Friends, fans stunned by death of master puzzler Reagle

His fans knew Merl Reagle as a master wordsmith with an incomparable talent for crafting crosswords and other word puzzles.

Scott Carter knew him as a musician, composer, playwright, fierce chess competitor and, especially, friend.

Friends and crossword devotees were stunned by Reagle’s death Saturday following a brief illness. He was 65.

His death was felt acutely in Tucson, where Reagle grew up exploring his passion for words through music, theater and newspapers, as well as puzzles.

“I remember how much joy he brought to my life,” said Carter, a writer and executive producer on HBO’s “Real Time With Bill Maher.”

Carter first met Reagle in 1971, when they were both University of Arizona students working on the Wildcat, the student newspaper.

“He was one of those people that had so many gifts that you knew one lifetime isn’t enough to realize all of them,” Carter said. “He wanted to be a novelist, a musician, a screenwriter. ... He gravitated to this (crosswords) world where he was a rock star. I know Stephen Sondheim was a fan, and Jon Stewart and Bill Clinton.”

Reagle once told Carter that it was he who urged him to pursue crosswords as a career. Carter has his doubts about that, but, he said, “If I did, I’m glad.”

So are many others.

Reagle’s puzzles appear in more than 50 newspapers across the United States, including the Sunday Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post. In Tucson, fans savor Reagle’s wit in the Arizona Daily Star’s Caliente section on Thursdays.

Well-recognized within the puzzle world, Reagle appeared in the 2005 documentary film “Wordplay” and later in an episode of “The Simpsons.”

He was also a crowd favorite from the inception of the Tucson Festival of Books, where he would delightedly lead crowds in quizzes and puns.

“Merl was so popular that one year the crowd rushed the stage and a man ended up in the hospital,” said Star senior editor Debbie Kornmiller. “People treated him like a rock star, even though it was just about crossword puzzles.”

Inseparable with wife

Marie Haley, whom Reagle always referred to as his “better half,” said the phone didn’t stop ringing on Saturday at their Tampa home.

She said Reagle was hospitalized Thursday with acute pancreatitis.

“He spent the night in a lot of pain, but we thought we had a game plan for him,” she told the Tampa Bay Times. “I went home to get some clothes and the laptop — he wanted to do a couple of things.

“I was just ready to walk out the door and there was the phone. I thought it was Merl calling me, ‘Oh, by the way, I need ... .’ It was Memorial Hospital. He had coded.” His condition worsened, and he slipped into a coma.

Haley said his medical condition came on suddenly. He had no backlog of future puzzles, she said.

Reagle and Haley were inseparable — from flying to newspaper conventions trying to sell his puzzle 25 years ago, to the sleuthing they started in 1998 to find the grave of Arthur Wynne, the man who invented the crossword. Reagle recounted their adventure in “Merl Reagle’s 100th Anniversary Crossword Book.”

Reagle’s death was announced on newspaper websites across the country.

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His longtime friend, New York Times crossword author and editor Will Shortz, also posted a tribute to Reagle on Wordplay, the Times’ crossword blog. “I’ve heard people say that their very favorite part of the whole movie (‘Wordplay’) was watching Merl construct a crossword. Many of today’s top constructors, in fact, got their inspiration from him,” he wrote, speaking to Reagle’s legacy.

Reagle was a standout at a young age.

At 16, he became the youngest person to ever sell a crossword puzzle to the New York Times. He was paid $10. Reagle had submitted it at the urging of John Carlton, his English and journalism teacher at Catalina High School.

He went on to the UA, where he earned a degree in literature and writing — and formed lifelong friends on the school newspaper.

“He was a marvelous friend to his friends,” said Tucson photographer Tim Fuller.

Carter, Reagle and Fuller were among a group that launched the Invisible Theatre in ’71. They performed in the basement of the Student Union and staged works they wrote.

“We did tons of musicals, and Merl wrote all the music for them,” Fuller said. Reagle’s character would do brilliant wordplay, including palindromes, from the stage. “Tim Fuller,” for example, became fulltimer. “He was addicted to playing with words.”

“The thing about his gifts — they were always openly given,” Carter said. “There was never a sense with him that he had to try hard at anything because he was so astoundingly gifted.”

His music is never far from Carter’s mind. “Some melodies he wrote, I still find myself humming,” he said. “I wish the whole world knew that side of him, as well. ... I just wish we had more time, but I’m thankful for decades and decades of being able to call him my friend.”

Reagle formed a band called Greylock Mansion. The lineup included Reagle on organ, Bill Ball on drums, Larry Lorenzen and later Farrell Wymore on guitar, and Aaron Zornes on bass. Reagle recalled playing “every town in Arizona, even Bagdad.”

“Greylock Mansion had a dark sound reminiscent of the Doors. In fact, they did a few Doors covers. Merl sang a lot of the leads,” Howard Wooten, a guitarist with another band, said in an email after learning of Reagle’s death.

An intricate mind

“Later on I worked with Merl on an Invisible Theater production in which Merl had written all the music. I remember Merl’s enthusiasm — which was contagious — and also his command of the language. He had an intricate mind. I don’t know if he played chess but I’m sure he would’ve been good at it,” Wooten recalled.

Carter does remember Reagle playing chess, and he took the game — and the competition — very seriously, he said.

Reagle worked at the Arizona Daily Star from 1972-76 as a copy editor. “He bet me five bucks he could unscramble five five-letter words in 30 seconds. Sucker that I am, I took the bet. Nice guy that he was, he wouldn’t take my five bucks,” recalled Star writer Tom Beal, who started working at the paper in 1974.

“Merl, as you might guess, was a brilliant copy editor, and you counted yourself lucky if he got your copy,” Beal said. “He’d make it better, and then he’d write a brilliant, funny headline to catch you a few more readers.”

After three years, Reagle left for California to pursue a dream that would lead to him becoming one of only four full-time crossword puzzle constructors in the U.S. Reagle and Haley returned to Tucson each year for the Tucson Festival of Books, which launched in 2009. The master puzzler was an anchor of the Star Pavilion, drawing crowds for his talks about the previous year in the world of puzzles, interspersed with funny stories and impromptu word games.

“I am so very sad to hear of Merl’s untimely death; I was a huge fan,” said Lila Tevik, who felt fortunate to see him at the festival, where she always had a chance to talk with him as he signed her books. “There’s going to be sadness throughout the crossword world.”

Despite his fame, Reagle remained humble. “He just would talk with anybody about anything as they lined up,” said Tevik, who teaches at Doolen Middle School, which Reagle had attended. He recently emailed her a video that UA students had made of his 2014 festival appearance that includes interviews with her.

She also saved his crosswords in Caliente. Even though his puzzle would appear nationally, she said, “He almost always had some little thing about Tucson that he would stick in there that was unique. ... He’s our Tucson guy. All of us have a deep connection to him.”