For decades, Mel Taub delighted readers with his ingenious Puns and Anagrams puzzles in The New York Times. Following his passing on September 14 at the age of 97, a wave of appreciation poured in from readers, who fondly recalled his cleverly groan-inducing puns and shared personal anecdotes.
In a touching tribute, one devoted reader from Queens even crafted anagrams of Mr. Taub’s name, complete with inventive clues.
Mr. Taub’s first Puns and Anagrams puzzle graced the pages in May 1951. Over his remarkable career, he contributed some 400 such puzzles, alongside occasional crosswords and cryptics. His final puzzle appeared in October 2019.
While Puns and Anagrams continues to appear every eight weeks in the print edition of The Times Magazine, it is not regularly published online. However, after we featured an interactive puzzle from May 2017 in Mr. Taub’s online obituary, many readers swiftly completed it (often in under an hour!) and eagerly requested more. Among them was Ellen from Philadelphia, who passionately pleaded:
“Please, please, PLEASE resume publishing Puns and Anagrams in the Puzzle Archive!!”
Although The Times has no immediate plans to regularly publish Puns and Anagrams puzzles online, we are thrilled to bring you three more of his classic challenges right here, accompanied by a selection of heartfelt reader comments. Dive in and let us know in the comments section how you solved them!
Feeling challenged? You can uncover the solutions to this puzzle by checking the answers page.
Joe Siano, a former copy desk chief at The Times, shared these encouraging words:
“The great thing about a PandA is that it rewards persistence. Very often, on the first few pass-throughs, I think I’m never going to figure it out. But if I stick with it, the dominoes start to fall and I wind up with a great sense of satisfaction. It’s a real test of your love of words. Long may it keep puzzling us.”
Need to confirm your work? The solutions for this puzzle are available on the answers page.
Fred from New York City shared this personal anecdote after reading Mr. Taub’s obituary:
“Many years ago, I interviewed Mr. Taub for an article about him in the Brooklyn College Alumni Magazine. He told me that he always rode in the same car on the subway and would often sit across from a woman working the New York Times Crossword, as he was. They didn’t speak but would acknowledge each other and he would nod as he got off the train at Times Square. One day, he opened the paper and found it was one of his puzzles, so while the woman glanced at him, he quickly filled in all the answers, held up the page for her to see and smiled sweetly. He said he always remembered the look of shocked surprise on the woman’s face as he got off the train. I guess once a trickster, always a trickster.”
Keep puzzling! If you find yourself stuck, the answers are provided on the dedicated solutions page.