Fan passes word on puzzle hall of fame

Robert Guilbert Sr. wants to open a Crossword Puzzle Hall ofFame.

Or - as Guilbert might say from force of habit - a museum,shrine, repository, gallery or pantheon of immortals.

Guilbert, 76, grew up in Chicago working the patternlesscrossword puzzles in the Chicago Daily News.

Besides learning about the Hebrew month Adar, the Celticsub-branch Erse and the tributary Oise, Guilbert acquired anappreciation for the "constructors" who create crosswords.

"A puzzle is sort of like a sonata, it is like a miniatureconcerto, it is all of a piece," said Guilbert, who now is aMilwaukee entrepreneur.

Earlier this year - the 75th anniversary of the creation of thecrossword - Guilbert sought out the nation's crossword celebrities,stars and personages of high repute. He wound up with a seven-memberboard that met for the first time in May and agreed to create a hallof fame.

"It is a fait accompli, it is really off and running," saidGuilbert, the editor of the Wisconsin Engineer Journal. Guilbert,who is not on the board, said his role is that of "institor" - acrossword-puzzle word that he said can mean either huckster or agent.

The hall of fame will comprise just one room of an existingmuseum in Washington, D.C., or New York City, Guilbert said.

Inside the hall will be replicas of some of the best puzzles aswell as exhibits on the luminaries of the field, such as ArthurWynne, who created the first crossword for the New York World in1913. Another sure inductee is Margaret Farrar, crossword editor atthe World after Wynne and at Simon and Schuster and the New YorkTimes.

Although Guilbert invented the crossword-based game Pago Pago,he rates his chances of getting into the hall as no better than thatof a Celebes ox hefting a Hindu weight in Raton.

Crossword constructor William Lutwiniak, by contrast, appearsto be headed on the iter, er, road to enshrinement in the hall.

Lutwiniak, 68, has constructed some 7,550 crosswords for all ofthe top publishers. He said there are only about 100 people in thecountry who can regularly turn out crosswords that are first-quality,A-1, top drawer or tours de force.

Lutwiniak, who lives in Maryland, calls himself atraditionalist, which means he shuns brand names and other words notfound in dictionaries. He also won't use obscure words like "esne"and "erne."

"We are trying to get rid of that kind of stuff - words thatyou never see anywhere except in crossword puzzles," said Lutwiniak,who is co-editor of the Washington Post Sunday Magazine crosswords."They take a lot of the fun out of crossword puzzle. As an editor Iwon't allow them and as a constructor I never use them."

Constructors get from $25 to $50 for daily crosswords that usea 15-by-15-letter grid and up to $200 for larger Sunday puzzles, saidLutwiniak, who is on the board of the directors for the new hall offame.

Lutwiniak said he starts a new puzzle with a theme of longwords and then adds the grid. He finishes by adding shorter words,working from the center of the puzzle to the corners. Then comes thefun of thinking up clues that add challenge to a puzzle.

Most newspapers use traditional puzzles, but some magazinesfavor "new wave" puzzles that permit words like Buick or even allowmore than one letter in a square, he said.

Crossword constructor Mel Rosen said he favors the new wavebelief that the definitions in a puzzle should be interesting. Forexample, it's better to define "arista" as Barry Manilow's recordinglabel than as "grain beard," which is too obscure, he said.

Rosen said one of his favorite new wave clues is "Cook book" todescribe the four-letter word "coma." (Author Robin Cook wrote thenovel Coma.)

"Our job as editors and constructors is to find modern ways todefine stock or trite words. That is sort of what the new waveemphasis is," said Rosen, co-author of the 1981 crossword book TheCompleat Cruciverbalist.

Rosen, who lives in Tampa, Fla., is pioneering anothercrossword change - the use of computers.

Computers already are used to generate complete puzzles, butconstructors agree that the computers' work is lifeless anduninteresting. Rosen, a former IBM programmer, uses his desktopcomputer to draw grids, number the grids and show him, for example, alist of six-letter words with A as the first letter and P as thefourth.

Rosen, who also edits crossword books, said he is developing aprogram that will finish creating a crossword after he has typed inthe long words that compose the theme.

"My objective is to develop a theme, insert several longentries in the puzzle, and then see what happens," he said.

More important than the debate between traditional and new waveconstructors is the effort by all top constructors to abandon obscurewords and uninteresting definitions, constructors said.

Those weaknesses in puzzles discourage young people frombecoming crossword enthusiasts, they said.

"I don't think there is a solver in the world who enjoys seeing`River of Southwest Romania' crossing with the French word for socketwrench," Rosen said.