I'm the founder and director of The Pre-Shortzian Puzzle Project, a collaborative effort to build a digitized, fully analyzable database of New York Times crossword puzzles published from February 15, 1942, to November 20, 1993 (before Will Shortz became editor). I received several awards for this work: In 2012 I was named Person of the Year on XWord Info, which recognizes "remarkable contributors to crosswords"; in 2013 I was awarded a $25,000 Davidson Fellows Scholarship by the Davidson Institute for Talent Development for the project; and in 2014 I won First Place in Quill and Scroll's 2014 International Writing and Photo Contest – Blogging Competition for the Pre-Shortzian Puzzle Project blog.
