Hogan Lovells Partner Makes NYT Crossword Debut After Daring E-Mail Submission
Hogan Lovells partner Chris Handman has made his New York Times crossword debut with a puzzle that is tied to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s Rally to Restore Sanity/March to Keep Fear Alive.
Handman, an appellate litigator, writes in the New York Times that he has submitted five crossword puzzles to the newspaper. The first three were rejected and the fourth was recently accepted for publication at a later date. With some consternation, Handman broke the snail-mail-only rule when he submitted his fifth puzzle to Will Shortz, this one on the Rally to Restore Sanity, on Sept. 29, about a month in advance of the rally.
“Needless to say, I was reluctant to bypass that established pipeline and e-mail Will directly,” Handman writes, “lest he think that, with all of one puzzle now under my belt, I considered myself too cool for mail.” The protocol violation was forgiven, however; Shortz notified Handman that the puzzle was “too cool not to run.”
Handman says he got the idea for the puzzle when he was watching Colbert’s show and noticed that the websites for the two rallies both have 20 letters. But the coincidences didn’t end there. Each event begins with a five letter word, and the names Colbert and Stewart both contain seven letters.
Crosswords are not Handman’s only hobby. “Although constructing has recently commanded an increasingly large share of my free time,” he writes, “I still make room for some key essentials: going to indie rock shows (despite its traditionally staid reputation, D.C. is a surprisingly good city for music), playing guitar and cooking (my wife and I entertain all sorts of Walter Mitty-like dreams of opening a B&B one day in the [probably very] distant future). We also have an almost unhealthy love for card games and board games (actually, any games, really), which means a few nights out of the month will typically involve some sort of dinner-drinks-and-games trifecta with friends.”
Hat tip to the Washington Post.
