Penn(cil?) Pals: 45 years of Building Community
This puzzle was made in honor of Pennswood Village‘s 45th Anniversary celebration
. . . or solve without leaving this page
The crossword that appeared in the New York Times on the day Pennswood Village opened, June 10, 1980, was by Bernice Gordon (1914-2015), who (at least as of June 10, 2025) holds the record as the oldest constructor at the time of publication in the NYT. The first of Bernice’s 147 NYT puzzles was published on February 19, 1953 when she was 39, and the last on August 11 2014 when she was 100 years and 7 months old.
Bernice’s final puzzle and her puzzle on June 26, 2013 were collaborations with David Steinberg. At the time of their 6/26/2013 collaboration, David was among the youngest to have had a puzzle published in the NYT. His first puzzle had been published on June 16, 2011, when he was 14 years, 6 months and 23 days old. David had become aware of Bernice through his Pre-Shortzian Puzzle Project, which he began working on during a course in high school. He launched the project website in June 2012 (when he was 15), and together with the help of some key mentors and a community of volunteers, has achieved his goal of digitizing all available NYT puzzles from the 52 years prior to November 20, 1993 (“the pre-Shortz era”). According to the project website (as of June 17, 2025) there were 16,225 puzzles in those 52 years and only 142 have yet to be located. Thanks to David’s project and Jim Horne’s extraordinary xwordinfo site, you can do any of pre-Shortz era puzzles if you know the date it was published. Bernice made 126 of these. One of her favorites was her innovative Sunday, May 30, 1965 puzzle. (You’ll need a NYT Games subscription to do the final 21 puzzles that Bernice had published in the NYT.)
In his January 2015 tribute to Bernice, David reflects on their relationship, and links to an interview he did with her in April of 2013 and an account of their first meeting in September of 2013 (a few months after the publication of their first collaborative effort).
As of this writing, David is the editor of the widely syndicated Universal Crossword. Another of David’s website’s is http://www.customcrossword.com/.
