Photo by Timothy Healy

Play to win while supporting a good cause! Read about the puzzle Merl created for the National Brain Game Challenge here. You can register here.

Merl Reagle, whom Games magazine has called the "best Sunday crossword creator in America," constructed his first crossword puzzle at age 6 and sold his first puzzle to The New York Times when he was just 16. He started making the Sunday crossword for the San Francisco Examiner in 1985 (he's now in the Chronicle), and since the mid-1990s his self-syndicated puzzle has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Seattle Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer and many others. His puzzle starts in The Washington Post Magazine on April 6.

"Crossword-solving is supposed to be good exercise, like a ThighMaster for your mind," says Reagle." But like any exercise, I think it should be as fun as possible. I've always had sort of a bent but G-rated sense of humor – hence the guarantee in all of my crossword puzzle books, 'Twisted but fair.'"

His "bent but G-rated" humor is what makes Reagle's crosswords so attractive to the Writers Group. "Merl's puzzles are not only charming, witty and fun to solve, they are laugh-out-loud funny. No other 'puzzle composer' does quite what Merl does," said Amy Lago, editor of comics and graphics for the Writers Group.

Reagle has been featured on ABC's "Nightline" with Ted Koppel, and he co-starred in the hit documentary "Wordplay." He currently lives in Tampa, Fla., with Marie, his wife and partner in their puzzle book publishing company. He can be reached via his Web site, sundaycrosswords.com.