Gridlock: Crossword Puzzles and the Mad Geniuses Who Create Them by Matt Gaffney

Author:Matt Gaffney [Unknown]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2009-01-02T15:56:00+00:00

With some perseverance, I wound up getting a few magazines interested in publishing crosswords. They weren't exactly magazines you've heard of, or that I was necessarily proud of having a byline in. As an actor might accept a lessthan-glamorous role early in his career, so did I publish crossword puzzles in magazines whose titles might actually make you laugh out loud.

First, there was the Tabbies puzzle. Yes, there is a magazine devoted not merely to cats, but to this specific breed of cat. It is filled with stories about tabbies, pictures of them, tips for breeding, and, thanks to me for one 1998 issue, a special tabbies crossword puzzle.

Again, to give an acting analogy, this was the cruciverbal equivalent of an aspiring serious actor accepting a bit part in a Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen movie. At the top of the page was the puzzle's title, "TABBY TEASER." In between those two words was a picture of a horrified-looking (and not particularly attractive) cat. Underneath, the words "By Matt Gaffney." The chest does swell with pride, does it not? Star answers included MEOW ("Cat's comnient"), PET'I'EU ("Stroked kitty"), PAWED ("Touched, cat-style") and STRIPE ("Tabby feature, often").

In keeping with the concept of cluing to the customer I'd learned with Puzzle Tov, some of the clues were fairly clever ways to feline-ize an answer (FEAST was "Cat food brand Fancy ") while others were sort of stretches (HOLE was "Mouse's escape from the cat") and others were just plain stupid (RENT clued as "Noted Broadway musical-but not "Cats").

The next magazine that hit was something called UPSCALE ("The World's Finest African-American Magazine"), followed by Running Times, German Life, and then International Figure Skating, whose editor commissioned a puzzle, accepted the completed work for publication, then never published and wouldn't return my phone calls or emails. Lois Elfman, if you're out there, you still owe me $175, you bitch.

The magazines paid somewhat better (and faster, when they paid) than my old freelance gigs. Tabbies paid $205, for instance, Upscale paid $240, and Running Times $105. These amounts may seem strange and random, and they are. Around that time I developed a pricing theory that if my quoted prices sounded bizarre, like $205, the client wouldn't argue with it. Indeed, I went through several odd pricing theories around this time. Most magazine editors have never mmn a crossword before, so they have no idea what a reasonable number is. I wasn't sure what to charge them either, so I read up at that time on the science of Naming Your Figure.

In one business book, I read about two brothers who owned a furniture store in the Midwest. They had an interesting and unique three-piece living room set which they priced at $399, which was about standard for a more regular but similarly sized set. It went unsold on their showroom floor for months; many customers looked at it, but eventually found it too weird, and bought more conventional sets for the same price.

Then the brothers had an idea: they were going to position their unique set as a unique set.

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