A Kalispell native who was famous for his finesse in solving crossword puzzles died recently of heart disease at his home in Maryland.

Doug Hoylman, 72, was a six-time winner of the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, the top-tier event in the world of crossword competition. He also made his mark as a competitive Scrabble and Trivial Pursuit player.

Hoylman was so well-known for his puzzle prowess on the East Coast that The Washington Post on Dec. 10 published a feature story about his life and accomplishments.

Hoylman was born July 2, 1943, in Kalispell to Byron and Nona Hoylman, who ran a heating and air-conditioning business. He was an avid reader in his youth and wrote for Flathead High School’s newspaper, The Arrow.

He was a 1960 graduate of Flathead High.

The Daily Inter Lake published a March 18, 1960, humorous column written by Hoylman for the school newspaper, in which he contemplates taking up skiing but pokes fun of the sport and himself.

“I have never skied in my life,” he wrote. “This is due to a digestive deficiency which I suffer from — no guts.”

Even in high school Hoylman acknowledged his love of indoor sports. And he excelled at those indoor sports.

The crossword puzzle editor of the New York Times, Will Shortz, who founded and directs the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, told The Washington Post that Hoylman “never got stuck on a puzzle.”

The Post followed Hoylman’s crossword moxie for nearly three decades, quoting him as saying “the only way to practice [crossword puzzles] is to do a lot of them, but I’m not a fanatic. I like problems that have neat answers ... In crosswords, there is always a right answer.”

Hoylman’s only brother, Richard, who lives in Kalispell, recalled how Doug skipped a grade in elementary school because of his academic ability. He earned a degree in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1964 and a doctorate in math from the University of Arizona in 1969. He began his career teaching mathematics at St. Peter’s College in Jersey City, New Jersey. He settled in Washington, D.C. around 1970 and retired from Geico in the 1990s.

Though he was a self-described “typical nerd” and a “solitary kind of person,” Hoylman was outgoing enough to earn a part in the Flathead High senior play, “I Remember Mama,” according to the Daily Inter Lake, which wrote about his academic achievements.

In a 1960 column, Inter Lake publisher Joe Caraher bragged that “the younger set tells us that Doug Hoylman, a clever young writer not interested in the field of communications, is knockin’ em out scholastically at MIT.”

Hoylman started competing in crossword tournaments in the mid-1980s, and as a Scrabble competitor he competed in 81 tournaments between 1993 and 2009, according to The Washington Post.

Hoylman was so admired for his puzzle ability that one of his friends and a co-competitor in crossword contests asked for his help while competing on the game show, “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?”

True to form, Hoylman knew the answer to the game-show question that had stumped his friend. He correctly identified the University of California-Berkeley as the institution where “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski once taught mathematics.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.