Retired house painter, busy with music projects, time in the garden, and puzzles. Created crosswords, logic problems and word games during down times in the business, of which about 90 were published by different outlets. His website VergePuzzles.com has free interactive quote--match puzzles, plus crosswords and “Swifties.”

Adrianne is a college student majoring in computer science and climate. Her love for crossword construction began this summer, and she is excited to keep learning and growing! In her free time, she enjoys visiting cafes, watching movies, and catching up on sleep.

George is an emeritus professor of chemistry at the University of Minnesota who now has more time to devote to puzzles. His puzzles have appeared in The New York Times, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Chronicle of Higher Education, Chemical & Engineering News, among other places. You can find many of his puzzles on his website.

Ben is a member of the National Puzzlers’ League, an official at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, and a slow speed-solver. He writes two cryptograms a week for a leading New York-based presenter of puzzles and games that also does journalism.

Elizabeth is a New York City-based multi award-winning maze maker, game designer, illustrator, and author. She has developed a unique maze design form where she turns line art illustrations into mazes, which have been published in books and magazines and provides to corporate clients. /com=ya/hoo=mazeology

A lifelong poet, Emily’s second chapbook will launch in June, 2025. An English teacher by day, she is the author of the kids puzzle mystery book The Case of the Missing Mask and Other Stories and two books of Drop Quotes Puzzles (The Future and Shakespeare), was the story author for The Year of Puzzles, and was co-author of The Conjurer’s Almanaq.

Moose’s love of words began in grade school while watching Allen Ludden’s Password. He suspects his incipient “retirement job” of cruciverbalist may be more time-consuming than his career in healthcare ever was.

Alan is a software architect, mathematician, puzzle maker, and outdoorsperson living in Amherst, Massachusetts. One of his passions is distributing groceries every Monday afternoon to people in the community with food insecurity.

Amy has written a wide variety of puzzles for kids and adults for print and digital media and events, both solo and with her partners at Puzzability. Her work appears weekly in The Week Junior magazine. Amy also co-hosts the annual Bryant Park Crossword Tournament and checks the puzzles in the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post Magazine.

Brent is one of the primary puzzle and challenge designers of Palace Games, the premier escape game venue in the San Francisco Bay area. He is also the co-founder of Shinteki, a company that creates puzzle-based events for the public and private sectors. He has been creating puzzles and puzzle-based adventures since 1994.

Wei-Hwa has been a competitor at the World Puzzle Championship more than any other person. While primarily known for puzzles, he has also recently been a board game designer, escape room enthusiast, a contestent on the “The 1% Club” game show, and a Broadway musical producer. His current full-time job, however, is being a father to seven-year-old twins.

Ken is the host of Jeopardy!, and is in fact the only host in the show’s long history who owned the first three Fugazi records. He is the author of thirteen books, most recently 100 Places to See After You Die: A Travel Guide to the Afterlife and the co-creator, with Richard Garfield, of the trivia game Half Truth.

Patrick’s crosswords have appeared in the New York Times, the CrosSynergy syndicate, GAMES Magazine, the Simon & Schuster puzzle book series, in a greeting card set, and in numerous custom crosswords on his website, pjscustomcrosswords.com. He appeared in the 2006 crossword documentary Wordplay..

Alex is a long-time puzzle enthusiast who serves as one of the editors for the monthly magazine of the National Puzzlers’ League. You can read samples of his fiction and nonfiction writing, including the full text of his puzzle-themed modular novel THE RANDOM HOUSE, on his web site at alexkolkerbooks.com.

Debbie lives in St. Louis with her family, which includes two very opinionated felines. She works as a writer, editor, and puzzle constructor and is the author of the young adult fantasy series, P.A.W.S. Her puzzles have appeared in Tribune newspapers, Penny Press, and Dell magazines. She believes that with enough tea and dark chocolate you can achieve anything!

Bruce is a software developer, entrepreneur, and puzzle and game creator. He enjoys creating quirky puzzles like COCOA, the Conundrum Cognitive Assessment test and Alice in Puzzlehunt. Bruce is a member of the National Puzzlers’ League and helps to edit the monthly puzzle magazine, The Enigma.

Roy is the founder of Puzzazz and Almanaq, and the author of The Librarian’s Almanaq, The Conjurer’s Almanaq, and thousands of published puzzles. He has created puzzles, games, and events for conventions, private parties, and corporate clients. When not creating puzzles and games, Roy is a software architect and UX consultant who has a dozen patents and has brought more than 25 software products and services to market.

Robert Leighton (robert-leighton.com) is a New Yorker cartoonist and, along with his partners Amy Goldstein and Mike Shenk, co-founder of the puzzle-writing company Puzzability. He is currently writing a puzzle book for Union Square & Co. based on the work of cartoonist Rube Goldberg.

Claire designs and illustrates distinctive, handwritten puzzle books in Cleveland, Ohio. She founded her company, Cleverland Puzzle, in 2023 with the mission to champion a human-first puzzle experience. In contrast with impersonal, mass-produced game books, Claire’s puzzles stand out as artistic and fresh.

Paul is a retired school social worker from New Mexico, who worked primarily with kids on the autism spectrum. For years, he and his sister Susan have co-solved Sunday-sized puzzles over long phone conversations. He is the cluing specialist in their puzzle-making endeavors.

Cynthia (Cyn) is a writer and editor with a lifelong addiction to coffee and acrostic puzzles. She’s the author of several nonfiction books and has plans to write a novel, but so far she’s been too busy constructing 22 volumes of acrostic puzzles. Fellow “acrostaholics” are welcome at acrosticsbycyn.com.

Lorelei is a lifelong crossword enthusiast and began creating her own crossword puzzles during the pandemic. Her first puzzle book “Lorelei’s Crossword Trivia” is currently available on Amazon. When Lorelei isn’t creating crossword puzzles, she plays keyboard in a church band.

Daniel is a semi-retired educator who has fewer hours available for puzzlecraft than he did when teaching full time. Additional pursuits include athletics, piano, and worrying far too much about everything. He has to date published five collections of themed cryptic crosswords in the Excruciverbiage® series (on Amazon or order from your local bookstore) excruciverbiage.com

Susan is a retired internal medicine and hospice physician from Arkansas. With her brother Paul, she has been constructing puzzles since the pandemic, providing them to family and friends. She is happy to have this opportunity to help Kamala Harris.

Cathy has created puzzles for various events, special occasions, and sometimes just when inspiration strikes. Many of them are at idleloop.com/puzzles. Since 2017, she has been Puzzle Manager for the DASH puzzlehunt events. Her hobbies include photography, programming, baking, and solving all kinds of puzzles with her husband, Tom.

Mike is president of the Seattle-based game and puzzle company Lone Shark Games. He’s the co-creator of puzzle books like The Maze of Games, Puzzlecraft, and Mindspaces. He develops games such as Betrayal at House on the Hill, the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game, Unspeakable Words, and Lords of Vegas.

Jill Singer is a Boston-based filmmaker who discovered a passion for crossword construction four years ago.

David had his first crossword published in the New York Times when he was 14, the first of more than 500 published across dozens of publications, plus two puzzle books. He is currently Editorial Manager, Puzzles, at Andrews McMeel Universal. In addition to being a champion crossword solver, he enjoys creating custom puzzles for clients, friends, teachers, schools, and his alma mater, Stanford University. customcrossword.com

There is no Dana, only Zuul.

Kenny has been writing puzzles of all types for the last 25 years. He is the creator of PuzzleJS, a system for adding interactive players for many kinds of puzzles into existing HTML pages (tabascq.github.io/PuzzleJS).

Some creators want to support the Harris-Walz campaign but prefer to remain anonymous, for various reasons.