Hi. I'm Kevin Wald, at one point a
math grad student at the
University of Chicago, and
then for a time
a math postdoc at the University of Connecticut.
Links to (non-puzzle) stuff I've written:
Various puzzle-related links:
- National Puzzlers' League:
An old and venerable word puzzle organization, of which I am a member
(under the nom de guerre "Ucaoimhu").
Activities include a monthly magazine (the Enigma), and an
annual convention; my Con Cryptics page has
most of the cryptic crosswords I have written for NPL conventions.
- MIT Mystery Hunt:
An annual weekend-long puzzle-solving extravaganza at MIT; I was on the
team that wrote
2001's hunt
and
2008's hunt.
I've put together lists of the puzzles I wrote
for those hunts, in case anyone is curious, but you'll get a better sense
of the size and variety of the Mystery Hunt if you look at the whole thing.
I also have copies of sixteen cryptics
("Still There,"
"Post-Game Predictions,"
"The Sequel,"
"Power Lines,"
"A Lesson in Cryptography,"
"Yet More Villainy,"
"Further Escapades",
"Time X*X",
"Honeymoon in Segas",
"If At First You Succeed,"
"Another One From The Vault,"
"Next Winter: Wonderland,"
"DAB,"
"Some Extraction on the Side,"
"Another Campaign," and
"Mind The Sharp Bits")
I wrote for my teammates shortly before the 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006,
2007, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017,
2018, and 2109 hunts, respectively.
- BAPHL: The Boston Area Puzzle
Hunt League, a puzzle hunt that happens two or three times a year in
Greater Boston. I was on the team that wrote
BAPHL 7 for Spring, 2013 and
BAPHL 12 for Spring, 2015.
- American Crossword
Puzzle Tournament: A crossword puzzle tournament (unsurprisingly)
held every March in Stamford, CT (till 2007) or Brooklyn, NY (from 2008
on). I bring along an unofficial cryptic every year; here are the ones
from 2000,
2001,
2002,
2003, 2004,
2005, 2006,
2007, 2008,
2009, 2010,
2011, 2012,
2013, 2014,
2015, 2016,
2017, 2018, and
2019.
(2000–2002 are HTML pages; 2003–2016 are PDFs;
2008, 2009, and 2015 have had minor edits). This is also the tournament
that appeared in the vastly entertaining documentary
Wordplay; this
(non-cryptic) crossword lists my
brief appearances in that film.
- Misc Cryptics (some other cryptics
of mine).
- Puzzlecrypt:
John de Cuevas's monthly variety cryptic crossword (which I test-solve).
- Mushroom
the Journal. Each issue of this quarterly contains a non-cryptic
crossword by me with a mushroom-based theme. One such crossword
appears on the MtJ website, in the
sample
articles section.
- Fireball Crosswords.
Written by Peter Gordon, as the successor to the Sun crossword (for
which he was the editor, and in which I had a few puzzles, including
my Election Day 2008 puzzle).
- P & A Magazine.
Foggy Brume's online magazine, containing an entire puzzle extravaganza
in each issue. This page also contains a lot of Foggy's other
puzzles and extravaganzas, including Intercoastal Altercations 3
and Spacefight, which I was a collaborator on, and the very nifty
Ucaganza
he wrote for my 40th birthday (warning: the Ucaganza contains some
spoilers for my past Mystery Hunt puzzles).
If you'd like to e-mail me with comments or suggestions, or just to say
hello, I'm at
wald@math.uchicago.edu.
- Kevin