7/1/2023 0 Comments Crossword editor online“He has already done that three times over.”Ĭonstructing for the Times and elsewhere is just part of Steinberg’s portfolio. “There are very few people who have hit for the cycle, or publish on every day of the week,” says Jeff Chen, ’92, himself a prolific constructor who runs the blog XWord Info. Sundays are smorgasbords.)Īnd while Steinberg’s late-week efforts get the most attention, fellow constructors appreciate his ability to tackle the range of puzzles, including lowly Mondays, which present the daunting challenge of needing to be friendly enough for beginners and fresh enough for jaded veterans. (Puzzles get more difficult as the week advances to Saturday. Since then, Steinberg, now a Stanford sophomore, has ranked among the most prolific Times contributors, his work appearing more than 50 times, typically on Fridays and Saturdays, the most difficult days of the week. It appeared in the Times on June 16, 2011, just days after his graduation from eighth grade. After watching the documentary Word Play, in which a master constructor demonstrates making a crossword, Steinberg walked up to his room, pulled out some graph paper and began his craft in earnest.Īfter a pile of rejections and a crucial switch from paper to laptop, he scored with his 17th submission, a fiendish Thursday puzzle that required solvers to crack a code. It would take two more years for him to get that serious. “I might submit it to Will Shortz, editor and maker of the NY Times crossword puzzle,” he wrote on his presentation poster. He made his first crossword for a fifth-grade project-a jumble of trivia and abbreviations perhaps most notable now for its cherubic swagger. By kindergarten or so, he was taking on 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzles.Īnd by 10, he was starting to bring his love for both into a common focus. (Unless, of course, you are the type who reads “Place to get drunk before getting high?” and immediately pens in “airport bar.”)īy age 1, Steinberg had not only memorized the alphabet, but also had a pet letter-a wooden “J” he toted wherever he toddled, his mother, Karen Steinberg, says. Looking back, the clues to David Steinberg’s crossword wizardry seem a tad more obvious than, well, the clues in some of Steinberg’s testier puzzles.
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