If you’ve been a regular solver of its puzzles, you’ve solved puzzles ostensibly written by people like Marie Kelly, Alice Long, and Gabriel Stone. Though the WSJ regularly publishes puzzles by many different freelance contributors, those three particular bylines were all pseudonyms of the editor Mike Shenk. Some colleagues of mine, after crunching the numbers, found that women comprised only 10.5% of all published crossword constructors for the WSJ in 2018. Solution to January 20, 2019 crossword, "Splinter Groups" (Evan Birnholz)Ten familiar phrases have to be re-parsed to understand today’s theme. It’s also one of the more personal puzzles I’ve ever written.

Source: Wall Street Journal January 20, 2019 14:03 UTC