You may have noticed that on Monday, Diary of a Crossword Fiend added the daily USA Today puzzles (edited by Erik Agard, who’s been addressing the industry’s gender imbalance by publishing mostly crosswords by non-male constructors) to our lineup, and we’re also delighted to welcome several new bloggers to Team Fiend! The USA Today puzzles will be reviewed by Malaika Handa, Emily Flynn, Sophia Maymudes, Darby Ratliff, and Nina Sloan. We’ve finally got a new roster for blogging the New Yorker themelesses now that Rachel Fabi has moved on to the NYT’S Wordplay: Matt Gritzmacher along with Nina and Malaika. The BEQ puzzles will be handled by Matt and Darby. (The rest of the puzzle/blogger lineup remains the same.) I’m excited to be able to bring you the puzzle perspectives of younger solvers to balance out the rather middle-aged lovelies who’ve been at Crossword Fiend for a while. It’ll be useful for constructors and editors to have that generational feedback, too.
To learn more about our newest Fiend writers, check out the “Meet Team Fiend” page. Everyone’s listed in reverse alphabetical order by last name because I grew up as a Z and was always last!—Amy