Most outlets offer less than $100 for a daily crossword and less than $300 for a Sunday-sized, despite the huge number of readers who presumably buy the paper in part or in whole for the crossword, and despite the substantial labor and creative energy that construction requires. Pay is - to use a puzzle term - olid (foul). If you’re hoping for riches, you’ll be disappointed. And this is true not just at The Times, but at other papers that run puzzles, such as Newsday and the LA Times. Attribution comes in the form of fine-print bylines, and in syndication the author’s name is often excluded altogether. (A few months ago, constructor Tim Croce received an acceptance from The New York Times - for a puzzle he submitted in 2001.) Even after a puzzle is accepted, the constructor may not know in advance when it will run. Submissions may sit in an editor’s inbox for months or even years before the author hears back. Puzzles are sent on spec to editors, who buy them or turn them down, and who fine-tune the ones they accept without, as a nearly universal rule, consulting the constructor. In fact, crosswords are made by people (called constructors) whose status is roughly equivalent to freelance writers - that is to say, low. If you haven’t caught the documentary Wordplay, or bothered to look up the name that appears in tiny agate type below the grid in The New York Times, you might join many others in assuming that the crossword is written by editor Will Shortz. The crossword puzzle can seem utterly authorless.
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