My Friend Franny Hansen,

1919-2004

            Fran Hansen constructed high-level crossword puzzles, mostly for the New York Times, where she published 83 puzzles, including every Christmas puzzle from 1995 until her death in 2004 at age 85. 

But she also constructed puzzles for the Washington Post, the LA Times, several other news and magazine outlets, and such book publishers as Dell, Random House, and Simon & Schuster.  For decades she was widely praised as a master of the craft.

According to Will Shortz, who took over the Times puzzle editorship in 1993, Hansen caused a sensation with her first puzzle in 1964, submitted to the then editor Margaret Farrar.  The puzzle was based on Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky” and forced solvers into reading and writing backwards to finish the 21 x 21 Sunday grid—a true tour de force.

Her signature puzzles were based on her own five-line limericks.  Shortz said of them that they had “perfect rhyme, and perfect meter” plus a perfect letter and syllable  count—and that they were “funny besides.”

I met Franny in 1992 at a wedding in Metuchen, NJ, where she lived most of her life.  My wife and I were seated at the “old people’s” table where Fran, a widow since 1983. also got dumped.  The groom was Benn Ciardi, the son of deceased celebrity poet John Ciardi, whose biography I was then writing.  Fran was a good friend of Benn’s mother Judith, the core members of a local women’s club they called The Quiet Hour that met once a month. 

Frannie and I became friends at once because we shared an interest in the Ciardi family, the standard repertory of the Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center, crossword puzzles, and funny limericks.  Hers were much better mine, and she proved it by going right into what she called her favorite: 

            A defiant old maid, pray forgive her,

            Remarked with a bit of a quiver:

                        Tonight I shall smoke

                        And drink till I croak—

            And nuts to my lungs and my liver!

Will Shortz liked this one best:    

                        Said W, Somerset Maugham

                        I shall visit the island of Guam.

                                    If I find it is hot,

                                    I shall leave on the spot.

                        I detest feeling overly waugham.

Franny and I had breezy conversations all afternoon about about Mozart, Verdi, and Puccini, about what a good crossword solver John Ciardi (who had died in 1986) had been, but I wanted to hear more and more about how she constructed the puzzles. Actually knowing a real-life constructor of Times puzzles, was an enormous kick for me and I wanted to hear all her stories.  But there wasn’t enough time.  Not nearly.

            When I got home I looked for her puzzles in the many collections on my bookshelf.  I had solved them all once upon a time, but now I wanted to study them to see what Miss Franny Hanson had been up to—and I was charmed and fascinated by her skill. 

I was also on the lookout for new ones by her—or at least new to me.  And when I found one, I’d solve it and often I’d send it to her with a note about how hard certain clues were.  She’d sign it and send it back with a word or two about the puzzle.  I think for both of us this little routine became great fun.

In late December 1998 I solved Franny’s Christmas puzzle for the Times, Yule Get Over It, and sent her a letter bragging a little and telling her how much fun it had been.  I also told her that my life of Ciardi, which she had a copy of and praised lavishly, had won an award from Choice magazine, a gold sticker for being Academic Book of the Year.  She was extravagantly happy to hear the good news and wrote in early May 1999 that “if they didn’t give you the Pulitzer, somebody goofed, that’s all.”  We had a mutual admiration society going.  “It’s a wonderful book and although it took years of your life, you have something to be proud of for the rest of your life.”

In July 2000 she was delighted to hear the paperback edition of my Ciardi book was about to be released.  I sent her a copy of the advertising bookmark that had been printed, for which she thanked me and called me a peach.  In September I ran across a book with another of her puzzles.  “My goodness, I had completely forgotten that old Flag Day puzzle!  Bless you for sending it along and I see you are a solving pro—good for you!”  She said she was writing more daily puzzles than in years past because she was “getting lazy in my dotage,” and because “they go much faster than the big ones!”

Two days later she got another note and finished puzzle from me and wrote back, “You are really on a puzzle bender!  Sounds to me like you are an A-one puzzler—keep it up!”  She signed off, Cheers, Franny.

When she died on July 9, 2004, I felt like I had lost a friend I’d met only once in my life, and with whom I had exchanged maybe ten letters in all, but her words remain with me twenty years later.