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Times crossword editor wil1/25/2024 "She is a pistol," said Shortz, who has known her for years. She recalled an argument with Times crossword editor Will Shortz over the words YAY and YEA: Gordon contends the former isn't a word Shortz disagrees and allows it in his puzzles. Gordon has had many puzzles rejected, too, acknowledging that some of her references are not modern enough. Her funny themes include types of "choppers" (HELICOPTERS, GUILLOTINES, WISDOM TEETH) and different kinds of "removers" (FLY SWATTER, FLEA POWDER, ROACH SPRAY). Unpublished puzzles are piled on the window sill. "She'll spend hours and hours looking for the right word or the right phrase," said her youngest son, Jim Lanard, 73. Ideas come to her constantly, and she uses a computer to build the grids. Gordon works best in the pre-dawn hours in her home office in downtown Philadelphia, surrounded by two bookcases of dictionaries, almanacs and other directories. "Our styles are a bit different in that way, but we still had a lot of fun collaborating," he said, calling Gordon "amazing and also prolific." Steinberg described the crossword as a blend of Gordon's deep classical knowledge and his penchant for modern language. The central answer in the puzzle was AGE DIFFERENCE. The most recent appeared last summer when she teamed up with teenage constructor David Steinberg, a regular contributor to the Times. Since then, the paper has printed more than 140 of her clever grids. She remembers one long answer was MAMIE EISENHOWER. Records are a bit sketchy - the Times didn't give constructors bylines until the 1990s - but it seems her first crossword was published in the early 1950s. "My child if you spend as much money on cookbooks as you do on dictionaries, your family would be better off," Gordon recalled her mother saying. She began creating puzzles in her 30s because she liked the challenge and it offered some extra pocket money.įarrar was not impressed with her first few attempts, and neither was Gordon's mother. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, she raised three children before working as an artist and traveling around the world. "And the others (said) how wonderful it was. "She got hundreds of letters, some screaming that they never saw anything worse and it was cheating," Gordon said. Letters poured into then-crossword editor Margaret Farrar, who forwarded some to Gordon. Though now considered standard fare, such a trick was unheard of when it first appeared decades ago. Her first rebus in the Times used an ampersand to represent the letters AND, so an answer like SANDWICH ISLANDS was entered as S&WICH ISL&S. She's credited with pioneering the "rebus" puzzle, which requires solvers to occasionally fill in symbols instead of letters. The grids have evolved a lot since then, thanks in part to Gordon.
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