NEW YORK (AP) – Frances Hansen, a prolific crossword puzzle creator known for using original poems as clues, has died. She was 85.
Hansen died Friday of complications of a stroke at a hospital in Perth Amboy, N.J., said her niece, Betty Lee Solley.
Hansen’s puzzles were published in newspapers including The New York Times, the Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times and by such book publishers as Dell and Simon & Schuster.
Eighty-two of her puzzles were published by The New York Times, and the 83rd was scheduled to be published in the Christmas issue of the newspaper’s Sunday magazine, the newspaper said in its Thursday editions.
Hansen wrote every Christmas puzzle since 1995, and she was the newspaper’s fourth most published crossword puzzle creator, the Times said.
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