wsj
wsj OP t1_j0hmoy1 wrote
Reply to comment by Metalhart00 in I’m Mike Shenk, Crossword Editor for the Wall Street Journal. AMA. by wsj
I'm not sure there's any innovation I could come up with that some clever constructor hasn't already done. With all of the self-published crossword sites online now, a constructor doesn't need to worry what the public is ready for.
wsj OP t1_j0hm5g3 wrote
Reply to comment by ForkShirtUp in I’m Mike Shenk, Crossword Editor for the Wall Street Journal. AMA. by wsj
I don't get hate mail. If the WSJ mailroom gets any, they're nice enough not to share it with me. I do get occasional lukewarm-or-worse reviews on some of the puzzle blogs.
wsj OP t1_j0hlw0x wrote
Reply to comment by bewildered_forks in I’m Mike Shenk, Crossword Editor for the Wall Street Journal. AMA. by wsj
As an editor, I don't like an answer word in the grid to appear in a clue for a different answer. My test-solvers are very good at pointing those out.
wsj OP t1_j0hli37 wrote
Reply to comment by RunDNA in I’m Mike Shenk, Crossword Editor for the Wall Street Journal. AMA. by wsj
Sort of a do-it-yourself crossword dictionary. Nice.
wsj OP t1_j0hl4p2 wrote
Reply to comment by bewildered_forks in I’m Mike Shenk, Crossword Editor for the Wall Street Journal. AMA. by wsj
I wish I had a better answer, but no, no particular word I've been dying to include. And I don't keep track of debut words, so I guess I don't have one to be proud of.
wsj OP t1_j0hks6k wrote
Reply to comment by PeanutSalsa in I’m Mike Shenk, Crossword Editor for the Wall Street Journal. AMA. by wsj
Filling grids becomes easier--you get to recognize which areas need to be tackled first and what words will fit. Coming up with new themes gets harder, since you feel like you've seen everything.
wsj OP t1_j0hkimu wrote
Reply to comment by Dirty_Old_Town in I’m Mike Shenk, Crossword Editor for the Wall Street Journal. AMA. by wsj
I've noticed that too, but it is just coincidence. I don't collaborate with other editors to plant common words. (Though maybe there's a super-meta contest idea in that...)
wsj OP t1_j0hk7de wrote
Reply to comment by Beavshak in I’m Mike Shenk, Crossword Editor for the Wall Street Journal. AMA. by wsj
Obviously there's often something hidden in the Friday contest puzzles. Other than those, I've probably hidden messages in puzzles in the past, though nothing comes to mind.
wsj OP t1_j0hjz1p wrote
Reply to comment by dubbsmqt in I’m Mike Shenk, Crossword Editor for the Wall Street Journal. AMA. by wsj
Yes, lots of those words that appear so often they're hard to clue in fresh ways. But they do glue the rest of the puzzle together.
wsj OP t1_j0hjt2y wrote
Reply to comment by mrshatnertoyou in I’m Mike Shenk, Crossword Editor for the Wall Street Journal. AMA. by wsj
We have occasionally Friday metas from Patrick Berry and Peter Gordon. But since I need to test-solve every meta to gauge its solvability, I'm need to be picky about those I'll invite.
wsj OP t1_j0hjhhp wrote
Reply to comment by pdxscout in I’m Mike Shenk, Crossword Editor for the Wall Street Journal. AMA. by wsj
The only words I can't include are the really offensive ones, and anything longer than the grid will fit.
wsj OP t1_j0hjbvd wrote
Reply to comment by pancakeNate in I’m Mike Shenk, Crossword Editor for the Wall Street Journal. AMA. by wsj
Will and I are friends. We worked together for years at Games Magazine, and I'm a judge every year at his crossword tournament.
wsj OP t1_j0hj6qm wrote
Reply to comment by IndyDude11 in I’m Mike Shenk, Crossword Editor for the Wall Street Journal. AMA. by wsj
I'm not too worried. I've been doing this for decades now, so if it goes away I'll be ready to retire. Though I hope it lasts another decade or two.
wsj OP t1_j0hiyup wrote
Reply to comment by JeffRyan1 in I’m Mike Shenk, Crossword Editor for the Wall Street Journal. AMA. by wsj
Yeah, no favorites. Too hard to come up with fresh clues for those folks.
wsj OP t1_j0hiujz wrote
Reply to comment by MicrowaveEye in I’m Mike Shenk, Crossword Editor for the Wall Street Journal. AMA. by wsj
I didn't have those ideas until I got to college, where I made a crossword for the daily student paper. Then I thought it would be great to make a living making puzzles, but I knew that wasn't realistic. Years later, I'm still surprised.
wsj OP t1_j0hiuiz wrote
Reply to comment by wsj in I’m Mike Shenk, Crossword Editor for the Wall Street Journal. AMA. by wsj
Hi, Maddie here from the WSJ interrupting for a minute. Here's a link to Rainbow Connection: https://www.wsj.com/puzzles/crossword/20180629/41573/index.html?mod=wsjreddit
wsj OP t1_j0hihbp wrote
Reply to comment by TheBlueSlipper in I’m Mike Shenk, Crossword Editor for the Wall Street Journal. AMA. by wsj
One of my early favorites was "Play with matches" for TENNIS.
wsj OP t1_j0hidxo wrote
Reply to comment by DuronHalix in I’m Mike Shenk, Crossword Editor for the Wall Street Journal. AMA. by wsj
At some point, I just thought "I wonder if I could make a puzzle." So I did. (The early results were pretty bad.) Editing is a lot like constructing, asking "How could this puzzle or clue be better?"
wsj OP t1_j0hi0df wrote
Reply to comment by bewildered_forks in I’m Mike Shenk, Crossword Editor for the Wall Street Journal. AMA. by wsj
Get a copy of Patrick Berry's Crossword Constructor’s Handbook from his website. And look for the Facebook groups for new constructors.
wsj OP t1_j0hhyr2 wrote
Reply to comment by bewildered_forks in I’m Mike Shenk, Crossword Editor for the Wall Street Journal. AMA. by wsj
If I consider it crosswordese, I'd be happy to never see it again. My current top nonfavorite word is STYE.
wsj OP t1_j0hhw17 wrote
Reply to comment by PizzaBuffalo in I’m Mike Shenk, Crossword Editor for the Wall Street Journal. AMA. by wsj
I solve a few crosswords. I do Matt Gaffney's Weekly Crossword Contest puzzles, and Peter Gordon's Fireball crosswords. I solve the Times puzzle sometimes, especially the unthemed Saturdays.
wsj OP t1_j0hhuf0 wrote
Reply to comment by hedgehogsinhats in I’m Mike Shenk, Crossword Editor for the Wall Street Journal. AMA. by wsj
Many of them are. The key to making a good computer-generated crossword is to spend a lot of time tweaking the word list. And even after that, the computer can't write good, clever clues.
wsj OP t1_j0hhswm wrote
Reply to comment by bewildered_forks in I’m Mike Shenk, Crossword Editor for the Wall Street Journal. AMA. by wsj
I'm not sure I have an absolute favorite. One of my favorite Friday contest puzzles was "Rainbow Connection." (I won't spoil it in case you can find it on the WSJ site.)
wsj OP t1_j0hhr30 wrote
Reply to comment by Kittystar12 in I’m Mike Shenk, Crossword Editor for the Wall Street Journal. AMA. by wsj
The first step is coming up with a theme, and finding theme answers of good lengths that balance each other. Then I place them in a grid, decide where black squares look promising, and then fill in the restof the words. Clues come last.
wsj OP t1_j0hmyuv wrote
Reply to comment by patodro in I’m Mike Shenk, Crossword Editor for the Wall Street Journal. AMA. by wsj
Until recently, I was pen solver (with plenty of cross-outs). When my printer conked out a while back, I switched to digital and haven't gone back to paper.