My enthusiasm for crosswords goes back to my early career when we subscribed to the Pittsburgh Post Gazette and then the Harrisburg Patriot News, each of which ran NY Times crosswords, but that particular syndication model had them appear one week after they appeared in the Times. When I was a child, my father devoured all the puzzles in the daily paper (including the Jumble, the Cryptoquote, and the weird little crosswords in the middle of the classified ads), so my only exposure at that time was looking over his shoulder to offer an occasional suggestion. He was good-natured about the intrusion (after calling me a kibitzer) and sometimes even asked for help.
Like many other people, I switched over to online subscriptions to newspapers and solving puzzles on a screen. I even downloaded some crossword software for creating puzzles for some classes (like History of Math) or for my friends with some funny theme. Since retiring from teaching, I have paid more attention to how these things are constructed and started to flex my creative muscles a little creating these and other puzzles, so far just with mathematical themes.
Click the link to play the puzzle online, or see the issue of MAA FOCUS for the print version.
On a first-name basis (published in MAA FOCUS, April/May 2024)
Math Acrostics (published in MAA FOCUS, October/November 2023)
You keep using that word... (published in MAA FOCUS, February/March 2023)
You keep using that word...again (more math puns)
Contronyms (words that mean two contradictory things)
Cape Fear Breweries
Leland Neighborhoods
The following puzzles are not related to mathematics:
Ship Words 2020. In the 2010s, Shippensburg University had a marketing campaign around words that end in SHIP (such as CHAMPIONSHIP, INTERSHIP, SCHOLARSHIP).. This large puzzle revisits that idea ten years later.
I help out on the technical side with a non-profit publication meant to encourage students in the Cape Fear region of North Carolina to write. Our online version also publishes stories by adults in the area, so I have written a few pieces for that: