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; here are 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 six cryptics ("Still
There," "Post-Game Predictions,"
"The Sequel," "Power
Lines," "A Lesson in Cryptography,"
and "Yet More Villainy")
I wrote for my teammates shortly before the 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006,
2007, and 2009 hunts, respectively.
- 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, and (with slightly modified intro)
2008 (2000–2002 are HTML pages;
2003–2008 are PDFs). This is also the tournament that appeared in
the vastly entertaining documentary
Wordplay; this
(non-cryptic) crossword lists my
brief appearances in that film.
- 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.
- The Sun Crossword. A
top-notch (formerly newspaper-affiliated) non-cryptic crossword, edited
by Peter Gordon; I've had a few puzzles there (including my Election
Day 2008 puzzle). Currently in a campaign to
come back as
an ongoing online enterprise.
- 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).
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