Peggy & Will

It's the birthday of memoirist and art collector Peggy Guggenheim, (books by this author) born in New York City (1898). Her father died on the Titanic shipwreck, and at the age of 14 she inherited nearly half a million dollars.
She moved to Europe to live a Bohemian lifestyle. She had an affair with Samuel Beckett, as well as several other artists.
Back in her native New York City, she opened a gallery called "Art of this Century" on West 57th Street. She became the patron of an unknown abstract painter by the name of Jackson Pollock, supporting him so he could be a full-time artist, and she held a one-man show for him at her gallery, one of his first. Soon he was famous.
She wrote some memoirs about her affairs with the rich and famous and artistic, including Out of This Century (1946) and Confessions of an Art Addict (1960).


It's the birthday of the world's only academically accredited enigmatologist, Will Shortz, (books by this author) born on an Arabian horse farm in Crawfordsville, Indiana (1952). He's the current crossword editor of The New York Times, the puzzle master of NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday, and the author or editor of dozens of books.
Shortz sold his first puzzle to a magazine when he was just 14 years old, and within a couple years he was a regular contributor to puzzle publications.
In his 16 years of editorship of the Times puzzle page, he's introduced some changes. The crossword puzzles now have constructor bylines; the puzzles contain more references to pop culture. He's made the Monday puzzles slightly easier and the Friday and Saturday puzzles harder than they used to be.
His all-time favorite crossword clue is "it might turn into a different story," with the answer "SPIRALSTAIRCASE."