A profile of Brendan Emmett Quigley
Today I’ll be continuing my series on influential crossword constructors with a profile on Brendan Emmett Quigley (known to his fans as BEQ), one of the most published crossword constructors of all time. Brendan’s first puzzle appeared in The New York Times in 1996, and he has had a total of 194 puzzles published in The Times (most recently in May). He told me recently that he stopped counting the total number of puzzles he has created long ago, but that it was well into the thousands. “Can’t stop, won’t stop,” he quipped. Like many constructors who started in the 1990s, Brendan was influenced by puzzles in Games magazine, especially those made by Matt Gaffney. Since his early days of puzzle making, Brendan has gone on to have an outsize influence on the field of crossword construction. My fellow editor Joel Fagliano told me: “Brendan is a constructor that so many of us admired and emulated, especially when first getting into the field of crossword making. He was a pioneer of the freewheeling, irreverent tone that crosswords have increasingly developed over the course of the Shortz era.” Brendan is indeed known for his irreverent style, and for pushing the boundaries of what’s worthy of appearing in a crossword. He has debuted 1,173 new entries in his puzzles, 465 of which have been used again by other constructors. He was the first to use many colorful phrases like WHY YOU LITTLE, WHAT A GUY, SCREW IT and SO SUE ME. “My most memorable Brendan answer comes from a Friday puzzle in 2002, one of the first that I was able to solve. The clue was [“Huh?”], and the answer was “WHAT THE …!” Joel said. This sort of fun, colloquial and boundary-pushing answer is what I associate with Brendan. Other entries he has debuted include brands (TWIX, NAPSTER and QDOBA), musicians (WEEZER, STEELY DAN and LL COOL J) and modern terms (UGLY CRY, SAD KEANU and MURDER HORNET). Besides the vocabulary in his grids, Brendan is known for his original themes. He said that when he makes a puzzle he tries to “manipulate the English language, hopefully in a way you haven’t seen before.” The first time I met Brendan was in 2022 at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, where he had made the notoriously difficult Puzzle 5. Traditionally, the fifth puzzle at the tournament is extremely tricky. It’s designed to stump most solvers and separate the wheat from the chaff. Brendan’s Puzzle 5 did just that. (If you’re up for the challenge, you can take a peek at it here.) Through his themes, vocabulary and clues, Brendan has been a major force in shaping how puzzles are made today.
Solve Friday’s Crossword on Easy Mode!
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