Today’s puzzle that I created for Universal Crossword is a landmark. It’s the 500th puzzle that I’ve had published commercially. Editor David Steinberg also published the 4th one in that string of 500, just over five years ago when he…

Visitors to the “News & Updates” link on my site will have noticed that I haven’t done any posts for several months. Here’s why. Not very many people were reading them. Nearly all the visitors to this site have come…

In my last post I explained the approval process for puzzles (which varies widely among publishers). Once the puzzle is approved, the constructor is in for a wait. All editors want to have a “queue” of puzzles that are in…

After you’ve sent off your puzzle (or theme query) and waited patiently, you’ll receive a reply. This is always via email, unless, of course if you don’t have email (but you probably wouldn’t be reading this, would you?). If you…

In my last post I discussed my “work in progress” inventory which at that time was 32 puzzles. This post is about what happens next. Editor/publishers have two different ways of accepting puzzles for consideration. The first (and in my…

Recently I had the opportunity to spend some time chatting with a local acquaintance who has a passing interest in crossword puzzles. Like most solvers, he has little knowledge of how crosswords are put together, so I was explaining to…

WELCOME BEST CROSSWORDS FANS! – This web site has seen a surge of traffic since I began publishing puzzles on the bestcrosswords.com site. So, if you’re coming from that site, welcome to mine! You’re probably more interested in solving puzzles…

Since completing my fourth book last fall (“Easy-ish Unplugged Crosswords”) I’ve devoted my full time and attention to constructing puzzles for commercial publication. This has started to bear fruit, as the submit-to-publish time can run from four to eight months…

I’d just like to give a shout-out to David Steinberg who is the editor of a new syndicated crossword puzzle series called Puzzle Society Crosswords. It’s published by Andrews McMeel which is one of the big names in news/entertainment/commentary syndication.…

Looking back on the previous year . . . it was pretty amazing. All told, 73 of my puzzles were published in 9 different venues. The largest number of appearances was in Newsday (26), with Los Angeles Times in second…