Who are you?
I’m Neville Fogarty, your humble constructor. I’ve written puzzles for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Chronicle of Higher Education. My puzzles have also been featured at the Lollapuzzoola and Marbles crossword tournaments as well as on the TNT drama Perception. (That’s where the photo at the top of each page comes from.)
I also wrote a weekly puzzle for two years for my school newspaper, the Ring-Tum Phi, in my undergraduate years at Washington & Lee University. I have a feeling this site will remind me of my salad days. I’ve been blogging about the Tuesday and Thursday LA Times puzzles for a while now at Diary of a Crossword Fiend (though I’m presently on holiday from that). If the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament is to believed, I’m the 69th greatest crossword solver in the country. (Or maybe even the universe?)
When I’m not puzzling, I’m a mathematics PhD student at the University of Kentucky, in Lexington, KY. I play racquetball, ultimate frisbee, and far too much MarioKart.
What is this site?
It’s a collection of crossword puzzles for you to solve. For free. Yeah, you heard me. Free.
Wait. Why would you give away puzzles for free?
Well, there are a few reasons. First, I want to get better at writing puzzles. How do you get better? Practice. So writing puzzles and posting them here gives me a reason to write a puzzle each week and gives me a chance to get feedback from you, the seasoned solver, as quickly as you can solve it and type in some comments.
Also, some of the puzzles I want to run on this site just aren’t right for many of the outlets that I can submit to. Some of them have words or themes that I think an editor would find too esoteric. Maybe I submitted a puzzle but it just didn’t excite any editor enough. If I think it’s still fun, I’m posting it here. The key here is that puzzles are fun.
When you publish a puzzle online, you have control over exactly when it comes out, too. This is great for getting out a timely puzzle when something happens in the news or to celebrate a particular milestone.
Finally, it’ll hopefully be good exposure. Maybe I’ll get a book deal out of this. Maybe not. Either way, share the puzzles with your friends!
What sort of puzzles will I find here?
I post mostly standard American crosswords, but I’ve explored but meta-puzzles and cryptic crosswords on occasion. As far as puzzle content, the content often skews toward my interests: mathematics, television, games and mythology seem to come up a lot in my puzzles.
When do you post new puzzles?
I post a new puzzle each Friday at 6AM ET.
How can I get in touch with you?
You can e-mail me at neville.fogarty@gmail.com.
What program do I need to access these puzzles?
To solve on your computer, you’ll need a program that can open .puz files. You can use Across Lite (that’s the program I use) or Crossword Solver. Both are available for Windows and Mac, and both are free. If you have an Internet Pad (or as most people call it, an iPad), try Across Lite Crosswords; Android users should try Shortyz Crosswords. (I don’t have much experience with either of these mobile programs – you may need to be clever with file management to have the file open properly.) If you use Linux, that’s awesome! Unfortunately, I’ve got nothing for you.
To print a puzzle, you can print from either of those programs or use Adobe Acrobat Reader to download a printable .pdf file. You probably already have this program; it’s available for both Windows and Mac and it’s free.
You made a mistake in a puzzle! I demand satisfaction!
All of my puzzles go through a crack team of monkey-experts before you see them; it only makes sense that there’d be a few errors since I’m using monkeys to test solve and edit. If you spot a mistake, feel free to point it out in the comments section, email me or otherwise get in touch. I’ll fix the error and punish the monkeys accordingly.
