Matt Gaffney is a professional crossword puzzle constructor and author who lives in Staunton, Virginia. His puzzles have appeared in Billboard magazine, the Chicago Tribune, the Daily Beast, Dell Champion Crossword Puzzles, GAMES magazine, the Los Angeles Times, New York magazine, the New York Times, Newsday, The Onion, Slate magazine, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Washingtonian Magazine, The Week, and Wine Spectator. Gaffney was thirteen when his first crossword puzzle was published in Dell Champion Crossword Puzzles, and has gone on to create more than 4,000 crossword puzzles over the past25 years. His puzzles have been published in the New York Times 58 times. He has served as judge for Will Shortz'sAmerican Crossword Puzzle Tournament and won the Junior division as a contestant in 1997. He has created puzzles for Lollapuzzoola and guest-constructed for Brendan Emmett Quigley. He was previously a contributor to the Onion A.V. Club crossword, edited by Ben Tausig. Since June 6, 2008, he has created a weekly crossword puzzle contest, and since September 21, 2011, he has created a daily crossword puzzle. On October 11, 2013, Gaffney started a Gaffney on Crosswords blog covering all things crossword related. In July 2014 Gaffney's "Murder by Meta" Kickstarter project was released.
Matt Gaffney's Weekly Crossword Contest
MGWCC is a combination crossword puzzle and "metapuzzle". It is posted every Friday afternoon and solvers generally have until the next Tuesday at noon to submit the correct answer. Instructions are provided each week, and the difficulty level increases as the month progresses. The first Friday of the month is about the level of a Monday New York Times Puzzle, where the last Friday of the month is about the Saturday New York Times difficulty level. There are prizes awarded weekly and monthly; normally a customized MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set. Once the weekly deadline passes, Joon Pahk provides a writeup and summary on the blog where won the 2011 Puzzle of the Year Award and Gaffney won the 2012 Constructor of the Year Award. MGWCC celebrated 5 years of puzzles on June 14, 2013 with . Gaffney has stated the MGWCC will run for exactly 1,000 weeks, meaning the last one will be published on Friday, Aug. 6, 2027.
On March 4, 2016, the website FiveThirtyEight said it had found similarities between puzzles Timothy Parker had edited and published through USA Today and Universal Uclick and ones previously published. Parker said he had not deliberately copied any puzzles, but Gaffney's Slate article "How to Spot a Plagiarized Crossword" presents evidence to the contrary. Since the scandal broke, Parker has been placed on temporary leave at USA Today, replaced by former Washington Post crossword editor Fred Piscop, pending investigation.
Publications
Author
Gridlock: Crossword Puzzles and the Mad Geniuses Who Create Them
The Brain Works: 20-Minute While-You-Wait Crossword Puzzles
The Brain Works 20-Minute On-the-Road Traveling Crossword Puzzles
