Will Shortz: Puzzle Master

This is from an article in the SF Chronicle about Will Shortz and his comments on the importance of the New York Times crossword to folks.

And then there was the time Shortz got a call from a young lawyer who wanted to propose to his girlfriend through the crossword. Shortz' first reaction was that it was a preposterous idea. The New York Times crossword was an august institution, a puzzle consumed by a huge global audience. It was no place for dispensing personal favors. But the more he thought about it, the more he realized it could be "very cool." So he assigned the crossword to one of his regular creators, and coordinated with the boyfriend about when the puzzle would appear in the paper. On the agreed-upon day, the man and his girlfriend went out for brunch, and on the way, they picked up the Times, just as they always did.

At the restaurant, she opened the crossword page, as was her custom, and started doing the puzzle. He pretended to read the front page, but in reality, he was watching her. He'd only slept 15 minutes the previous night. The theme of the puzzle was "A Modest Proposal," the title of a Jonathan Swift pamphlet. "Oh look, your name's in here," she said at a certain point. "Oh, my name's in here, too," she said a few minutes later. One of the answers was THIS DIAMOND RING, a '60s hit by Gary Lewis and the Playboys; another was WILL YOU MARRY ME, the title of a Paula Abdul song. She looked up. "This puzzle," she said. "This puzzle!" The moment was right. He got down on one knee and asked for her hand. Her reply, too, was in the crossword, under the clue, "hoped for response." The answer was YES.

Shortz also comments on how upset the crossword puzzle can make people:

The most offended people ever got, though, was by a puzzle that ran on the day of the 1996 presidential election. Two of the answers were clued as "lead story in tomorrow's newspaper!" The second word was ELECTED, and the first word was seven letters. The crossword provoked something like a popular uprising. Shortz got dozens of phone calls. How dare the Times presume the winner of the election? Furious solvers called in accusing Shortz of being biased, presumptuous, wrong and worse.

The genius of the puzzle was that there were two possible answer sets. An entire section of the grid had bivalent answers. "Black Halloween animal" could be either CAT or BAT; "French 101 word" could be LUI or OUI; "provider of support, for short" could be IRA or BRA. And the answer to the clue about tomorrow's top story could be either BOB DOLE ELECTED or CLINTON ELECTED. Once the diabolical double solution was revealed, Clinton (as he recounts in the movie) made a copy and sent it to Dole, after calling him and saying, "We both won after all!"