marbles Tournament, and Puzzazz Year of Puzzles

This week I'm thrilled to present a wonderful interview with pre-Shortzian constructor and author Mel Rosen!  Mel has published hundreds of puzzles, and according to my (still incomplete) records, 26 of his crosswords appeared in The New York Times during the pre-Shortz era and 10 under Will Shortz's editorship.  He is also the author (with Stan Kurzban) of The Compleat Cruciverbalist, which was later revised and became the classic Random House Puzzlermaker's Handbook.  To read my interview with Mel Rosen, click here or on the Pre-Shortzian Constructor Interviews tab above.

There's lots of news this week!  First, we're now almost in the Margaret Farrar era.  Many Will Weng–edited puzzles being sent out now for litzing continued Margaret's style of putting periods at the ends of clues.  Although adding in the periods makes litzing a bit trickier—to my knowledge, no one has discovered a way to automate this process in Crossword Compiler—it quickly becomes habitual.  The periods after clues will continue all the way back to 1942, so we have lots of time to get used to them!

We've now litzed more than 9,200 puzzles!  This was an amazing week in litzed-puzzle submissions, starting off with a batch of 21 puzzles from Mark Diehl on Saturday.  On Sunday, Martin Herbach sent in 35 puzzles, which put us over 9,100, and then Mark sent in another 14.  Finally, on Wednesday Martin sent in another 35 puzzles, putting us over 9,200!  In between these large batches, other litzers continued sending in packets of 7, which all added up to a huge increase from our total at the end of last week—almost as if we were running another litzing contest (which, by the way, will be coming this summer!).  Thanks so much, everybody—great, great job!

Mark Diehl also reached an amazing milestone this week in his personal litzing total, having digitized more than 2,500 puzzles!  That's also more than 15 percent of the entire pre-Shortzian puzzle canon!  Congratulations and thanks again, Mark—maybe this will eventually go down in the Guinness World Records!

This week Martin Herbach also sent me an e-mail about a litzing script he wrote for use with .txt files.  Here's his description of it—if you'd like more details, please contact him (or me, and I'll forward your e-mail):

I don't know how many people give you Across Lite source (.txt) files, but I just wrote a script that automates a bit of the work.  Editing the clues is still the labor-intensive step, but I build the clue file in Notepad (which automatically deals with smart quotes), including clue numbers and the script scans a directory for clue files of the form nytyymmddclues.txt and turns each one into nytyymmdd.txt, stripping the clue numbers and adding the rest of the tempate.  It uses the date from the filename for the template header, including correct day of week.

It's not very user friendly but if you think anyone would want to use it, I'll provide further info. 

A couple of other announcements:  Last weekend, Marbles:  The Brain Store's 5th Annual Crossword Tournament took place at various locations around the country, and litzer Doug Peterson and I were judges at the one in Sherman Oaks, California.  It was a lot of fun, with great puzzles and plenty of yummy popcorn, and litzer Todd Gross was one of the contestants!  Here's a picture of Doug, Todd, and me at the tournament:

Finally, the Puzzazz Year of Puzzles has begun, and litzer Parker Lewis built the very first one, which came out last week.  I took a break from studying for AP tests to do his double spiral puzzle and had a blast!  There'll be a metapuzzle to solve at the end, and I'm already looking forward to the next installment, which will be by Patrick Berry!  To find out more about the Puzzazz Year of Puzzles, click here.

Today's featured puzzle, "Fuller Explanations," was constructed by Mel Rosen and edited by Will Weng.  It was originally published on July 13, 1975, and was recently litzed by Howard Barkin.  In this "reversed-out" puzzle, a piece of pre-Shortzian  crosswordese is used as a clue and its typical definition as an answer for each of the twelve theme entries!  For example, the clue "Orts" leads to TABLE SCRAPS, and the clue "Amah" leads to ORIENTAL NURSE.  I'm amazed that Mel was able to get all these definitions to interlock so nicely with (drumroll, please) so little crosswordese in the nonthematic fill!  Instead, he used lots of fun pieces of fill, such as GONDOLA, GOES FAR, and PREENED.  On top of all that, Mel even managed to sneak his own name into the grid at 18-Down (clued as "Allen or Brooks" rather than "Allen or Rosen").  All in all, this is a very innovative pre-Shortzian puzzle with an interesting, original, and humorous theme!  The answer grid (with highlighted theme entries) can be seen below:

Today's featured pre-Shortzian entry is LOXODROMIC.  LOXODROMIC originally appeared in the Will Weng–edited July 29, 1972, puzzle (constructor unknown), which was recently litzed by Mark Diehl.  Not surprisingly, the Ginsberg database shows that LOXODROMIC has never been reused in a Shortz-era puzzle!  The original clue for LOXODROMIC was "Of map-projection lines"; Webster defines it as "Relating to a rhumb line or to sailing on rhumb lines."  It defines a rhumb line as "a line on the surface of the Earth that follows a single compass bearing and makes oblique angles with all meridians."  In my book, both loxodrome and rhumb line are a mouthful—then again, I doubt I'll be using either of these terms anytime soon!  Below is a picture of some loxodromes/rhumb lines:

Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

Bernice Gordon Interview, Over 9,000, In 1969, Marbles Tournament, and Pre-Shortzian Stumpers

Today I'm delighted to present another interview with a pre-Shortzian constructor, the amazingly creative and prolific Bernice Gordon!  At 99, Bernice is the oldest constructor in the history of The New York Times; according to my (incomplete) records, she published 112 puzzles in the pre-Shortz era and has published 18 under Will Shortz's editorship, but she reportedly has published more than 150 puzzles in the Times.  To read my interview with Bernice Gordon, click here or on the Pre-Shortzian Constructor Interviews tab above.

I'm also thrilled to announce that we've now litzed more than 9,000 puzzles!  On Sunday, Todd McClary sent in a batch that put us over 8,900, and then, in very short order, more puzzles came in—including a batch of 34 from Mark Diehl—that put us over 8,950!  Finally, on Wednesday, Martin Herbach sent in five batches totaling 35 puzzles, putting us well over 9,000!  Thanks so much, everybody—great job!

We also reached another milestone this week:  On Tuesday, litzer Nancy Kavanaugh received the first batch of 1969 puzzles!  Here's a representative photo from that very eventful year.  It's of astronaut Buzz Aldrin walking on the Moon during the Apollo 11 mission, which, on July 20, 1969, landed the first humans there:

Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

Although there won't be any pre-Shortzian puzzles to solve, I wanted to help spread the word about this weekend's Marbles 5th Annual Crossword Tournament at various locations throughout the country.  This should be a very fun event, and litzer Doug Peterson and I will be judges at the one taking place in Sherman Oaks, California!

Finally, if you haven't checked out the Pre-Shortzian Stumpers on Twitter, many of the previous stumpers are listed there under #psstumpers.  Litzers Jeffrey Krasnick, Martin Ashwood-Smith, and Denny Baker have come up with some doozies, and I'm sure there'll be more to come!

Today's featured puzzle was constructed by the legendary Bernice Gordon.  As Bernice mentioned in her interview, this puzzle caused something of a controversy—in fact, Margaret Farrar initially rejected it!  The puzzle, titled "Words and Words," was published on May 30, 1965.  It features ten common phrases containing a word, AND, and then another word; the catch is that AND is squeezed into a single square, making this puzzle the earliest Sunday rebus I've seen so far.  This puzzle is way ahead of its time thematically—Sunday rebus themes didn't catch on until much later during the Maleska era!  In addition to using a completely innovative theme, Bernice also chose a wide-open grid and did a lovely job filling it.  Some highlights of the nonthematic fill include RASPBERRY, CONDUCTOR, QUAKING, and AESTHETES, but perhaps the most interesting/unusual entry is ODTAA.  At first, I thought it had to be a mistake—litzers have found several errors in the solutions to Times puzzles recently.  But ODTAA, clued as "Masefield novel, 1926," is indeed a legitimate entry.  My first thought was that the title had something to do with TAA, a piece of pre-Shortzian crosswordese commonly clued as "Chinese pagoda"; I couldn't have been more wrong, however—ODTAA is an acronym for "One Damn Thing After Another!"  In sum, this is a very futuristic and creative pre-Shortzian puzzle!  The answer grid (with highlighted theme entries) can be seen below:

A few months ago, one of our proofreaders came across a very clever clue in the Maleska-edited Saturday, June 7, 1986, puzzle, constructed by Irene Smullyan.  The clue, for the entry SMASHED, was "Under the alfluence of incohol."  This clue, like the featured puzzle, feels way ahead of its time—both are exceptionally clever!  Below is a picture of SMASHED in a different sense of the word:

Image courtesy of 123RF.

Arthur Schulman Interview, New Record, Over 8,800, 1984 Puzzles on XWord Info, and More Publicity

Last week's review by Rex Parker and Matt Gaffney of a pre-Shortzian puzzle was a big hit!  Thanks again, Rex and Matt, and thanks to everyone who stopped by (and especially to those of you who left comments)!

This week I'm thrilled to present a fascinating interview with Arthur Schulman, a prolific pre-Shortzian constructor and cognitive psychologist who (according to still-incomplete records) published 80 New York Times puzzles in the pre-Shortz era and 1 under Will Shortz's editorship.  To read the interview, click here or on the Pre-Shortzian Constructor Interviews tab above; to read "The Art of the Puzzler," the very interesting book chapter he mentions in the interview, click here.

During the course of this interview, I learned that Arthur's first published puzzle in The New York Times appeared when he was 18.  I wrote to Jim Horne about this discovery so he could update the teenage constructors page on XWord Info, and he contacted Will Shortz, who originally began tracking these data.  So we now have a new entry for the record books:  Arthur Schulman was the 21st-youngest constructor to publish a crossword in The New York Times!

In other news, on Sunday veteran litzer Denny Baker sent in a packet that put us over 8,800 on the litzing thermometer, and we've received so many packets this week from other litzers that we're now almost at 8,900!

Also, the proofread 1984 puzzles are now up on Xword Info—that makes 10 years of pre-Shortzian puzzles that are now available on Jim Horne's wonderful site!

The Pre-Shortzian Puzzle Project received some more publicity this past week connected with the review by Rex Parker and Matt Gaffney:  Rex wrote about it here on Rex Parker Does the NY Times Crossword Puzzle, Matt mentioned it here on Facebook, and T Campbell discussed it here on Amy Reynaldo's Diary of a Crossword Fiend.  Several people tweeted about it as well, including Jeffrey Krasnick, Brendan Emmett Quigley, and Ben Tausig.  Thanks, everybody!

Today's featured pre-Shortzian puzzle was constructed by . . . (drumroll, please) . . . Arthur Schulman!  It was originally published on March 29, 1975, and was recently litzed by Howard Barkin.  This impressive 74-word themeless features a host of zippy entries such as SQUEEGEE, JAVA MAN, and METHANOL.  Oh , and I forgot to mention that the puzzle is a pangram—wow!  I've seen many fine William Lutwiniak pangrams from around this time period, but they've all had relatively closed-off grids with 76 or 78 words.  Another noteworthy feature of this puzzle is its relative absence of obscurity and crosswordese.  The crossing of HAKIM (clued as "Moslem judge") and KOP (clued as "African hill" instead of as "Keystone Kop") would've left me 41-Down, but the rest of the puzzle is very clean.  All in all, this is an exceptional Will Weng–edited themeless—I very much look forward to seeing the remainder of Arthur Schulman's puzzles as they get litzed!  The answer grid can be seen below:

On March 22, the entry of the week was the Norwegian town HAMMERFEST, which I thought sounded awesome but probably wouldn't be showing up a New York Times crossword again anytime soon.  Imagine my surprise when I was solving Julian Lim's Wednesday puzzle this week and saw the clue "Hammerfest's locale: Abbr." for NOR!  I wonder if this clue was written by the constructor or by Will Shortz himself—either way, I was delighted and had no trouble filling it in!

So this week I'm featuring another amazing-sounding city, HÄMEENLINNA.  HÄMEENLINNA was originally used in the January 13, 1973, puzzle (author unknown), which was recently litzed by Mark Diehl.  It was clued as "City in Finland"; Britannica mentions that Hämeenlinna's name was derived from the Häme castle and became the northernmost terminus of Finland's first railroad in 1862.  I look forward to seeing if "Hämeenlinna's locale: Abbr." shows up as a clue for FIN in the near future—that would be awesome!  For now, below is a picture of the Häme castle:

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.