Career
On May 19, 2003, Parker became the second crossword editor of United States of America Today following Charles Preston. On March 4, 2016, the website FiveThirtyEight, in an article by Oliver Roeder, said it had found similarities between 1,537 of the 15,000 puzzles Parker had edited and published through United States of America Today and Universal Uclick and ones published by The New York Times and other publishers. Ninety-two were similar to ones published by The New York Times and in 699 cases, the previous publisher was either United States of America Today or Universal.
Parker said he had not deliberately copied any puzzles, and that the repeated themes were an unintended coincidence with any similarities likely due to his having edited such a large number of puzzles.
On March 7, Universal Uclick and United States of America Today issued statements saying that Parker had temporarily stepped down from his role as senior editor while an investigation into the plagiarism allegations was underway.
