Rex Parker
American crossword blogger and professor (born 1969)
Michael David Sharp (born November 26, 1969), known by the pseudonym Rex Parker, is an American blogger known for writing about the New York Times crossword puzzle on his blog, Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle. Sharp teaches English at Binghamton University in New York.
Early life, education, and career
Sharp grew up in Fresno, California. He went to Pomona College as an undergraduate and earned his PhD in English from the University of Michigan in 1999. He became interested in crossword puzzles in his senior year of college in 1990. While in graduate school, he often solved crosswords in free newspapers found in cafés.
Sharp joined the English department of Binghamton University in 1999. He has taught classes on medieval literature, crime fiction, and comic books. He used to teach occasionally at Elmira Correctional Facility.
Blogging
Sharp began writing about the daily New York Times crossword puzzle as practice for a possible website for a comics course.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Rex Parker” is american crossword blogger and professor (born 1969). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Parker, American and crossword, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “american crossword blogger and professor (born 1969)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q123502239. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1969, 1999 and 1990.
Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.
- Establishing names and roles
- Building a first chronology
- Locating cited institutions
Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Rex Parker”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Rex Parker primary sources, Rex Parker archive and Parker research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Rex Parker”?
- Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
- Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Rex Parker” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.