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Puzzling Alum: Neville Fogarty '10

Fans of Neville Fogarty’s crossword puzzles from his days with the Ring-tum Phi need not wait until he publishes his next puzzle in the New York Times to match wits with the 2010 Washington and Lee alumnus.

Neville has just opened his own site, where he publishes a new puzzle each Friday. The first of those puzzles, on July 20, drew 200 players. Here’s the link to Neville’s site. You can download the puzzles as either .puz or .pdf files. If you choose the .puz option, you’ll want to also download either the Across Lite or the Crossword Solver application that opens the files. (Of course, if you’re a heavy-duty crossword player, you know this already.)

A mathematics and economics major at Washington and Lee, Neville is working on his Ph.D. in mathematics at the University of Kentucky. He also stays plenty busy constructing puzzles for various sources, and his puzzles have even been seen on the new TNT drama “Perception.” He also blogs each Tuesday and Thursday about the Los Angeles Times puzzles on the “Diary of a Crossword Fiend” site.

Why would Neville give away his puzzles for free? Here’s his answer: “First, I want to get better at writing puzzles. How do you get better? Practice. So writing puzzles and posting them here gives me a reason to write a puzzle each week and gives me a chance to get feedback from you, the seasoned solver, as quickly as you can solve it and type in some comments. Also, some of the puzzles I want to run on this site just aren’t right for many of the outlets that I can submit to. Some of them have words or themes that I think an editor would find too esoteric.”

If you know any W&L alumni who would be great profile subjects, tell us about them! Nominate them for a web profile.