Blog du Wren

Wall Street Journal Crossword

Today I got another big notch in my crossword bedpost with my first Wall Street Journal puzzle. Coming shortly on the heels of my big NYT puzzle debut last week, it has a week of crossword accomplishments that has been so fun to sit back and enjoy.

A fun little story behind this Wall Street Journal puzzle: I have had my eyes set on getting a WSJ puzzle published ever since they started doing daily puzzles about a year ago*. While out at the Crossword Tournament this spring, I made a point to seek out Mike Shenk, the WSJ puzzle editor, and shake his hand in hopes it might get my name noticed when my puzzle crossed his desk. He explained that it wasn't him that did the culling, but he'd try to mention me to his assistant who did. Sure enough, 2 weeks later, I got the e-mail with my puzzle's acceptance. Whether or not my deliberate socializing helped my puzzle or if it was accepted on its merits alone, I'll never know. But it's a fun story nonetheless.

As always, I encourage you to support the people and publications that support crossword creators by going out and buying a copy of the puzzle. It's in today (June 7th, 2016) Wall Street Journal. But if you missed your chance, you can download a copy of the PDF here. Once you've done the puzzle (or if you get stuck), you can go read the review/solution at Diary of a Crossword Fiend. This one also got a gereally encouraging review, which started with the awesome line "Wren Schultz completes the hat trick today for getting a puzzle published in all three major dailies".

This crossword publication thing is pretty neat. Knowing that there are people out there doing (and hopefully enjoying) something that I've created and worked hard on really makes me feel great. And so much because of that, I hope to keep creating crosswords and getting them published. Stay tuned!

Wednesday June 8 2016

File under: crosswords

Toggle Comments (2)

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on Wed 08th Jun, 2016 11:22 am EDT Andrew said:
THE MAN THE MYTH THE LEGEND!
NEXT UP: THE CLAMDIGGER!
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on Thu 09th Jun, 2016 04:33 pm EDT Horge said:
Now that you've gotten a hat trick, please explain to me how I can throw squids onto your blog's rink, because I can't seem to find that option anywhere. (it's a Detroit Red Wings custom, if I'm not mistaken) In any case, congratulations once again! I wonder if the crossword fiend knows you were on WoF, too, which might make him/her wet himself :-)
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