In the history of the New York Times crossword, there have been 27,407 daily puzzles and five full-time editors. (Mel Taub was the interim editor following Mr. Maleska's death in 1993.)
The puzzle counts below are the actual number of puzzles with each editor's byline, not the number of days they served. Because of strikes and other issues, some days had no puzzles.
Only daily puzzles are counted here. (Variety puzzles have incomplete data.)
Margaret Farrar edited 7,085 daily crosswords from Sun Feb 15, 1942 to Sun Jan 5, 1969 (25.9% of total) |
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Will Weng edited 2,975 daily crosswords from Mon Jan 6, 1969 to Sun Feb 27, 1977 (10.9% of total) |
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Eugene T. Maleska edited 5,947 daily crosswords from Mon Feb 28, 1977 to Sun Sep 5, 1993 (21.7% of total) |
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Mel Taub edited 76 daily crosswords from Mon Sep 6, 1993 to Sat Nov 20, 1993 (0.3% of total) |
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Will Shortz edited 11,071 daily crosswords from Sun Nov 21, 1993 to Wed Mar 13, 2024 (40.4% of total) |
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Joel Fagliano edited 253 daily crosswords from Thu Mar 14, 2024 to Thu Nov 21, 2024 (0.9% of total) |
In the Shortz Era, there were only four times when the editor byline read something other than Will Shortz.
That 2011 crossword was the playoff puzzle from the Lollapuzzola 4 tournament.