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Crossword puzzle designer visits Red Deer

Gwen Sjogren has direction in her life. It’s just that it’s all down and across.The Calgary woman is the brains behind hundreds of crosswords in six books of crossword puzzles.
CrosswordPuzzle
Crossword puzzle designer Gwen Sjogren held a book signing at the Coles Bookstore in Parkland Mall Saturday afternoon.

Gwen Sjogren has direction in her life. It’s just that it’s all down and across.

The Calgary woman is the brains behind hundreds of crosswords in six books of crossword puzzles.

“I’ve always been a word person rather than a numbers person,” she said at a book signing appearance at the Parkland Mall Coles bookstore on Saturday.

“I started solving puzzles when I was around eight. When I got older, I just thought if I can solve them maybe I can make them.

“I just started trying and got very lucky I got published.”

Sjogren, 47, grew up in Ontario and after getting a degree at the University of Waterloo she went into the world of corporate communications in Toronto. She worked for a law firm, an insurance company and TransCanada Pipelines in Calgary, where she still lives with her husband and two boys.

It was about 10 years ago that she got started on crosswords. She first made a few sales to U.S. companies, and then at the urging of friends decided to see if she could find any takers in her own country.

About six years ago, she hooked up with B.C.-based Harbour Publishing and has just completed her sixth book of crossword puzzles and in the Cross-Canada Crosswords series, which features themed puzzles. Politics, journalism, authors, music, you name it, she has designed a crossword around it.

However, after six books, Sjogren felt like she had hit the crossword wall.

“When I finished this book, I thought that’s it I’m done. I had done about 300 crosswords in six years and I thought I couldn’t do any more.

“But I sat down and brain stormed and I came up with lots of ideas, and I’m actually 80 per cent done book seven, which will come out next year.”

Sjogren still isn’t sure how long she will keep going. Since she does themed puzzles, she faces the additional challenge of coming up with new topics she can build a whole puzzle around.

Always on the hunt for ideas, she keeps a notebook by her side and jots down possibilities as they occur to her. Most of the work involved in crossword puzzle creating is the research. She scours sources for interesting tidbits and then double and triple checks.

“That’s where the challenge is. Lots of different words have lots of different spellings. In my life, I’ve probably found five spellings of the word TV at one point. It’s a lot of nitty gritty, a lot of fact checking, a lot of detail.”

And for all those defenders of Canadian English out there, yes, she does use Canadian spellings. U.S. spellings are listed as variants, or var. in crossword short form.

Modern crossword design is helped with a software program that lays out a grid. If you’re lucky, the majority of words can be placed, If you’re not so fortunate, a day’s worth of tinkering can be required to get all the letter squares and black squares to come together.

“And then you have to write your clues, which is the most fun part.”

Depending on the size, it can take about six to 10 hours to complete each puzzle.

Sjogren also holds crossword workshops, including one at the Red Deer Public Library Saturday, to give tips to devoted legions of puzzle lovers.

The latest book sells for $9.95 and is available at many bookstores. For more information go to www.harbourpublishing.com.

pcowley@www.reddeeradvocate.com