Local Cincinnati pediatrician has crossword puzzle featured in New York Times

Aficionados of the New York Times daily crossword know each day comes with a different difficulty level.

Monday and Tuesday are easier. Thursday is known for unique clues and unusual tricks in the puzzle. Saturday is typically the hardest and Sunday is the biggest puzzle.

So, when Sheldon Polonsky, a local pediatrician at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, had his crossword selected to be the Thursday puzzle, it was the culmination of months of work and revision.  

“People take their crosswords very seriously,” Polonsky said. “When they picked mine for Thursday because it was slightly more difficult, that was really exciting. It was fun and I’m really happy about it.”

He also recently had another crossword published May 29 in the Wall Street Journal, under the theme “Marquee Matchups.”

Polonsky is a lifelong lover of puzzles and logic games who only recently got into the New York Times crossword after his daughter suggested he download the app. After reading the comments under the daily puzzles, he learned that anyone could submit one.

“I said that sounds cool, and it was something I wanted to try and do,” he said. “I had a lot of ideas.”

At first, he said he received “rejection after rejection,” not because the puzzles were bad, but often due to the sheer volume of others also submitting puzzles to the newspaper. Polonsky would rework his puzzles, changing the theme here or a clue there until finally, an editor reached out to him with interest.

Polonsky and the New York Times crossword editor worked together to add ideas and change some clues until it was finally ready to be published June 10.

The crossword’s theme? The last word of each phrase that usually ends with the “-air” or “-airs” sound has been changed to end in the “-or” or “-ors” sound, according to his notes on the New York Times.

The answer to one of the clues—25A—was given as “Polishing the chandelier in ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ and laundering uniforms in ‘Hamilton’?” “Musical chores” instead of “musical chairs.”

“Constructors come from all walks of life, as do solvers,” New York Times crossword columnist Deb Amlen wrote about Polonsky’s puzzle. “You certainly don’t have to have a degree in English to notice or enjoy the peculiarities of our language. The only thing that published constructors all have in common, when you get right down to it, is persistence. They don’t give up easily.”

With all his recent success, Polonsky said he hopes to keep constructing and submitting puzzles in the future.

“There’s a few I’m working on, but the ideas are coming a little slower,” he said. “But I’m going to keep working on them until I run out of ideas.”