Michael T. Buerke author page
1 puzzle by Michael T. Buerke
with Constructor comments
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Hi, I'm Mike (he/him). I live and work in Minneapolis, including a side-hustle (as pictured in uniform) for my beloved MN Twins helping guests have a great experience at Target Field while I get paid to watch baseball. Now that I've been published in the NYT, I guess I have another side hustle?
As is often the case, I was doing some mental word exercises while trying to fall asleep, this time searching for one-syllable words that start with either a consonant blend or digraph and end with the five long vowels (Blay, Blee, Bly, Blow, Blue..no. Shay, She, Shy, Show, Shoe ... no. Why Won't My Brain Sleep ... no) and stumbled into what I thought was a tidy little set of actual words with a unique spelling of each long vowel. (Only the "O" word actually has an "O" at the end). I'm a sucker for elegant examples of simple themes, found five long entries I liked and loved that I would get to debut a favorite author in Annie Proulx if accepted. I put this one together fairly quickly from there.
Many thanks especially to Tracy Bennett over at NYT for the always kind and always helpful feedback through many previous rejections (22!) and for the suggestions that ultimately got this one accepted.
Go Twins!