His intention was to make the Sun puzzle the best in the country, no easy task. When the New York Sun began publishing in 2002, Peter Gordon jumped ship from the Times to edit its crossword. There were other good daily puzzles around, but the big kid on the block had reasserted himself artistically, the Times was back on top. Within weeks of his hire in 1993, the reputation and the reality of the Times crossword were back in alignment: Artistic standards were raised, puzzle writers' fees were increased, and the Times's puzzle audience widened.Ĭompeting daily crosswords began to have more trouble syndicating their puzzles, and started to position themselves not so much as rivals to the Times, but rather as "somewhat easier than the Times crosswords" or otherwise different in some way. Rival editors like Stan Newman at Newsday had begun successfully syndicating their ownĭaily crosswords, pointing out in their promotional literature how obscure and practically unsolvable some Times puzzles had become.Įnter Will Shortz, the genial former editor of GAMES magazine, who famously possesses the world's only college degree in enigmatology (the study of puzzles).
The so-called "New Wave" style of crossword puzzles, which shunned obscurities in favor of familiar words, humor, and pop culture, held little appeal for Maleska, and when he passed away in 1993, the Times puzzle was in need of a savior to keep pace with the zeitgeist. The average well-educated person simply couldn't be expected to know that LOA, in an infamous clue example of the era, was a "Town in Utah"-a town with around 250 people, as it turned out. This made many of his puzzles less a fun, fair challenge than an unsolvable, headache-inducing battle with a set of encyclopedias. Maleska was known for filling his puzzles with "crosswordese," those painfully obscure words you never see anywhere in life outside of the crossword page. Maleska, the puzzle's reputation began to slide, at least in crossword circles. But under the editorship of Weng's successor, Eugene T. She was followed by Will Weng, who edited to mostly favorable reviews until 1977.Īt that time, the puzzle was regarded as the best daily crossword in the land, and it was. The New York Times crossword established its household-name brand dominance under the skillful eye of Margaret Farrar, who edited the crossword from its debut in 1942 to her retirement in 1969. But before we get to that, a little history to set the scene. For the first time in recent memory, the answer to the question posed in the opening sentence of this article is seriously debatable.Īs a normal American, I have an unhealthy fascination with the concept of "best," so I decided to run an experiment to see which of these two puzzles would come out on top in head-to-head competition-a crossword smackdown, if you will. This novel creature is the New York Sun crossword, and is driven by the vigor of its puzzle editor, Peter Gordon, who used to work for Shortz at the Times. But recently, a rival has emerged upon the crossword veldt to challenge the Times's supremacy and its puzzle editor, Will Shortz. They might well be right three years ago, they indisputably were right. WHICH NEWSPAPER PRODUCES THE BEST crossword puzzle in the country? Ask 10 people at your next dinner party and all of them will say, "Why, the New York Times, of course," while shooting you a doesn't-everybody-know-that? look.
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