Hi, Francis Heaney here. It’s been an interesting few months, hasn’t it? My first impulse, on watching the election returns in November, was to throw my television out the window. But TVs are both heavy and expensive, so I did not do that. Instead, I followed my second impulse, which was to try to do something positive. Since I, as a generally lazy and frivolous person, am not a very good activist, I decided the way I could be most helpful was by getting more money to organizations that actually are good at activism. And so, I asked some of my puzzle-writing friends to contribute to a puzzle packet, which you can have by donating $10 or more to any of the charities below.
Just send a copy of your charitable receipt for $10 or more to puzzlesforprogress@gmail.com and I’ll email you a pdf of the book within like 24 hours. I mean, I’m just a person, I might be watching a movie or sleeping or something.
If you donate $25 or more, I’ll also throw in a copy of “Idiosyncrossies,” a pdf collection of selected crosswords of mine that originally ran in The Onion. If you already own that, I’ll send a gift copy to whoever you like.
Note that this must be a new donation! If you already donated to any of these charities, that is too bad. Well, actually, that’s awesome and you are a good person for doing it, but I’m going to need you to be an even better person and donate again. That’s just how it goes. How do I enforce this? Honestly not very strictly, but nonetheless please make sure your receipt shows the date, which should be no earlier than one day before your e-mail to me. If you’re donating by analog means and will be getting your receipt via snail mail, send me a message to let me know you’re doing that and remind me about it when you email me a copy of the receipt.
This project has been live for about two months, and I would say it’s been going very well! As of this moment (early evening on March 23), we’ve had 719 donors who’ve donated an average of just under $58 each, for a total of $41,382.26. That includes a handful of people who said “I was planning to donate today anyway, but gimme the puzzles!”; I informed those people I would be cheerfully taking full credit for their donations and none of them argued with me. For people who made monthly donations, I counted their donation as 12 months’ worth of that amount. Here’s how the donations have broken down per charity so far:
ACLU: $15,983.80
American Refugee Committee: $343.00
CAIR: $2,139.00
EarthJustice: $2,486.00
Electronic Frontier Foundation: $60.00
Lambda Legal: $995.46
NAACP: $523.00
National Immigration Law Center: $2,732.00
Northern Manhattan Coalition for Immigrant Rights: $100.00
Planned Parenthood: $10,805.00
Southern Poverty Law Center: $2,929.00
The Trevor Project: $1,265.00
TransWomen of Color Collective: $1021.00
American Refugee Committee was added to the list of charities on January 27 at the suggestion of one donor, and thanks to another suggestion I added the Electronic Frontier Foundation on February 20. Another donor asked if I’d accept his donation to the Northern Manhattan Coalition for Immigrant Rights and I was more than happy to. Thanks very much to everyone who has donated and to everyone who has helped spread the word! Power to the puzzlers!
Oh my goodness, yes. Just look at what’s in it!
Crosswords by
Erik Agard, Patrick Blindauer, Peter Gordon, Andy Kravis, Andrea Carla Michaels & Jonathan Gersch, Tony Orbach, Erin Rhode, and Ben Tausig
Variety word puzzles by
Patrick Berry, Emily Cox & Henry Rathvon, Mark Halpin, Robert Leighton (with cartoons!), Joon Pahk, and Mike Selinker
Paint by Numbers puzzles by
Amy Goldstein
Trivia by
Noah Tarnow
… and a few variety and logic puzzles by me, Francis Heaney. All in all there are 20 pages of original puzzles! Some are non-political, and some are very political indeed. Also there are answers, because I’m not a monster. So please donate, and let’s see if we can help solve our country’s problems together.
Web page designed & coded by Deborah A. Levinson