![]() “That just opened up the idea for phrases like ’in a rut” or ‘all the way,’ and then titles. The answer was “hard-shelled crab.” It “crawled across the page,” he said in an interview in 1991. One of his puzzles had the first multiple-word answer ever printed in the Times. Over the years he pioneered many changes in construction, including the use of nonprimary definitions, such as “nutcracker”s suite,’ for “nest” and “meter man” for “poet,” rather than the straight-from-the-dictionary clues of the past. He took a year off to study at Harvard University from 1954 to 1955 and was the principal of Junior High School 184 from 1955 to 1958.ĭuring this time, Maleska had dozens of crossword puzzles published in the Times. ![]() 169 in 1946, and in 1952 he became the principal of P.S. He was the assistant to the principal at P.S. He was an English teacher at Frederick Douglass Junior High School in Manhattan from 1940 to 1946. In 1940 he began his more than thirty-year career in the New York City public school system. Maleska’s puzzles were included almost from the start.įrom 1937 to 1940, Maleska taught Latin and English at a junior high school in suburban Palisades Park, New Jersey. At the time, the New York Times did not publish crossword puzzles, considering them “a primitive form of mental exercise.” In 1942 the Times published its first puzzle in the Sunday magazine. In 1940 Maleska was accepted as a regular contributor at $1.50 a puzzle. The Tribune rejected his first forty puzzles, because they were so well crafted that they thought he was using other puzzle writers’ clues. While in college Maleska began submitting his puzzles to the Tribune. Their friends called them “Big Gene” and “Little Jean,” and both became schoolteachers. The one-across clue was “Most beautiful girl on campus.” The answer was “Jean.” They were married on 23 March 1940. He saw her working on the crossword in the New York Herald-Tribune, so he constructed a puzzle for her. His first success came while he was an undergraduate, trying to catch the attention of a student named Jean Merletto. He began to keep notebooks of words and definitions, and eventually he created his own puzzles. He saw the puzzle and was hooked for life. He was traveling home from high school on the commuter train, when he found a copy of the New York Daily News on the seat next to him. Maleska discovered his first crossword puzzle in 1932. He did some graduate work at Columbia University from 1943 to 1946, and he received a doctorate in education from Harvard University in 1955. Raised in Bergen County, New Jersey, he attended Regis High School in New York City and Montclair State Teachers College in New Jersey, where he received a BA. His father worked for the Central Railroad Company in New Jersey. Maleska was the son of Matthew Michael Maleska and Ellen Kelly. 3 August 1993 in Daytona Beach, Florida), educator, legendary crossword puzzle editor for the New York Times, and the only person to have a New York City school named for him during his lifetime. ![]() 6 January 1916 in Jersey City, New Jersey d.
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