Mike Shenk (born 1958) is an American crossword puzzle creator and editor.

[1][2] He solved his mother's Dell crossword books and taught himself to construct puzzles in his youth.

[1][4] He graduated with a bachelor's degree in mathematics in 1979 and spent a year working as a math teacher at a vocational high school in York, Pennsylvania.

[1][2] The Wall Street Journal hired Shenk as its first crossword puzzle editor in 1998.

[6] He formerly credited his own constructions to anagrammatic pseudonyms such as Marie Kelly ("really Mike") and Colin Gale and Alice Long ("Collegian").