Yesterday’s release of The Journal of Wordplay #4 was a time for pomp and pride. Today, it’s a time for self-correction! As we head toward year two, I’m making some adjustments to preserve what’s been good about my editorship so far—and to shore up my own weaknesses.
First and most short-term: I’ve made a slight tweak to the latest issue, addressing a table-of-contents typo. Such “post-publication” changes will probably come up now and then in the future, but they should be rare, minor, and quick.
Second, I’ve worked up a hub site for all the Journal of Wordplay issues so far at journalofwordplay.com. It’s pretty simple right now, but it gets the job done!
Third, I’ve got some policy adjustments for future issues. I’ll roll these out below, with a quick explanation of each. These are mostly for contributors’ eyes, but readers may also find them of interest.
New issues will release on the third Monday of every third month. Making the 15th a launch date seemed like a good idea at the time, but it turns out it’s much easier for me to work with releases that aren’t hopping around to random days of the week. So issue #5 is now planned to release on May 20, not May 15.
Submission deadlines are three weeks prior to that, AKA the last Monday of every third month. One reason I didn’t get this issue out on time was that I loosened the submission deadline for contributors—which tightened things up for me!
For puzzle submissions, I’ll ask for answers to be included with the puzzles. If you want the answers published in the following issue instead of the same issue, please say so. This was the real monkey wrench that held up issue #4. I feel that before running a puzzle, I should work through it and make sure it’s solvable rather than passing it on to the reader, even if it’s from a source I trust. That’s much easier when the answers are there to check against.
Many of the puzzles in #4 came to me with no answers included. In some cases, those answers weren’t available—I had to check the late Jack Lance’s puzzles on my own—but in others, it was just silly pride that kept me from asking contributors for their puzzles’ answers earlier. So this rule is as much for me (to protect me from myself) as it is for anyone else.
At least three days before official release, contributors will get a special “contributors-only” copy. This version of the magazine won’t have a cover or other key features, but it will give contributors a chance to look over how their pieces have been edited and formatted. Up till now, many of them haven’t seen their edits before publication. I try not to interfere much, but they should probably have a bit more say in the edits I do make. And if I make any errors immediately obvious to others—always a possibility—this creates another chance to catch those early.
All issues after #4 will have a contributors page. Don Hauptman chimed in with this idea, which Word Ways sometimes practiced. I think it’s a good one, and it’s a natural place for Journal contributors to let our audience know about their other projects. Author photos are requested but not required!
And that’s it. Onward!
Tomorrow: A cryptic micross.