My name is John.  I live in Los Angeles with my wife, my children and my dogs.  When I’m not solving or creating cryptic crosswords, I work as a lawyer.

I have been solving cryptic crosswords for about 45 years now.  It all started with the cryptic double-crostics in Thomas H. Middleton’s wonderful books.  I can remember, when my parents got a new book of crostics, I’d try to do the cryptics.  (I hesitate to say that I tried to do the cryptics before anyone else could get to them, but that may well have been the case.)  There were usually about four cryptics in a book of fifty crostics.

Later on, I found the cryptics in The New Yorker.  Funny, right after I discovered them, the magazine dropped that feature.  Other magazines included cryptics, and I attempted to solve them.  For me, the most difficult regular cryptic is in the Times Literary Supplement.  It is pretty much all literary references and, if you haven’t read every book ever written, you might find them as tough as I do.  There are lots of books of cryptic crosswords, and I’d guess I’ve bought them all.  Some are better than others.  I prefer the ones made for solvers based in the U.S.  There seem to be even more English cryptics available, but they are tough, as they include many British idioms, and require a working knowledge of cricket and soccer.

The current standard, for me at least, is the cryptic in the back of the weekly edition of The Nation.  I did Frank Lewis’s cryptics for years.  The transition to the new creators has been pretty much seamless.  The puzzle in The Nation continues to be fairly difficult to solve — certainly difficult enough to yield plenty of A-HA moments.  It is always well crafted.

Years ago, I started creating my own cryptic puzzles.  Now it is time for me, it seems, to spend even more time doing what I love to do.  I’m creating several puzzles a week, all with original clues — and all aimed at American solvers (this means that you need not have an intimate knowledge of the vernacular of British sports to solve them).  I will be making available for purchase my first book of 50 puzzles later this summer.  Stay in touch.