Anna Shechtman | |
|---|---|
 Shechtman in 2024 | |
| Born | 1990or1991(age 33–34) |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | Swarthmore College Yale University |
| Occupation(s) | Journalist and crossword constructor |
Anna Shechtman (born 1990/1991) is an American journalist and crossword constructor. Shechtman is the film editor for the Los Angeles Review of Books and constructs crossword puzzles for The New Yorker and The New York Times . [1]
Shechtman grew up in a Jewish family in New York City's Tribeca neighborhood. [2] [3] She earned her bachelor's degree from Swarthmore College. [2] In 2020 she received her PhD in English literature and film and media studies from Yale University. [1]
Shechtman was 19 when her first crossword appeared in the New York Times. [2] [3] Until she was 25, she created most of her puzzles by hand using graph paper and dictionaries rather than crossword software. Shechtman is the second youngest female crossword creator to be published in the New York Times. After graduating college, Will Shortz asked Schechtman to be his assistant at the New York Times. [4]
In May 2019, The Guardian called her "the new queen of crosswords". [3]
She has been praised for including youthful references and lighthearted clues, such as [State of being awesome, in modern slang] for EPICNESS. [5]
Shechtman's memoir The Riddles of the Sphinx: Inheriting the Feminist History of the Crossword Puzzle was published on March 5, 2024. [6] In this, she discussed how some of her puzzles have been caught in "culture war" controversy, especially over what kinds of facts and figures are considered puzzle worthy. The book also discusses her struggle with anorexia nervosa as a teen. [7] One figure she highlighted in the book is Margaret Farrar, the first editor of crossword puzzles for the New York Times. [6]
The New Yorker is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for The New York Times. Together with entrepreneur Raoul H. Fleischmann, they established the F-R Publishing Company and set up the magazine's first office in Manhattan. Ross remained the editor until his death in 1951, shaping the magazine's editorial tone and standards.
A crossword is a word game consisting of a grid of black and white squares, into which solvers enter words or phrases ("entries") crossing each other horizontally ("across") and vertically ("down") according to a set of clues. Each white square is typically filled with one letter, while the black squares are used to separate entries. The first white square in each entry is typically numbered to correspond to its clue.
A cryptic crossword is a crossword puzzle in which each clue is a word puzzle. Cryptic crosswords are particularly popular in the United Kingdom, where they originated, as well as Ireland, the Netherlands, and in several Commonwealth nations, including Australia, Canada, India, Kenya, Malta, New Zealand, and South Africa. Compilers of cryptic crosswords are commonly called setters in the UK and constructors in the US. Particularly in the UK, a distinction may be made between cryptics and quick crosswords, and sometimes two sets of clues are given for a single puzzle grid.
William F. Shortz is an American puzzle creator and editor who is the crossword editor for The New York Times. He graduated from Indiana University with a degree in the invented field of enigmatology. After starting his career at Penny Press and Games magazine, he was hired by The New York Times in 1993. Shortz's American Crossword Puzzle Tournament is the country's oldest and largest crossword tournament.
Dame Shirley Ida Conran was a British author, designer, journalist and social entrepreneur.
Timothy Eric Parker is an American puzzle editor, games creator, author, and TV producer.
The New York Times Crossword is a daily American-style crossword puzzle published in The New York Times as part of The New York Times Games, online on the newspaper's website, syndicated to more than 300 other newspapers and journals, and on mobile apps.
Margaret Petherbridge Farrar was an American journalist and the first crossword puzzle editor for The New York Times (1942–1968). 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 book of any kind that Simon & Schuster published (1924). She was considered "the grand dame of the American crossword puzzle."
Henry Hook was an American creator of crossword puzzles, widely credited with popularizing the cryptic crossword in North America. With Henry Rathvon and Emily Cox, he wrote the crossword for the Boston Globe.
Anna Biller is an American filmmaker who wrote and directed the feature films Viva (2007) and The Love Witch (2016). Biller considers herself a feminist filmmaker and consciously explores feminist themes throughout her work, including exploring the female gaze in cinema. She is vocal on both her website and in interviews about gender inequalities in the film industry.
Barbara Hall MBE was an English crossword compiler, advice columnist and writer. From the early 1980s until her retirement in 2010 she was the Crossword Puzzles Editor for the Sunday Times. In a career spanning seven decades, she edited, created and set puzzles for the Daily Mail, The Yorkshire Post, The Sunday Times and The Observer, as well as many other newspapers, making her Britain's longest serving crossword compiler.
David Steinberg is a crossword constructor and editor. At 14, he became the then second-youngest published constructor in the New York Times, and at 15, the youngest published constructor in the Los Angeles Times and the youngest known crossword editor ever for a major newspaper.
Bernice Gordon was an American constructor of crosswords. She created puzzles for many publications after beginning her career in the early 1950s, and holds the record as the oldest contributor to The New York Times crossword puzzle. A 1965 Times puzzle she wrote is credited as the first rebus puzzle, fitting an exclamation point into a single square. She celebrated her 100th birthday in 2014, just a few weeks after the 100th anniversary of the crossword. Her last puzzle was published in the Los Angeles Times on December 2, 2014.
Sarah Hayes, usually known as Arachne, is a British cryptic crossword setter. She sets puzzles for The Guardian, The Independent, the Financial Times, the New Statesman, and The Times, and advanced cryptics for The Listener crossword, Enigmatic Variations and the Inquisitor. Hayes's clues are often smutty or political and make frequent use of the generic she.
"The Riddle of the Sphinx" is the third episode of the third series of the British dark comedy anthology television programme Inside No. 9. It first aired, on BBC Two, on 28 February 2017. The episode was written by the programme's creators, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith, and directed by Guillem Morales. "The Riddle of the Sphinx", which is set in Cambridge, stars Alexandra Roach as Nina, a young woman seeking answers to the Varsity cryptic crossword, Pemberton as Professor Nigel Squires, who pseudonymously sets the crossword using the name Sphinx, and Shearsmith as Dr Jacob Tyler, another Cambridge academic. The story begins with Nina surreptitiously entering Squires's rooms on a stormy night and being discovered; this leads to Squires teaching her how to decipher clues in cryptic crosswords.
Joel Fagliano is an American puzzle creator. He is known for his work at The New York Times, where he writes the paper's Mini Crossword. On March 14, 2024, Fagliano became the interim editor of The New York Times Crossword due to editor Will Shortz being on medical leave.
Erik Agard is a crossword solver, constructor, and editor. He is the winner of the 2016 Lollapuzzoola Express Division, the 2018 American Crossword Puzzle Tournament (ACPT), a frequent contributor to the New York Times crossword puzzle, a crossword constructor for The New Yorker, the former USA Today crossword editor, and a former Jeopardy! contestant. He is currently a crossword editor at Apple News+.
Adrienne Raphel is an American poet and writer. She has published works of poetry as well as a book on the history of crossword puzzles.
Wyna Liu is an American puzzle creator and editor of the New York Times game Connections.
Tracy Bennett is an American editor and puzzle editor. She edits The New York Times Games products Wordle and Strands.
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