Puzzling

Today is the birthday of puzzle master Will Shortz (books by this author), born on an Arabian horse farm in Crawfordsville, Indiana, in 1952. He's the world's only academically accredited enigmatologist; he designed his own course of study at Indiana University. 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. He's the current crossword editor of The New York Times, the puzzle master of NPR'sWeekend Edition Sunday, and the author or editor of dozens of books. His latest obsession is KenKen, a numerical logic puzzle originally designed by a Japanese teacher to help kids learn math.
He told Time, "Puzzles really help newspapers. They help the print edition because most people agree it's more satisfying to solve a puzzle on paper than on a screen."
His all-time favorite crossword clue is "it might turn into a different story," with the answer "SPIRALSTAIRCASE." His favorite crossword puzzle is the one that was printed on Election Day 1996, designed by Jeremiah Farrell. The puzzle had two different correct solutions with the same set of clues. The clue whose answer formed one of the middle rows across read, "Lead story in tomorrow's newspaper." The answer seemed to be CLINTON ELECTED, but Jeremiah Farrell had carefully constructed ambiguity in all of the crossing clues, so that the answer to that middle-across clue could also be "BOB DOLE ELECTED." Either answer worked perfectly in the puzzle. The first downward crossing clue, for instance, was "Black Halloween animal." Either "bat" or "cat" would be correct, with the C for the start of CLINTON or the B for the start of BOB DOLE. Will Shortz later said, "It was the most amazing crossword I've ever seen. As soon as it appeared, my telephone started ringing. Most people said, "How dare you presume that Clinton will win!" And the people who filled in BOB DOLE thought we'd made a whopper of a mistake!"