Why is this so meaningful? “It was the only weekly puzzle journal ever published,” Shortz says, “and it had the cream of the work of puzzle makers of the era. It takes less than three seconds for him to latch onto the thing that means the most to him: a stout bound volume of the collected issues of The Ardmore Puzzler, published between 18. Shortz has a rule: “Can I put my hands on it in sixty seconds?” So far, so good: he has always found what he was looking for in less than a minute. The area may look a little chaotic, but this is chaos of a highly controlled kind. There’s also the occasional cardboard box overflowing with puzzles. Two closets don’t quite edge into Collyer Brothers territory, but they’re crammed with canting stacks of magazines. Cabinet doors open to reveal drawers overflowing with small puzzles. Many are neatly shelved in bookcases that line a former bedroom that he redesigned as a space for much of his collection. He is also a world-class collector of puzzles and anything written about them, including twenty-five thousand books and magazines, in numerous languages. He owns the Westchester Table Tennis Center, which bears the slogan “Fitness for the body and mind.”) No one who has spent any time with Shortz would expect to find him playing something mindless. (In addition, he is a demon, even fanatical, table tennis athlete, who has played in clubs in thirty-nine of the fifty states and in nineteen other countries. He celebrates ingenuity and his taste is catholic: he likes puzzles that involve words or numbers or pictures, and he likes unusual items-sheet music, buckets, postcards, plates-that make reference to them. Shortz inhabits, challenges, rejoices in, and expands the universe of puzzles, from the simple-to-solve to the dazzling and all-but-undoable, from the clever to the mind-boggling. In addition to his degree in enigmatology from Indiana University, Shortz earned his juris doctorate from the University of Virginia.Covers to the sheet music of some of the dozens of crossword songs from 1924- 1925, when crosswords were at the height of their popularity. The owner and director of the Westchester Table Tennis Center in Pleasantville, New York - the largest table tennis facility in the United States - Shortz is also the owner of the world’s largest collection of puzzle paraphernalia, numbering more than 25,000 pieces dating back to 1533. He wrote the riddles for the film “Batman Forever” and has guest-starred, occasionally as himself, on programs like “The Simpsons,” “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” “How I Met Your Mother” and “The Crossword Mysteries.” He was also the subject of the 2006 award-winning documentary “Wordplay.” He has been editor of Games magazine for 15 years, the founder and director of the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, the co-founder of the World Puzzle Championship, co-founder of the World Puzzle Federation, and program director of the National Puzzlers’ League convention. To date, he is the author or editor of more than 500 puzzle books. Shortz sold his first puzzle professionally at 14 years old at age 16, he became a regular contributor to Dell puzzle publications. The puzzle master for NPR’s “Weekend Edition Sunday” since the program’s start in 1987, and crossword editor of The New York Times since 1993, Shortz closes Chautauqua’s week on “Games: A Celebration of Our Most Human Pastime” by sharing his favorite crosswords and puzzle makers, how crosswords are created, their curious history, and his lifelong passion for puzzles. Mystic Heart Interspiritual Meditation ProgramĪmphitheater and CHQ Assembly | $30 | How To Access This Event Week Two (July 1–8)ĭescribed by New York Magazine as a “philosopher of puzzles,” Will Shortz is the world’s only academically accredited puzzle master, having designed his own major program at Indiana University which led to his one-of-a-kind degree in enigmatology - the study of puzzles.Chautauqua Opera Company & Conservatory.
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