It began with a crossword puzzle.

Back in the 90's, Veritas founder, Matt Bardin, rode the subway from his home in Greenwich Village to the homes of his students on the Upper East and West Sides, in Park Slope and Brooklyn Heights. Like many straphangers before and since, he discovered the joys of the daily crossword.

The New York Times crossword is a live experience. It offers the brain several dozen tiny mysteries to solve - mysteries that unfold themselves in a steady, interwoven rhythm. There's nothing like folding that Arts section in fourths and attacking the puzzle as the train rattles and bangs you to your destination.

Lured in by the easy Monday and Tuesday puzzles, Matt kept trying even when he hit a wall on the more difficult Thursday, Friday and Saturday crosswords. Initially, he would work diligently on one area of the puzzle, starting with the upper left corner before moving on. That strategy never worked past Wednesday.

The vexing thing about it was that, when he saw the correct answers in the next day's paper, many of them were not at all difficult. A seven letter word with the clue, "In the normal fashion" turned out to be "as usual." Not "quotidian" or "diurnal." Just plain "as usual." The answer seemed obvious in retrospect, yet he had no idea how he could have figured it out at the time.

The experience felt uncannily similar to what he saw his students go through on standardized tests. For every problem he could help them with by teaching them a short cut or fact, there seemed to be five others where they had simply "not gotten it" at the time. In retrospect, these problems looked easy.

Then he stumbled upon a solution. He discovered what seasoned crossword takers already know — that if he went quickly and repeatedly through all of the crossword clues, answering only those that came to him right away, the second or third pass would yield up "as usual" for "in the normal fashion."

Getting his students to apply the same approach to the SAT consistently raised their scores and led to a series of discoveries about the nature of reading, thinking and anxiety.

Matt founded Veritas in 2001 to promote and further develop his new approach. He began recruiting and training tutors who shared his passion for teaching.

Veritas developed strong ties with several New York independent schools where we offer test prep courses.

In 2005, Matt co-authored and published Zen in the Art of the SAT.

In recent years, Veritas has expanded with New York tutors working successfully over skype with students in Washington DC, Massachusetts, California, Texas, Florida, British Columbia, Greece, England, Italy, France, Korea, China and the United Arab Emirates.