Marilynn Huret, '57

Puzzle Maker

The following is excerpted from an article by Kristin E. Holmes, Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Writer, published April 29, 2007.

A Passion To Fit Words Together.

For more than 25 years, Marilynn Huret [nee Moskowitz] has created and edited crossword puzzles.

It is the feeling that anyone addicted to crossword puzzles knows well. The last letter, or number, or word gets figured out and penciled in. Ahhhhh, completion. And then, next one.

When Marilynn Huret of Lower Makefield isn't scribbling in a puzzle and seeking that feeling herself, she is creating the brainteasers that are the welcome adversaries of the puzzle crowd. Huret specializes in crosswords. She creates them, edits them, and uploads them to the Garfield Games Web site for which she is the puzzle editor. In more than 25 years as a puzzle creator, she has edited puzzles and provided them for newspapers, magazines and Web sites.

Today, [April 29, 2007] Huret is hosting a crossword puzzle tournament at the Lower Makefield Township Building. She will bring the clock and the crosswords (courtesy of Will Shortz of the New York Times), and will serve as emcee.

"I always liked the idea of things fitting together," said Huret,... "I feel like it tests me. Sometimes I can't go to sleep until I finish." .... For Huret, the infatuation with puzzles started when she was young. Her sisters played with dolls; Huret played games. "I was always trying to get people to play Monopoly, Sorry, jigsaw puzzles, and then I got hooked on word puzzles," Huret said. "I was the oldest of four. I had to find things to do while my mother took care of the others. And we didn't have a television."

Huret earned a degree in mathematics from Adelphi University in New York. Her path to puzzle creation began in the late 1970s when she discovered Games magazine.... She began to construct puzzles and submit them for publication. When she moved to Bucks County, she met an editor who needed 160 word puzzles in three weeks. Huret supplied them, and they were published in 1982's The Great Puzzle Catalogue. Since then, Huret has edited and constructed puzzles for 101 Crossword Puzzles for Dummies, volumes one through five. She creates the Sudoku numbers puzzles for a local newspaper, and edits and creates word puzzles for [GarfieldGames.com] http://www.garfieldgames.com/.

"She loves to solve things," husband Barry Huret said, "whether it's the puzzles, or taking apart a microwave, a washing machine or a computer."

Marilynn Huret's puzzle sanctuary is an upstairs room in her home where there are hundreds of reference books for everything from anagrams to quotations. There are dictionaries for insults, and books about puns and advertising slogans. And, she is surrounded by everything Garfield.

Huret, whose puzzle nickname is Asobi (Japanese for "play"), starts to construct the crosswords on paper or by using scrabble letters. She then creates the clues. She could use the computer to help, but Huret says computers can't provide the nuance of a human.

Her life with puzzles has included wearing puzzle pajamas, playing Puzzles the clown at children's hospitals, and creating word brainteasers in Hebrew.

As a constructor, she winces at tournaments when she sees someone solve in six minutes a crossword that it might have taken 100 painstakingly creative hours to produce. "It's like a slap in the face," Huret said. "It's like being in the Louvre and somebody rides a motorcycle through it."

The above was excerpted on 6/25/2007, from the website: "A Passion To Fit Words Together - Inquirer, 4/27/2007."
( http://www.philly.com/inquirer/local/pa/bucks/nabes/7216282.html )
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