Binghamton Research Magazine - Spring/Summer 2012 - (Page 45)

Michael Sharp, a Binghamton University scholar of Medieval and Renaissance literature, may now be better known by his online moniker, Rex Parker. Some 20,000 readers a day flock to his blog, Rex Parker Does The New York Times Crossword, in search of answers about the puzzle, his idiosyncratic take on its clues, quality and level of difficulty and, perhaps most important, an opportunity to interact with other crossword fanatics.
“I feel like I’m maintaining a community, a place where people can come and talk about the puzzle,” Sharp says. His readers include at least a few celebrities, notably actress Dana Delany, who recently mentioned the blog on Jimmy Kimmel Live; Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten and food writer Ruth Reichl. Will Shortz, crossword puzzle editor of The New York Times, reads the blog and occasionally leaves a comment. The blog has been joined by a Facebook page and Twitter account, where Sharp riffs on matters only tangentially related to crosswords and his other passion, pulp fiction. “I prefer the Facebook page as a place to hang out and chat,” he says. “People have conversations and they love each other, and I could practically not exist. There’s opportunity for back and forth, maybe because I only have about 1,400 Facebook fans. Compared to 20,000 readers a day, it’s a smaller group. I feel like I can actually talk to people in a way I can’t on the blog. … At this point, it’s a more intimate space.” Scroll through the comments and you’ll find readers sharing their favorite words, news of places and people with unusual names and discussions of pop-culture references to crosswords. Of course, there are plenty of threads full of outrage over misspellings or poor grammar. Sharp works on the blog, which he began five years ago, for an hour or two each day. It might take some people that long just to complete the puzzle, but he can do even the toughest ones in 10 or 15 minutes. (A typical Monday puzzle, the easiest of the week, might be a threeminute challenge for him.) While Sharp says speed isn’t his primary goal, he placed 31st overall and 10th in his division at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in 2011. He received a small trophy for being second-fastest in New York state, though he’s quick to note that the category excluded New York City.

“I usually solve it online on The New York Times website proper, which means my time comes up against everyone else’s,” Sharp says. “It used to stress me out because I was being timed and ranked against other solvers. That doesn’t stress me out anymore.” In 2010, Sharp took on the challenge of constructing original puzzles for the first time. Since then, he’s had a few in The New York Times, one in The Wall Street Journal and a couple in the Los Angeles Times. “Sometimes I get an idea and it’s done in three or four hours,” Sharp says. “Others take longer to percolate. They pay very little, but it is satisfying to see them and to have people doing them. It’s good validation. If you get it into The New York Times, a lot of people will do it. That kind of audience is nice to have if you’re going to put the time in.” The notion of readership — for the blog, for his puzzles, for his scholarly work — is one Sharp wrestles with regularly. When he joined Binghamton’s faculty in 1999, a more conventional academic career seemed to lie ahead. Life as Rex Parker, which includes a second blog, Pop Sensation, devoted to Sharp’s collection of vintage paperbacks, has taken him off that course. “More people read me in a single day than ever read everything I ever wrote over all time,” he says. “If you take all the articles I wrote, add my dissertation and anything I had written on paper up to the time I started

Binghamton University • BINGHAMTON RESEARCH • Spring/Summer 2012

Watch as Michael Sharp solves a puzzle.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Binghamton Research Magazine - Spring/Summer 2012

Binghamton Research Magazine - Spring/Summer 2012
Contents
About Binghamton Research
Welcome
Briefs
Digital defenders
Jockeying for genetic advantage
The unfiltered truth
Spring awakening
Wall Street watchdog
Principles of the universe demand principled engineers
Engineering and Science Building
Graduate research
Undergraduate research
A piece of the puzzle
Crossword puzzle

Binghamton Research Magazine - Spring/Summer 2012