After that, his teacher asked if I could make one for his bowling league's Christmas party, and word began to spread from there. I started out making puzzles for fun, then I offered to make one for my brother's robotics team when I was 14. But then when the time comes to design the 'Across' and 'Down' grids, I struggle to line everything up perfectly and have to scrap my well-established intentions and start over.īut that's part of the fun of being a crossword puzzle designer, which is how I describe myself on the business card that I hand out to pretty much everyone I meet. Sometimes I get so into the client's request that I'll research a topic for hours, coming up with hundreds of possible clues on the specific subject I've been assigned to cover. Having a job creating custom crossword puzzles is one part trivia and one part strategy. As the final clue in the custom crossword puzzle that I created for my state's equestrian association, it took a bit of coordination to get everything right, but I was able to create enough clues to make a puzzle of intermediate complexity, just as the client had requested. 'What's a seven-letter word to describe a specialist in equine hoof care?'Īfter I typed 'farrier' into the answer key, I sat back and surveyed my work. The student who wrote this as her essay was accepted to the University of Michigan, and we are sharing it with her permission. As part of College Confidential's essay series, we're sharing personal essays from students who were admitted during a prior college admissions cycle.

Umich college confidential