Y. K. Snarfas

Y. K. Snarfas is a pen name for Sy Safransky the editor and founder of The Sun. “Beginnings, Blunders, & Eleventh-Hour Rescues” in Issue 457 — The Sun’s fortieth anniversary issue — explains in the third entry under the subheading “Eleven Firsts”:

3. FIRST CORRESPONDENCE
The first letter from a reader appears in issue 2. “You’re mighty brave to be starting such an adventure,” it says. But for the most part The Sun received little correspondence in its early days — so little that Sy would sometimes write cranky letters to the editor under various pen names, including “Y.K. Snarfas” (“Safransky” spelled backward), who would lambaste the magazine for its pretentiousness.

— From March 1976