If you were going to cross Susan Garrett and Scott Weiss' names in a crossword puzzle, the vertical clue might read, "The woman who rediscovered her love of word puzzles when she met a great guy." The horizontal clue would say, "The man who proposed in a puzzle."
Susan has always been fascinated with wordplay. As a child, she designed her own crossword puzzles. As a teacher, she uses word games like "Tom Swifties" to make linguistics and punctuation interesting for college students.
It was the Swifties (puns written at the turn of the century in which the adverb in the sentence is a play on the word that is the subject of the pun: "The situation is grave," Tom said cryptically) that sparked a conversation between Susan and Scott.
They met in July 1997 when Scott, then a graduate student at the Johns Hopkins University, attended a conference in Philadelphia and ended up staying at Susan's house. Susan, who grew up in Catonsville, was working on her Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania. Scott's adviser knew Susan's roommate.
An avid gamesman, Scott gives gaming parties that are famous among his friends and family. A longtime member of the National Puzzlers League, Scott writes his own crossword puzzles and wordplays. He's a regular at the annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, and he solves the New York Times crossword every Sunday.
After discovering their shared passion for puzzles, the new acquaintances began e-mailing. In August, Susan came to Baltimore to visit her family, and she and Scott had their first date. A few weeks later, Scott started at Mount St. Mary's College in Emmitsburg as a computer science lecturer. Susan began returning to Maryland on the weekends to be with him.
Scott talked her into joining the puzzlers' league. He got her on his prize-winning team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's annual scavenger hunt. (Participants solve puzzles to find the clues that eventually lead them to the prize.)
On May 29, 1999, Scott made a puzzle and e-mailed it to a friend. The friend then sent it to Susan and Scott, claiming he was the author and that he wanted them to rate its difficulty.
Scott spent that Sunday evening waiting for Susan to check her e-mail. When she did, she decided it was too late to solve the puzzle, but Scott talked her into it.
