Matt Gaffney
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Matt Gaffney
Matt Gaffney is a professional crossword puzzle constructor and author who lives in Staunton, Virginia. His puzzles have appeared in ''Billboard'' magazine, the ''Chicago Tribune'', the ''Daily Beast'', ''Dell Champion Crossword Puzzles'', ''GAMES'' magazine, the ''Los Angeles Times'', ''New York'' magazine, the ''New York Times'', '' Newsday'', ''The Onion'', ''Slate'' magazine, the ''Wall Street Journal'', the ''Washington Post'','' Washingtonian Magazine'', ''The Week'', and ''Wine Spectator''. Gaffney was thirteen when his first crossword puzzle was published in Dell Champion Crossword Puzzles, and has gone on to create more than 4,000 crossword puzzles over the past 25 years. His puzzles have been published in the ''New York Times'' 58 times. He has served as judge for Will Shortz's American Crossword Puzzle Tournament and won the Junior division as a contestant in 1997. He has created puzzles for Lollapuzzoola and guest-constructed for Brendan Emmett Quigley. He ...
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Crossword
A crossword is a word puzzle that usually takes the form of a square or a rectangular grid of white- and black-shaded squares. The goal is to fill the white squares with letters, forming words or phrases, by solving clues which lead to the answers. In languages that are written left-to-right, the answer words and phrases are placed in the grid from left to right ("across") and from top to bottom ("down"). The shaded squares are used to separate the words or phrases. Types Crossword grids such as those appearing in most North American newspapers and magazines feature solid areas of white squares. Every letter is checked (i.e. is part of both an "across" word and a "down" word) and usually each answer must contain at least three letters. In such puzzles shaded squares are typically limited to about one-sixth of the total. Crossword grids elsewhere, such as in Britain, South Africa, India and Australia, have a lattice-like structure, with a higher percentage of shaded squares ...
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The Week
''The Week'' is a weekly news magazine with editions in the United Kingdom and United States. The British publication was founded in 1995 and the American edition in 2001. An Australian edition was published from 2008 to 2012. A children's edition, ''The Week Junior'', has been published in the UK since 2015, and the US since 2020. History ''The Week'' was founded in the United Kingdom by Jolyon Connell (formerly of the ''Sunday Telegraph'') in 1995. In April 2001, the magazine began publishing an American edition; and an Australian edition followed in October 2008. Dennis Publishing, founded by Felix Dennis, publishes the UK edition and, until 2012, published the Australian edition. The Week Publications publishes the U.S. edition. In the year 2021, ''The Week'' celebrated its 20 year anniversary of its first publication in the United States. Since November 2015 ''The Week'' has published a children's edition, ''The Week Junior'', a current affairs magazine aimed at 8 to 14 ...
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Crossword Compilers
A crossword is a word puzzle that usually takes the form of a square or a rectangular grid of white- and black-shaded squares. The goal is to fill the white squares with letters, forming words or phrases, by solving clues which lead to the answers. In languages that are written left-to-right, the answer words and phrases are placed in the grid from left to right ("across") and from top to bottom ("down"). The shaded squares are used to separate the words or phrases. Types Crossword grids such as those appearing in most North American newspapers and magazines feature solid areas of white squares. Every letter is checked (i.e. is part of both an "across" word and a "down" word) and usually each answer must contain at least three letters. In such puzzles shaded squares are typically limited to about one-sixth of the total. Crossword grids elsewhere, such as in Britain, South Africa, India and Australia, have a lattice-like structure, with a higher percentage of shaded squares ...
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Gannett
Gannett Co., Inc. () is an American mass media holding company headquartered in McLean, Virginia, in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.Tysons Corner CDP, Virginia
." ''''. Retrieved May 7, 2009.
It is the largest U.S. publisher as measured by total daily circulation. Massive layoffs and cessation of newspapers occurrred in November and December, 2022. It owns the

Universal Uclick
Andrews McMeel Syndication (formerly Universal Uclick) is an American content syndicate which provides syndication in print, online and on mobile devices for a number of lifestyle and opinion columns, comic strips and cartoons and various other content. Some of its best-known products include ''Dear Abby'', ''Doonesbury'', ''Ziggy'', ''Garfield'', ''Ann Coulter'', ''Richard Roeper'' and ''News of the Weird''. A subsidiary of Andrews McMeel Universal, it is headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri. It was formed in 2009 and was given its current name in January 2017. History Universal Press Syndicate (UPS) was founded in 1970 by Jim Andrews and John McMeel. The company began syndicating Garry Trudeau’s ''Doonesbury'' comic strip in October 1970. Trudeau won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning in 1975 for his work on ''Doonesbury'', and the strip is now syndicated in more than 1,400 newspapers worldwide. Over the following decades, the syndicate added other well-known comic ...
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USA Today
''USA Today'' (stylized in all uppercase) is an American daily middle-market newspaper and news broadcasting company. Founded by Al Neuharth on September 15, 1982, the newspaper operates from Gannett's corporate headquarters in Tysons, Virginia. Its newspaper is printed at 37 sites across the United States and at five additional sites internationally. The paper's dynamic design influenced the style of local, regional, and national newspapers worldwide through its use of concise reports, colorized images, Infographic, informational graphics, and inclusion of popular culture stories, among other distinct features. With an average print circulation of 159,233 as of 2022, a digital-only subscriber base of 504,000 as of 2019, and an approximate daily readership of 2.6 million, ''USA Today'' is ranked as the first by circulation on the list of newspapers in the United States. It has been shown to maintain a generally center-left audience, in regards to political persuasion. ''US ...
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Timothy Parker (puzzle Designer)
Timothy Eric Parker (born April 7, 1960) is an American puzzle editor, games creator, author, and TV producer. Puzzle career In November 1996, Parker started writing a "Daily Crossword" feature. By early 1997, Parker’s puzzle became the "Universal Crossword" syndicated by Universal Press Syndicate to newspapers and clients worldwide. In 1999, together with Universal Press Syndicate’s Uclick division, Parker founded The Puzzle Society, and is the founder and senior editor of the Universal Uclick line of crossword puzzles and games. On May 19, 2003, Parker became the second crossword editor of USA Today following Charles Preston. In summer of 2003, Parker created the "Family Time Crossword". Plagiarism scandal On March 4, 2016, the website FiveThirtyEight, in an article by Oliver Roeder, reported that "a group of eagle-eyed puzzlers" had found similarities between 1,537 of the 15,000 puzzles Parker had edited and published through ''USA Today'' and Universal Uclick and one ...
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FiveThirtyEight
''FiveThirtyEight'', sometimes rendered as ''538'', is an American website that focuses on opinion poll analysis, politics, economics, and sports blogging in the United States. The website, which takes its name from the number of electors in the United States electoral college, was founded on March 7, 2008, as a polling aggregation website with a blog created by analyst Nate Silver. In August 2010, the blog became a licensed feature of ''The New York Times'' online and renamed ''FiveThirtyEight: Nate Silver's Political Calculus''. In July 2013, ESPN acquired ''FiveThirtyEight'', hiring Silver as editor-in-chief and a contributor for ''ESPN.com''; the new publication launched on March 17, 2014. Since then, the ''FiveThirtyEight'' blog has covered a broad spectrum of subjects including politics, sports, science, economics, and popular culture. In 2018, the operations were transferred from ESPN to sister property ABC News (also under parent The Walt Disney Company). During the pr ...
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Kickstarter
Kickstarter is an American public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative projects to life". As of July 2021, Kickstarter has received $6.6 billion in pledges from 21 million backers to fund 222,000 projects, such as films, music, stage shows, comics, journalism, video games, board games, technology, publishing, and food-related projects. People who back Kickstarter projects are offered tangible rewards or experiences in exchange for their pledges. This model traces its roots to subscription model of arts patronage, where artists would go directly to their audiences to fund their work. History Kickstarter launched on April 28, 2009, by Perry Chen, Yancey Strickler, and Charles Adler. ''The New York Times'' called Kickstarter "the people's NEA". ''Time'' named it one of the "Best Inventions of 2010" and "Best Websites of 2011". Kickstarter repo ...
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Ben Tausig
Ben is frequently used as a shortened version of the given names Benjamin (name), Benjamin, Benedict (given name), Benedict, Bennett (name), Bennett or Benson (given name), Benson, and is also a given name in its own right. Ben (Hebrew), Ben (in he, בֶּן, ''son of'') forms part of Hebrew surnames, e.g. Abraham ben Abraham ( he, אברהם בן אברהם). Bar (Aramaic)#Aramaic, Bar-, "son of" in Aramaic language, Aramaic, is also seen, e.g. Simon bar Kokhba ( he, שמעון בר כוכבא). Ben meaning "son of" is also found in Arabic as ''Ben'' (dialectal Arabic) or ''bin'' (بن), ''Ibn''/''ebn'' (ابن). People with the given name * Ben Adams (born 1981), member of the British boy band A1 * Ben Affleck (born 1972), American Academy Award-winning actor and screenwriter * Ben Ashkenazy (born 1968/69), American billionaire real estate developer * Ben Askren (born 1984), American sport wrestler and mixed martial artist * Ben Banogu (born 1996), American football player ...
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Brendan Emmett Quigley
Brendan Emmett Quigley (born 1974) is an American crossword constructor. He has been described as a "crossword wunderkind". His work has been published in ''The New York Times'', ''The Washington Post'', ''The Wall Street Journal'', ''The Boston Globe'', by the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, and ''The Onion''. He appeared in the documentary ''Wordplay'' and the book ''Crossworld: One Man's Journey into America's Crossword Obsession''. In a 2007 interview, ''The Boston Globe Magazine'' credited Quigley with "making the New York ''Times'' crossword hip." Career Quigley was born in Norwood, Massachusetts. He became interested in crosswords while studying at the University of New Hampshire. Will Shortz brought his first submission to the New York ''Times''. He lists Merl Reagle, Frank Longo, Elizabeth Gorski and Patrick Berry among his influences. He has constructed puzzles for the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, the Boston Crossword Puzzle Tournament, and Lollapuzzoola. ...
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Lollapuzzoola
Lollapuzzoola is a crossword-solving tournament held annually on a Saturday in August. Founded in 2008 by Brian Cimmet and Ryan Hecht, it is the second-largest crossword tournament in the United States, and the only major tournament in New York City. The term "Lollapuzzoola" was coined by Amanda Yesnowitz, as a play on the Lollapalooza music festival. Lollapuzzoola 15 took place online and in person on August 27, 2022, and was cohosted by Brian Cimmet, Brooke Husic, and Sid Sivakumar. For its first three years, Lollapuzzoola was held at the First Methodist Church in Jackson Heights, New York, but owing to its increasing popularity, in 2011 the tournament moved to All Souls Church in New York, New York. In 2018, the tournament relocated again, still within New York City, to Riverside Church. Lollapuzzoola traditionally opens with a non-crossword social mixer game to get everyone chatting and friendly with one another. The entire day is a combination of puzzles, camaraderie, and all ...
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