Archive: Around Town

Spider-Man Activity BookIf you like Spider-Man and you like puzzles you don't have to wait for Spider-Man 3 to hit the movie theaters this May.  You can get the Spider-Man Activity Book right now.  Coauthored by Terry Stickels and Sam Bellotto, Jr. the book includes a variety of Spider-Man themed crosswords, Sudokus, word searches and other 'frame game' puzzles.  "It's nice," Bellotto says.  "It's basically for kids so everything is on a simpler level, and it comes with a gel pen.  It's kind of cute."

Bellotto splits his time between creating puzzles, working on puzzle books, and developing his Crossdown line of puzzle software.  A former journalist, he has regular puzzles in several publications including The Hill Newspaper in Washington, DC, the Nantucket Independent, Backstage East and West, and Central New York magazine.  His puzzles often appear in many major publications including the New York Times, and he is responsible for the crossword puzzles and technology used to bring them to you in the Lansing Star.

Simon and Schuster has a contract with Bellotto to develop and maintain the software used to create their crossword puzzle books.  Puzzle contributors send their puzzles to Editor John Samson in Crossdown format.  Sampson uses Crossdown to edit the puzzles, then sends the edited puzzles to Bellotto, who processes them in the software.  "I go out and have a cup of coffee, come back, and the computer has the complete book done," he explains.  "All I have to do is burn it to a CD and send it to the publisher.  It's pretty heavy duty stuff and it took me a long, long time to develop the software."

When Paramount approached Simon and Schuster about creating a Star Trek crossword puzzle book, it was only natural that they would turn to Samson and Bellotto.  "They approached me and John about it, and of course we jumped at it," he says.  "But we realized we couldn't do it we needed a third, so we got a third person to help us who was also a Star Trek expert.  Between the three of us, we put four books together."

Bellotto has always loved doing crossword puzzles, but a time came when he wanted something more challenging, so he decided to try constructing puzzles.  New York Times Crossword Editor Gene Maleska rejected his first efforts, but kept in touch with Bellotto, offering advice and encouragement.  "He was very nice," Bellotto recalls.  "He gave me a lot of tips and a lot of encouragement to keep trying.  Eventually he bought my puzzles, and from then on he started buying a lot of them."

Soon he was selling puzzles to other magazines, and before long he decided to try his hand at writing software to take care of tasks like grid construction and error checking.  "I was doing a crossword puzzle and then it hit me," he remembers.  "Maybe I could write a program that would help me with the construction part of the puzzle, not actually constructing the puzzles, but take care of the elements and putting the puzzle together where generally you make a ton of errors like making sure the grid is symmetrical, not leaving out clues, making sure you don't have any unkeyed squared.  These are all purely routine mechanical things that is very easy to screw up and you can spend half a day working on a big puzzle or even longer than that."

Next he tried marketing the software to other puzzle constructors, but when he found little interest he wrote a package that enabled anyone to solve and print puzzles on their computers.  He released the first version in the early 1990s, and soon customers were asking for him to add the capability to construct puzzles.  "So I just went back and added the code that would enable you to construct puzzles," he says.  "I had Crossdown Version 1, and after that was out I figured I needed to have other products.  So that's when I developed acrostics software and cryptogram software, and then it just developed."

Bellotto works from his Rochester home, where he lives with his dog, Petra.  He calls her Crossdown's 'Vice President of Recreation Security.'  "It's absolutely essential because if it wasn't for her, I'd spend all day either in front of the TV or in front of the computer," he says.  "By now I would look like Jabba the Hut!  She lets me work, but she does have a rigid schedule.  She knows at about 5pm you have to go outside and have several hours of good exercise.  The same thing in the morning."

This is Bellotto's second brush with Spider-Man.  In 1967 he met Ralph Bakshi who was making the Spider-Man animated TV show.  "He was looking for scripts," Bellotto recalls.  "So we talked and he asked me to write a few sample scripts.  They were never used.  I don't know whether they were just not good enough or it was because the program was canceled."


The new book came about when Marvel Comics approached Terry Stickles, who has more than 20 puzzle books in print, as well as Frame Games and Stickdoku syndicated columns in USA Weekend magazine, which appears in 600 newspapers.  "They got in touch with him originally to do these activity books, but I think Marvel specified that they also wanted word searches and crossword which Terry doesn't do," Bellotto says.  "So he got in touch with me and asked me if I would like to work with him and do the word searches and crosswords, which of course I was delighted to do."

The book is available in stores and on the Harper Collins Web site, as well as Amazon.com, where Bellotto also sells his software.  In addition to his puzzle constructing software he offers 'game editions' for people who just like solving puzzles.  When asked how he balances puzzle making, work on books, and software development, Bellotto exclaims, "Beats me!  I'm very haphazard.  I just do what I feel like doing whenever.  The regular columns have deadlines, so I have to do those.  My software is now at a stage where it is pretty much stable on all platforms and there isn't a whole lot more that I can add to it."

And, of course, Petra makes sure that he stays in shape to do all that.

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