Auspicious Anniversary

My crossword-creating career, such as it has been, officially kicked off one year ago today with a submission to Games Magazine entitled "Signals". I was going to post the puzzle, but I can now see that it is a subpar effort no editor would touch.

It did have some colorful words such as WIEZ (which was Pauly Shore's old MTV nickname), KUMAR (as in "Harold And Kumar Go To White Castle"), and NANTZ (which is the sportscaster Jim, which was actually misspelled once in a Liz Gorski puzzle in a Simon & Schuster edition). But for those words there were some real clunkers!

Egyptian ferryboat patron - AKEN
Its capital is Taillin - ESTOVER
Classical guitarist Asaad - ODAIR
Folksinger Cargill - ACIE
Acct's concern - TCO

That's four fairly obscure words and a meaningless abbreviation in a puzzle that should really be no more than Wednesday difficulty.

I have since created about seventy puzzles, mostly 15x15, with a few 17's and a 23 thrown in for good measure. Editors have accepted seven of my puzzles so far: three for Games, two for LA Times Syndicate, and one each in USA Today and The New York Times. That's only a .100 batting average, but I'm still learning and still honing my skills.

Robair has created significantly more puzzles but has yet to make a sale, in spite of a very innovative puzzle sitting on Will Shortz' desk right now that... no, I won't spoil that just yet. You'll hear of it soon enough when it happens. Meantime, watch soon for some news of coming attractions (as I alluded to this morning).