Puzzle and Game Constructors

	Tyler Hinman	Tyler, from San Francisco, sporadically constructs crosswords and solves them far more often. He is a five-time champion of the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. His other interests include sports fanaticism and Scandinavian rock music.
	Donna Levin	Shunning the international fame and glittering jet-set lifestyle that is synonymous with crossword construction, Donna lives quietly with her husband Denis in South Florida and devotes time to environmental causes, particularly sea turtle conservation.
	Aimee Lucido	Aimee is a junior at Brown University, dual majoring in Computer Science and Literary Arts. She’s relatively new to the crossworld, but has been an avid crossword fangirl since she first saw the film Wordplay in high school.
	Todd McClary	Todd is a puzzle and game designer from Aurora, Colorado. His enigmatic wares have found their way to newspapers, magazines, crossword tournaments, puzzle conventions, game parties, dark alleys, and, most recently, the book Crowd Pleasing Puzzles coauthored with Patrick Berry.
	Andrea Carla Michaels	Andrea is a company and product namer in San Francisco. A former Stand-up comic and TV sitcom writer, she now confines most of her wordplay to crosswords and Scrabble.
	Trip Payne	Trip is a freelance puzzlemaker living in West Hollywood. You may know him from Wordplay or Who Wants to Be a Millionaire or his thousands of published puzzles, or, hey, maybe you don’t know him. It’s possible.
	Doug Peterson	Doug has been constructing puzzles for about eight years and has been solving puzzles ever since he could pick up a pencil. His interests include reading, baseball, and Batman.
	John Schiff	John is a serial hobbyist who has been creating and solving puzzles and word games for more than two decades, but has only recently tried to tame the ferocious crossword. Despite a severe mauling by a cryptic crossword in 2006, John has bounced back to see his first crosswords published by The Los Angeles Times in 2009.
	Dave Shukan	Dave is a puzzle and boardgame designer who practices intellectual property law whenever he gets a chance, though his colleagues and clients might (more accurately) tell you he's got that precisely backwards. He lives in Pasadena with his wife, Rebecca, and her cat, Loki.
	Marc Spraragen	Marc is a game designer and researcher based in Los Angeles and working at USC. He is also a member of the National Puzzlers’ League and contributor to the MIT Mystery Hunt.
	Byron Walden	Byron is a math professor at Santa Clara University, and constructs crosswords in his spare time. Who are we kidding, the professoring and constructing are in the scant few minutes afforded by being a new dad. He lives in San Francisco with his wife Robin, human son Harrison and thinks-he’s-a-human son Dash the dog.
	Zoe Wheeler	Zoe is a senior at Brown University. When she isn’t doing crosswords, she spends her time doing Sporcle quizzes, watching Dawson’s Creek, and admiring Aimee Lucido.

Organizing Team

	Elissa Grossman, director	Elissa, when not organizing Crosswords LA, moonlights as a professor of management at Loyola Marymount University (and mommy to Daniel). Her job at the tournament is to run around all headless chicken and take credit for the great work done by everyone else.
	Tyler Hinman, puzzle wrangler	Tyler, from San Francisco, sporadically constructs crosswords and solves them far more often. He is a five-time champion of the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. His other interests include sports fanaticism and Scandinavian rock music. (Yes, this Tyler is the same one as in the prior section. He's so helpful, we decided to list him twice.)
	Alex Boisvert, solver-in-cheif [sic]	Alex is a mathematician who works for a defense contractor here in Los Angeles. He lives with his wife Lorène and his two children, Charlotte and Léo.
	Dave Grossman, mis chief	Dave previously taught physics at Princeton and managed robotics and AI research at IBM. His recent hobby has been building a 300 kilovolt cosmic ray exhibit in his garage. He designed software to administer these crossword competitions and to partially automate the scoring.
	Daniel Grossman, assistant director	Daniel, our assistant director, has promised this year to sleep through only part of the event. A fan of hurling jigsaw puzzle pieces across living rooms, Daniel remains a reluctant crossword solver. His job at Crosswords LA is to model our tournament T-shirt and point emphatically at anything he finds interesting.

Past Tournaments