We would like to congratulate everyone who applied to the Crossword Hobbyist Crossword Scholarship in its first year. With an outpouring of clever, personal, and well-crafted crossword puzzles, we knew this would be a hard selection.

In the end, our scholarship committee had to consider each and every clue and answer to make a decision. While we could only award one scholarship, we felt it fitting to give mention to those who also made excellent puzzles. We loved learning more about the interests and aspirations of our applicants.

Without further ado, we present to you the Crossword Hobbyist Crossword Scholarship winner, finalists, and semi-finalists. We highly encourage you to solve each of their crossword puzzles.

Winner – Eleanor Miranda, “Toon Time”

Eleanor Miranda is a senior at Westhampton Beach High School. She is enrolled at St. John’s University for the fall semester, and she plans to major in illustration.

In her spare time, she likes watching anime, designing games, and doing crossword puzzles with her family. Her winning puzzle reflects her love of anime. She started her drawing career by creating fan art of her favorite anime shows. Then, she moved on to creating her own characters and stories. Because anime has been such a big part of her life, she incorporated it into her crossword puzzle.

To learn more about Eleanor and solve her winning puzzle, visit our interview with her.

 

Finalists

Alexandra Tran, “On the Beat: Literature’s Iconoclasts”
Alexandra is a native to the San Francisco Bay Area, and studies computer science at UC Berkeley. She has a passion for all sorts of things including music, literature, philosophy, logic, computers. She’s only recently encountered the crossword community, but as a longtime lover of word games and combination puzzles, she’s become addicted. A middle child among three girls, Alexandra come from a tight-knit Vietnamese immigrant family.

Jacob Barberena, “Halloween”
Jacob has been accepted to the University of Texas at El Paso in his home state. He is one of the first members of his family born as a U.S. citizen, and he plans to be the first to get a Bachelor’s degree as well. He plans to study computer science in college.

Madalyn Freedman, “All You Need Is…”
A sailor, traveler, artist, and reader, Madalyn is studying Art at the University of Hawaii. In between studying and working on illustrations, crossword puzzles are her favorite leisure activity. Waking up early every morning gives her plenty of time to slowly drink coffee and solve puzzles before riding her bicycle to school. She hopes to study Art Therapy in graduate school. View her art at her website.

Samantha Gajda, “Music”
A student-athlete who plays both field hockey and lacrosse, Samantha plans to continue both sports at Stevens Institute of Technology in the fall. She plans to study biomedical engineering because of her interest in math and science and her desire to help people. Her puzzle was inspired by the major impact music has had on her life.

 

Semi-finalists

Bryan Harkins, “See Spot Work”
Olivia Dayberry, “Word Scribbler”
Megan Callans, “American History 3”
Valerie Connor, “Nursery Rhymes”
Nautia Smith, “High School Hope”
Axel Webber, “Functionality”
Matthew Hoobin, “Cinema Potpourri”
Hope Beckloff, “Bible Bonanza”

 

Thank you to all of our applicants and to those who shared our scholarship with others for making this a wonderful inaugural year. We look forward to solving more puzzles next year!