A nine-letter word that begins with ‘c’
Tinton Falls resident recently published her last crossword puzzle
BY KATHY HALL
Correspondent

FARRAHMAFFAI staff Mary Brown has designed crossword puzzles for The New York TImes and other publications. At left is a sample of the answer key to her last puzzle.

Every morning millions of people start their day with a cup of coffee, a sharp pencil and a crossword puzzle.

Since 1981, 83-year-old Mary Derderian Brown, a resident of the Seabrook adult community in Tinton Falls, has spent part of her time devising these entertaining brain teasers. More than 100 of her puzzles have been published by Simon & Schuster, Running Press, Random House, The Boston Globe, The New York Times and Wordsquare Publishing Co.

Mary Derderian was born in Milford, Mass., on Dec. 24, 1921, and grew up in a non-English-speaking household.

“My parents came here from Armenia,” she said. “When I went to kindergarten, I didn’t know how to speak English. Maybe I was fascinated with English words because at first I didn’t understand them.”

She attended Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, where she majored in math and planned to be a math teacher. Instead she found employment as an engineering assistant at General Electric. In November 1949 she married James Brown.

“My husband, Jim, liked doing crossword puzzles,” she explained. “I never had done one before so I thought I would try it.”

During the early years of their marriage, the couple worked on puzzles together. “He’d do one word and I’d do another,” she said.

Brown enjoys all kinds of puzzles. “Somebody gave me the kind they do in England. I was fascinated. Their clues are tricky, sort of a puzzle inside of puzzle,” she said.

Eventually she began to wonder how crossword puzzles were created. In 1981 she wrote to Margaret Ferrar, puzzle editor at Simon and Schuster, who sent her guidelines for creating a puzzle and suggested she submit one. She had seen Ms. Ferrar’s name in a book and wrote to her because she was a woman editor, a rare occurrence at the time.

“She was one of the big names in the puzzle world,” Brown said, “but she was very sweet.”

Ferrar had also been crossword puzzle editor at the New York World and The New York Times and is credited with creating standards for crossword puzzles that still apply today.

Brown honed her craft by studying other people’s work.

“Looking at puzzles, you learn things you should and shouldn’t do,” she said. “I looked to see how they were made up and the themes used, and then you could sort of figure out maybe that’s what this editor would like.

“You get so you don’t use certain words because you know he’s not going to like it, or she — most editors are he’s, I guess, except Margaret,” she added.

Crossword puzzle rules prohibit references to death, disease, drugs or sex. “You don’t use profanity or things that are going to disturb someone’s coffee in the morning,” Brown explained.

Her first puzzle was published by Eugene Maleska, editor of The New York Times crossword puzzle section, in 1981.

“Mr. Maleska was very encouraging and gave me some great advice on how to improve my puzzles,” she said.

Other editors offered suggestions as well.

“Every time I’ve sent something in they were so nice about telling me how I can change it to make it better and whether they liked it or not. They were very kind,” she added.

Brown had most of her puzzles published by The Crosswords Club, which paid her from $250 to $300 per puzzle.

“When you write to an editor, they will tell you how much they pay for each size puzzle,” she explained. “Once you have submitted your puzzle for publication, you get a note right away regarding whether or not it has been accepted. Then, about a year later, you receive a copy of the book it has been published in and a check.”

Because creating puzzles takes a lot of time, she only submitted a few a year. “I didn’t create crossword puzzles for the money. I did it for the challenge,” she said.

The modern crossword puzzle evolved from word squares composed of equal length words that can be read both horizontally and vertically

The first known crossword puzzle in America was created by Arthur Wynne and published on Dec. 21, 1913, in the Sunday New York World. Unlike today’s crossword puzzles, Wynne’s was diamond-shaped and contained no black squares.

Today’s crossword puzzle is governed by a number of rules, beginning with the size and shape of the puzzle grid. Standard puzzles range from 15 by 15 squares to 23 by 23. The pattern of black-and-white squares must be symmetrical. If you rotate the grid 180 degrees, the pattern should look the same. The number of black squares should not exceed 16 percent of the total grid squares and may not cut the grid into separate pieces. Every letter must appear in both an across and a down answer. Creating the pattern of the grid is part of designing the puzzle.

“It’s always an odd number of squares,” Brown explained. “There’s a middle line and it has to be even on both sides. If there are three white squares and a black square on this side, it has got to be the same on the other.”

Brown’s method of developing a puzzle began with coming up with a title and a theme.

“Larger ones always have themes,” she said. “If it doesn’t have a title, you are missing one important clue.”

Six to eight words in the puzzle must relate to the theme and are placed in the grid first. Theme entries must be placed symmetrically within the puzzle. If one theme entry is three rows down from the top of the grid, there must be another theme entry in the same position three rows up from the bottom. Nontheme words should not be longer than the theme-related ones, and themes should not require specialized knowledge to understand or appreciate them.

“You are better off to find something that’s interesting but not ridiculous,” she said. One puzzle Brown created was based on the word “Quilt.”

“The word ‘quilt’ is five letters, and each letter is also a word,” she explained. “If I ask you to define ‘q,’ there are three different possible definitions. There’s the stick used to play pool, a ponytail or standing in a line. Each letter of the word is the same way, and I made a puzzle out of it. I was so pleased with that,” she added. “I don’t know how I thought of that, maybe I was quilting and said, ‘What an interesting word.’ ”

According to The New York Times crossword specifications, “the clues in an ideal puzzle provide a well-balanced test of vocabulary and knowledge, ranging from classical subjects like literature, art, classical music, mythology, history, geography, etc., to modern subjects like movies, TV, popular music, sports and names in the news. Clues should be accurate, colorful and imaginative. Puns and humor are welcome.”

While most of Brown’s puzzles drew on her own knowledge, she used the resources of the Peabody Library in Massachusetts where she was a volunteer as well. This year, after the death of her husband, she retired from creating crossword puzzles. Her final puzzle was published in the November issue of The Erickson Tribune, a monthly publication that serves the nationwide Erickson retirement communities.

For Mary Brown the appeal of creating and completing a crossword remains the same.

“You’ve got to get your mind going,” she said. “I have to do a puzzle every so often; otherwise, I go nuts.”