#LOS ANGELES TIMES CROSSWORD EDITOR SOFTWARE#
#LOS ANGELES TIMES CROSSWORD EDITOR SERIES#

A lifelong resident of New York City, she attended Berkeley Institute in Brooklyn and graduated from Smith College in 1919. Margaret Petherbridge was born March 23, 1897, in Brooklyn, New York, to Margaret (Furey) and Henry Petherbridge, who owned a licorice factory.

#LOS ANGELES TIMES CROSSWORD EDITOR SERIES#

Creator of many of the rules of modern crossword design, she compiled and edited a long-running series of crossword puzzle books including the first-ever book of any kind published by Simon & Schuster. Margaret Petherbridge Farrar (Ma– June 11, 1984) was an American journalist and the first crossword puzzle editor for The New York Times (1942–1968). I’ve just been honing my skills over time, from my crayon puzzles to my newspaper publications to my puzzle website to my connections to the crossword puzzle community.Margaret Petherbridge, from the 1919 yearbook of Smith College

My obsession with puzzles grew enough, I guess, to put me on The Times’ radar. How did you get it, and what, exactly, does an assistant puzzles editor do? OON and INI are common suffixes? People say E-MAG? “The three R’s” is the same thing as RRR? Come on, now. If it’s not real, it’s not going in my puzzle. Did you know that I AM HE AS YOU ARE HE is fifteen letters? What entry or entries would you NEVER put in a puzzle, and why? Thus, I lack a word list entirely, although I do keep a Google Doc of interesting words and phrases I stumble upon over time, regardless of whether or not they’re puzzle worthy. I enjoy this approach to construction as it allows me to get creative when no results are returned, and the increased challenge of pulling off a wide-open grid is so exciting. All my filling is done manually by querying databases using strings of known and unknown letter patterns. How many hours a week, on average, do you spend on refining your tools, like your word list? That sounds like a lot, but I only use them so as not to do anything by hand. I use CrossFire on my Mac, Crossword Compiler on my PC, and Crossword Maker for Cruciverbalists on my iPhone.

#LOS ANGELES TIMES CROSSWORD EDITOR SOFTWARE#

Do you use a computer software constructing program and, if so, which one? What do you like about it? And before my senior year of high school, my dreams of publication came true.īecause it’s the only thing I’m good at. I discovered websites such as XWord Info and Cruciverb to help me hone my skills. I downloaded software so I would no longer have to draw out puzzles on graph paper. I analyzed every last grid in “ Will Shortz’s Favorite Crossword Puzzles” for theme squares, word count and block patterns. When I discovered The New York Times Crossword in my early teenage years, I began to transform a casual hobby into a serious pursuit. On long car rides, I would draw up grids in crayon, and they were half-decent “half-decent” in the sense that maybe half my answers were acceptable for current standards. Not only did I enjoy solving Fill-It-In puzzles throughout elementary school, but I was always intrigued by their construction, so there was never a real transition between being a constructor versus a solver. What made you decide to try your hand at making a crossword puzzle? I loved the experience so much, and still remember parts of the puzzle today! Thus began an obsession with crossword-style grids that has lasted 17 years and counting.

I was so fascinated by this display of interlocking words, and although I didn’t know what 75 percent of them meant, I was able to fill the grid successfully. It was like a crossword, except that instead of clues, every answer was alphabetized by length, presented as a word bank. I was maybe six years old, waiting around in a Hair Cuttery, and I noticed a half-completed Fill-It-In puzzle in an open magazine. How did you get into puzzling? What is your first memory of solving? Saturday, J(A collaboration with Victor Fleming). When was your first New York Times crossword published? The Los Angeles Times on Sunday, March 25, 2012. Where and when was your first puzzle published?

Los angeles times crossword editor