Mike Shenk

Mike Shenk (born 1958) is an American crossword puzzle creator and editor. He has been the editor of the Wall Street Journal crossword puzzle since 1998. He is considered one of the foremost crossword constructors of his time.

Career

Shenk grew up as one of four siblings on a family farm in Manheim, Pennsylvania. He solved his mother's Dell crossword books and taught himself to construct puzzles in his youth. He worked for Games as a constructor and editor until 1996 except for one year when it was briefly discontinued. After leaving Games, he and former Games editors Amy Goldstein and Robert Leighton founded the puzzle-writing company Puzzability in 1996. The newspaper started with weekly 21×21 puzzles on Fridays and added variety puzzles on Saturdays when the paper's weekend edition launched in 2005.

Shenk has invented several variety puzzle formats, such as Spell Weaving and Snowflake. At ACPT in 2005, he hand-constructed, clued, and printed copies of a new puzzle in an hour, a feat recorded during the making of the documentary Wordplay, and the puzzle ran in the Times two weeks later. He was awarded the Merl Reagle MEmoRiaL Award "for lifetime achievement in crossword construction" at ACPT in 2019.

Personal life Shenk lives in Manhattan, New York City.