NYT Crossword Constructor Biographies

Ralph G. Beaman constructed the first-ever Schrödinger crossword in the Times, which appeared on February 7, 1988. Beaman's puzzle is the only Schrödinger in the Pre-Shortz Era. It was published over 8 years before David Kahn's first-of-the-Shortz-Era Schrödinger and Jeremiah Farrell's Dole/Clinton masterpiece, both of which appeared in 1996. ... read more

In the Pre-Shortzian Puzzle Project blog, David Steinberg discussed Beaman's puzzle at length, noting such unique features as its inclusion of three 21-letter spans employing the Schrödinger device and the use of Schrödinger elements in the clues.

Ralph Gardner Beaman was born in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1923. His father was a funeral director, and his mother was a homemaker. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1944. He then served in the Navy at its foreign language school. He earned a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Illinois in the late 1940s. By the 1950s, he joined DuPont in Wilmington, Delaware, where he would spend the rest of his career as a chemist.

He had a profound interest in words and their patterns. Throughout the 1970s, he wrote articles for the journal Word Ways. (This journal was later edited by fellow Schrödinger constructor Jeremiah Farrell).

In one of his Word Ways articles, Beaman analyzed the interplay between a word's length and its number of syllables, identifying words that have the same number of syllables as letters, including a four-letter word with four syllables (IEIE, a Hawaiian pine).

In another Word Ways article, he attempted to show the maximum possible score in Scrabble, demonstrating a game in which the total score is 4,153 (featuring two board-spanning words: JACKPUDDINGHOOD and BENZOXYCAMPHORS).

In other articles, he identified words that form new words if the last letter is dropped (e.g., RABBIT to RABBI), the first letter is dropped, both the first and last letters are dropped, and other more complex sequences. Notably, his various Word Ways analyses do not reference the use of a computer and instead suggest he formulated them by hand.

He passed away in 1997 at age 73.

Sam Bellotto, Jr. is the editor and publisher of Perihelion, an online science fiction magazine that originated as a print publication in 1967.

Jeanette Brill's son Jon (who is also a constructor) relayed an interesting anecdote: when Jeanette was constructing, she had paper cut-outs of individual letters that she would move around her grid as she changed her fill. Sounds a bit akin to using Scrabble tiles. ... read more

Jeanette was born Jeanette Kessler in 1917. She grew up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania College for Women. She also earned a master's degree in psychology from UPenn in 1938 while working as a social worker at the Pennsylvania State Hospital.

William L. Canine was born in 1922 in Kansas City, Missouri. He graduated from Duke University. In World War II, he was an officer in the Marines, serving in the Pacific as a platoon leader. He was wounded at Iwo Jima and awarded the Purple Heart. In 1946, he married Emily Anderson. They had four children. ... read more

After the war, he taught English at Duke. He later became the director of development at Hollins College in Virginia and Newberry College in South Carolina. He also worked in development for the Nature Conservancy.

He passed away in 2007 at age 84.

Roger H. Courtney, a longtime radio announcer, had 13 crosswords in the Times between 1986 and 1995. He had a puzzle on every day of the week except Sunday. ... read more

He was also published by Simon & Schuster, the Los Angeles Times, and other outlets.

"It's fascinating and creative and exacting," he said in a 1990 interview. "I spend a lot of time with words, and I enjoy coming up with interesting themes and doing all the research. I used to do bowling. Now I'm addicted to crosswords."

His radio broadcasting career began in Bradenton, Florida, in the 1960s.

"I did everything at the station back then," he said. "I was news editor and production man. I covered meetings and helped broadcast the Pittsburgh Pirates spring training games. Everything was new to me, and I was eager to learn."

He went on to work as an announcer and news editor at stations in Tampa, St. Petersburg, and his hometown of St. Louis, Missouri. In the 1970s, he hosted a daily talk show at WFLA in Tampa called "Ask the Expert."

Roger Harry Courtney was born in 1934 in Missouri, the son of Daniel Courtney, a radio operator for the Army Corps. of Engineers, and Mildred (Yost) Courtney, a homemaker.

He passed away in 2018 at the age of 84.

Gayle Dean's puzzles have appeared in The Washington Post, NY Times, Dell, Simon & Schuster, Crosswords for Dummies, Tribune Media, and many other major publications. She constructed puzzles for Eugene Maleska for many years and had 34 puzzles appear in the NY Times from 1985-2015. ... read more

Her E-Less puzzle (no E's in either the grid or the clues) from May 4, 1999, was chosen by Will Shortz for one of his books of 'Favorites'. He called it a "feat of construction". Gayle and Will tried to figure out a clever way to eliminate the e's from her byline as well but decided best to leave it alone.

Grace Fabbroni started constructing crosswords after a chance meeting with Eugene Maleska who was the principal in the school where she taught. PSPP has a letter she wrote about her life in puzzles.

"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." See the complete Will Shortz reminiscence here.

Bernice Gordon's NYT crossword construction career didn't start until she was nearly 40, but that didn't stop her from getting 147 published over her 62-year career. She was prolific even in her 90s, and her last two were constructed when she was 100 years old.

Peter Gordon is a puzzlemaker and editor from Great Neck, N.Y. He has been a puzzle editor for Games magazine, Sterling Publishing, and the bygone New York Sun. Since 2010 he has edited Fireball Crosswords, a 45-times-a-year online-only super-challenger.

John Greenman, a longtime college textbook editor, had 64 puzzles in the Times, including 12 in the Shortz Era. He was also published by the Tribune syndicate and People magazine. ... read more

Eugene Maleska, in his 1984 book "Across and Down," identified John as one of the most promising newcomers to constructing.

Born in 1936, he grew up in Deposit, New York. His mother was a librarian and his father was a veterinarian. He attended Hamilton College, graduating in 1957 with a degree in English literature.

As the Hamilton alumni magazine explained about his career path:

From Hamilton and at the recommendation of a mentor in the English Department, John moved to New York City to work for the publishing company then known as Harper & Brothers. (As a result of mergers, it became Harper & Row in 1962 and HarperCollins in 1990.) His first assignment was as a publisher's representative, specifically a "College Traveler." He visited colleges and universities in his geographic territory, the Upper Midwest, to meet with faculty members and, ideally, sell them on new textbooks in their respective fields….

By [1963], John had been promoted to editor for economics and business administration in the company's college division. As his career unfolded, he rose to senior editor by 1989 and later to executive editor, the position he held when he retired in 1997. John wasn't very interested in the management of a publishing company; he preferred the nuts-and-bolts of editing and thus cultivated a comparatively small group of authors with whom he worked for a number of years.

In 1963, John married Barbara Storms, a children's book editor. They had two children, a daughter and a son.

In retirement, in addition to constructing crosswords, John had many pursuits. These included volunteering at the information desk of the Weill Cornell-NY Presbyterian Hospital, sketching, needlepoint, and attending the theater, sometimes four times a week, according to the Hamilton alumni magazine.

From Wikipedia: Henry Hook (September 18, 1955 — October 27, 2015) was widely credited with popularizing the cryptic crossword in North America. With Henry Rathvon and Emily Cox, he wrote the crossword for the Boston Globe. ... read more

Hook began constructing crosswords at age 14 when he sent a rebuttal crossword to Eugene T. Maleska. Maleska's crossword contained the hidden message: You Have Just Finished The World's Most Remarkable Crossword

Hook's crossword contained the hidden message: What Makes You Think Your Puzzle Is More Remarkable Than Mine?

Maleska subsequently became Hook's mentor.

Maura Jacobson was the first winner of the prestigious Merl Reqgle Award for lifetime achievement in crossword constructing in 2016, ... read more

See Remembering Maura Jacobson by Will Shortz, and David's Steinberg's In Memoriam.

Nancy worked as a journalist at The Long Islander and authored educational textbooks for Educational Developmental Laboratories.

Will Shortz has called Nancy, "one of the greats — one of the few constructors to successfully go from the Maleska era to my own."

Betty Jorgensen authored at least 77 crosswords in the Times. She often employed punny quips in her themes, such as "The smith making hardware for a new bathroom reports he's forging a head." ... read more

Born in 1916 in Portland, Oregon, Barbara "Betty" Price was the daughter of Ore Price, a lawyer, and Margaret (Beharrell) Price, a homemaker. In 1935, she married Victor Jorgensen, a photographer, and journalist, also from Portland. (His photos include the New York Times version of the iconic sailor and nurse kissing in Times Square at the end of World War II.) After the war, Betty and Victor traveled abroad for ten years as a photographer-researcher team. Their work was published in Fortune, Life, Collier's, the Saturday Evening Post, and other outlets. In the mid-1950s, they settled in Maryland, where they had two daughters. In 1968, the family moved back to Oregon, where Betty and Victor founded Telltale Compass, a boating publication.

Betty's first known crossword in the Times appeared in 1988. Over the next ten years, she was a frequent contributor. Her last Times puzzle (with the quip "A door's what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of") was published a few months before she passed away in 1998.

Albert J. Klaus was born in Jersey City, New Jersey in 1917, the son of Charles and Anne (Fischer) Klaus. In 1949, he married Anne Horan, also of New Jersey. They raised three children. A graduate of NYU, Albert was a mechanical engineer. He worked for over 25 years at Airco, an industrial gas and metals company in Union, New Jersey. He retired in 1979. His first Times crossword was published in 1983, the start of a prolific 13-year period in which he was published at least 119 times in the Times. He was also published elsewhere. He passed away in 2000 at the age of 82. (Bio courtesy Flip Koski.)

Lynn Lempel has been constructing crosswords, hundreds of them, since the 1970s. Her career hats have included writing, editing, community college teaching, and Head Start research. She is a longtime library volunteer and has worked on numerous political campaigns, usually for the loser. ... read more

A Northeasterner, she has lived in Daytona Beach for many years—and no, she has never been to an auto race.

Michael S. ("Mickey") Maurer is an Indianapolis native whose career as an attorney and entrepreneur has included cable television, film production, radio broadcasting, publishing, real estate and banking. Mickey has authored seven books: Water Colors (2003), 19 Stars of Indiana — Exceptional Hoosier Women (2009), and 19 Stars of Indiana — Exceptional Hoosier Men (2010), 10 Essential Principles of Entrepreneurship You Never Learned in School (2012), 50 Crossword Puzzles with playful narrations (2015), Cinderella Ball (2017) and The Methuselah Gene (2021). Mickey is married to Janie Maurer, and they have three children and nine grandchildren.

Alfio Micci, born in 1918, played in the First Violin Section of the New York Philharmonic for many years.

See this article in the Pre-Shortzian Puzzle Project.

Derrick Niederman, of Charleston, S.C., is a writer, mathematician, and game designer, and formerly an adjunct math professor at the College of Charleston.

Stafford "Tap" Osborn was an executive at Reed & Barton silversmiths in Taunton, Mass. Born in France in 1924, he was the son of Kenneth Osborn, president of a latex manufacturer, and Helen (Brown) Osborn, a homemaker. ... read more

Tap graduated from Amherst College in 1945. Soon thereafter, he joined Reed & Barton, where he worked for 40 years, retiring in 1985 as vice president of merchandising.

He had a daughter and four sons. He was a resident of Falmouth, Mass., and later Fort Myers, Florida. He had at least 112 crosswords published in the Times, as well as others in the LA Times, Washington Post and elsewhere. He was also the editor of crossword books published by the Running Press. He passed away in 1994 at the age of 70.

Beloved constructor Merl Reagle constructed the Sunday crossword for the San Francisco Chronicle (widely syndicated) every Sunday for 30 years. He starred in the 2006 documentary, Wordplay, which followed the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament that year. The tournament now annually presents the MEmoRiaL Award, a lifetime achievement award in the form of a snow globe with Mr. Reagle inside. ... read more

The photo here is from his appearance on The Simpsons.

Warren W. Reich served in the U.S. Army from 1943 to 1946 and returned to eventually get a Ph.D. in German Literature from the University of Connecticut. His first NYT crosswords appeared when he was nearly 60.

Sidney L. Robbins was born in Manhattan in 1909, the son of Herman and Mary (Susnitsky) Rabinowitz. He grew up in Brooklyn and attended Columbia College, graduating in 1930. In 1946, he married Beatrice Levine. Sidney was an executive in a leather manufacturing business. ... read more

He had over 200 crosswords published in the Times, including over 140 Mondays. Of his 50 Times puzzles in the Shortz Era, 48 were Mondays. He passed away in 1997 at the age of 86.

Will Shortz called Mel Rosen "one of the longtime greats in crossword puzzles" in this NYT memorial. ... read more

David Steinberg shared his memories on his blog.

Randolph Ross, of Manhattan, is a retired high school principal.

Mike Shenk is the crossword editor of The Wall Street Journal. See this 2014 article about him from the Penn State News.

Lois Sidway was born Lois Hobart in 1929. She grew up in Oklahoma and there graduated from Phillips University, majoring in French. She married Peter Sidway in 1952. They lived in Connecticut for many years, before moving to Virginia. Peter passed away in 2011.

Mel Taub was a huge part of NYT puzzle history. He took over as interm crossword editor after Maleska's death until 1993, until Will Shortz was hired three months later. NYT has a nice obituary.

Ernst Theimer held a doctorate in chemistry from New York University and was the editor of the 1982 book, "Fragrance Chemistry: The Science of the Sense of Smell."

Joy L. Wouk was born Joy Lattman in New York City in 1919. She graduated from Barnard in 1940 and, shortly after, married Victor Wouk. Victor was an accomplished engineer (and the younger brother of author Herman Wouk). Joy had two sons. According to one remembrance, Joy took up crossword constructing when NYC went to alternate-side parking, which caused her to have to spend a lot of time in her car. She went through so many NYT crosswords that she started to create her own. ... read more

The photo here is from her Barnard yearbook.