Dean MacLachlan has created a special UBC-themed crossword - can you solve it?
In his day-to-day life, Dr. Mark MacLachlan is a professor of chemistry researching supramolecular materials and dean of science at the University of British Columbia.
For the average individual, relaxing after work might involve scrolling through Instagram, reading a book or watching some junk television. But not for Dean MacLachlan. He creates crosswords for The New York Times, LA Times, and The Wall Street Journal.
“When I was a postdoctoral fellow, my wife and I would buy the newspaper every week and do The New York Times crossword puzzles together. At some point, I started thinking, somebody must create these puzzles. So I made some, submitted them and promptly had them rejected.”
The florally festooned dean (he wears an aloha shirt every day) first had a crossword accepted by The LA Times in 2016 and he estimates he’s created about 75 puzzles since; that’s about one every two months.
If you’re flying into the city, you might see him creating them on the plane, his most common crossword workshop where he has a good chunk of time to spare. On a flight to Toronto, he conceived what may have been his pièce de resistance: a chemistry-themed crossword featuring the noble gases. Or perhaps it was the crossword created in a very special collaboration: with his son John MacLachlan, who will be studying music this fall at UBC. Appropriately, the theme was ‘musical turns of phrase’.
Mark's work has earned him some fans such as Provost and Vice-President, Academic, Dr. Gage Averill, and former dean of science, Dr. Simon Peacock.
With students heading back to school next week, is his puzzling now in the past? “Although it will be a busy term, I still plan to make some time in the evening and on weekends to construct new puzzles. I have three puzzles submitted and a Sunday crossword in The New York Times in the queue. I was thrilled to get it accepted.”
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