Remembering an Irondequoit woman who spread the word on crosswords
During the pandemic, when we had so much time on our hands, but also before and after the pandemic, many of us have been cheered and sustained by crosswords.
The world might be in chaos, but there’s something reassuring, indeed comforting, about answering all those clues, about filling in all those boxes.
And, giving credit where credit is due, we owe the late Nancy Salomon of Irondequoit thanks for our crossword pleasures. It’s not just that she created hundreds of crosswords, it’s also that she mentored so many crossword constructors.
Even though she was not widely known in Rochester, Salomon, who died in May 2021 at age 74, deserves to be included on our list of Remarkable Rochesterians.
I was reminded of Salomon’s contributions while reading a recent story about crosswords in The New Yorker.
Natan Last, a writer and crossword creator, profiled Mangesh Ghogre, 43, a native of India and a crossword puzzle creator.
Ghogre began solving crosswords when he was in late teens — it was a way to improve his English language skills — and he later decided he wanted to design crosswords, as well.
“He began corresponding with Nancy Salomon, a legendary constructor and also a generous mentor,” Last writes. “Over email — Ghogre couldn’t afford international phone calls — Salomon workshopped his theme proposals.”
Salomon also schooled Ghogre on overused crossword words, and on phrases that worked in India, but not in the U.S. Eventually, one of his puzzles was accepted for publication in the Los Angeles Times, whereupon he wrote Salomon a wonderful thank-you note.
A 1968 graduate of the University of Rochester, Salomon had to leave her work as a systems programmer in 1982 because of herniated discs.
Ten years later she took a course on how to create a crossword puzzle. She got very good at puzzling and would go on to have hundreds of her puzzles published in The New York Times alone, as well as in other papers.
I learned of Salomon in late 2005 when Will Shortz, the editor of the Times puzzles gave a talk in Rochester. During his presentation, he asked Salomon to stand and take a bow. Intrigued, I contacted Salomon and visited her in her Irondequoit apartment.
We had a wonderful talk, and I wrote about her in a January 2006 column. I mentioned one of her many protégés, Kyle Mahowald. In 2004, when he was 17, Mahowold became the youngest person to author a Sunday crossword in the New York Times.
In an email to me, Mahowald, then a student at Harvard University, praised Salomon as one of the best teachers he ever had.
“She always responds with upbeat and positive feedback, even when the crux of the message is ‘This is no good, start over,’” Mahowald wrote me. “... She gets no money, no accolades, nothing tangible out of helping so many people. It’s just something she does out of kindness.”
Helping others helped herself, Salomon said. Though she was limited by her bad back, doing crosswords and helping crossword designers had given her a community of friends. “It kinda saved my life,” she told me.
Puzzle tips
When Nancy Salomon died, Evan Birnholz, who writes The Washington Post’s Sunday crossword wrote a string of tweets about how she mentored him when he was starting to construct crosswords.
“I can only imagine that a mentor who was less patient and less passionate about puzzles might have steered me away from crosswords entirely,” Birnholz tweeted. “Nancy did the opposite. She helped foster a love of puzzle construction that I’ve carried with me ever since.”
Birnholz directed would-be crossword creators to Salomon’s advice essays on the website Cruciverb.com. The easiest way to access her tips is to do a search for: Nancy Salomon Cruciverb.