Janice Witham was born in Saskatchewan, Canada, and began her writing career as a copywriter for radio stations. Her love of writing led her to begin writing articles for magazines, including a series of travel pieces while traveling across Australia in 1987.

Upon her return to Canada after the year-long working holiday in Australia (where, incidentally, she met her future husband), Janice continued to write on a freelance basis and also began compiling Wordfind puzzles. When a magazine she was writing for wanted to publish them, Janice began supplying one per week. "I found the challenge of compiling puzzles much more interesting than solving them, even though the first few took hours to do!" Today she has compiled over 600 Wordfinds.

In 1989 Janice immigrated to Australia and successfully reestablished her freelance writing and puzzle compiling career in Melbourne. Janice has established a long-term relationship with Auspac Media. "Joining forces with the enthusiastic team at Auspac meant I could concentrate on compiling and generating new puzzle ideas, and they handled the marketing aspect." Janice says.

To date, Janice's word puzzles have appeared in Qantas Airways in-flight magazine, several regional newspapers criss-crossing Australia, as well as Woman's Day magazine, the Melbourne Herald Sun newspaper and international publications spanning the globe from Dubai to London to the U.S. to South Africa.

When she first saw a Sudoku puzzle Janice says, "This puzzle intrigued me -- a number puzzle that required logic rather than mathematical skill. It was a new challenge for me, and it was great that they were picked up right away by The Observer (in the United Kingdom)."

Janice has compiled hundreds of word puzzles and written and published over 80 articles for a variety of publications including Australian Geographic, Business Review Weekly and The Australian.

Janice lives in Melbourne with her husband Ric, their two daughters and an office full of paper and dictionaries.