Speaker 1: What's the record for the Sunday puzzle.
Speaker 2: Maybe four minutest or four minutes something like that, But
Speaker 2: there's no reason to race, you know. It's like going
Speaker 2: to a four star restaurant and thinking how fast can
Speaker 2: I eat this meal?
Speaker 1: Hello everyone, this is Martha Stewart. At four am. When
Speaker 1: I can't sleep, I do the New York Times Crossword Puzzle,
Speaker 1: the Mini crossword Puzzle. I do tiles if I like it.
Speaker 1: I don't like all of the tiles, and I also
Speaker 1: try wordle and I do letterbox, which I really like,
Speaker 1: and I'm really good at letterbox. For some reason, many
Speaker 1: set aside a little or a lot of time, depending
Speaker 1: on one skill level, on a daily basis to keep
Speaker 1: their minds sharp and solve what has affectionately become known
Speaker 1: simply as the puzzle. In addition to the puzzle, there's
Speaker 1: a newer set of puzzles many can enjoy, from spelling
Speaker 1: be to tiles. I'm sure many of you have puzzles
Speaker 1: of all kinds that you love and will enjoy this
Speaker 1: episode of our podcast, we have two of the rock
Speaker 1: stars in the puzzle world joining me here at Samsung
Speaker 1: eight three seven Will Shortz the crossword puzzle editor and
Speaker 1: known as the Puzzle Master to millions of public radio listeners,
Speaker 1: and Everdeen Mason, editorial director of Games at the New
Speaker 1: York Times. Welcome Will and Evergine. I'm so happy that
Speaker 1: you're sitting across from me here in this beautiful studio. Hi,
Speaker 1: and It's true that I'm a terrible sleeper. So the
Speaker 1: first thing I do when I wake up is open
Speaker 1: my iPad, which if I haven't gone to sleep with
Speaker 1: it on and it's already expired, then I have to
Speaker 1: get my other iPad. So and I go right to
Speaker 1: I do the mini crossword puzzle first, then I do letterbox,
Speaker 1: then I look at tiles. But we will talk about
Speaker 1: it each of these games. It's just really interesting that
Speaker 1: The New York Times has really a department of more
Speaker 1: than fifty people working on puzzles. So how did this happen? Will?
Speaker 1: Can you explain what's this explosion in the interest of
Speaker 1: puzzles or has it always been there?
Speaker 2: Well, of course, the New York Times has had a
Speaker 2: crossword since nineteen forty two. I started the year after
Speaker 2: I was born.
Speaker 1: They knew I was going to like.
Speaker 2: Puzzles, and I started at the Times in nineteen ninety three,
Speaker 2: I was only the fourth Times Crossword editor, and when
Speaker 2: I started it was just a department of one. Basically
Speaker 2: I had an assistant to do proofreading and some other things,
Speaker 2: but it was just me. The crossword has become more popular,
Speaker 2: and I think that the world has become more puzzle
Speaker 2: friendly lately. And I have a couple theories for this.
Speaker 2: Why there is more interest in puzzles now than ever before.
Speaker 2: I think it's because the world has changed in way
Speaker 2: that more of us are using our brains now in
Speaker 2: our regular occupations, especially with computers. And once you're done
Speaker 2: thinking about your regular work, well your mind doesn't stop.
Speaker 2: It just keeps going on. So you want to do puzzles.
Speaker 1: Well, I noticed it with children. I have two bright grandchildren. Truman.
Speaker 1: Truman told me about auto check on. I didn't even
Speaker 1: know that I could auto check my puzzles, of course,
Speaker 1: but he does all the puzzles every morning. He's ten.
Speaker 2: You have a good grandson.
Speaker 1: And my granddaughter can do wordle in no time. She
Speaker 1: they are very good with language, but she's she's twelve
Speaker 1: and she just does whatever. You know, all the puzzles.
Speaker 1: They can do it so fast and so now now
Speaker 1: that I realize it's also a timing thing with like
Speaker 1: the mini, you should be able to do that? What
Speaker 1: in a minute? Fifty or what's the record record?
Speaker 3: Seconds?
Speaker 2: And I know someone who has solved the New York
Speaker 2: Times crossword, the regular crossword in fifty three seconds.
Speaker 1: Fifty three seconds.
Speaker 2: It's just online online, of course that's using Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's online because you can type faster than.
Speaker 1: You can write, right, right, Oh my gosh, that is amazing,
Speaker 1: that's incredible. Well, how many people really do work on
Speaker 1: the crossword puzzle itself? This is the big crossword puzzle
Speaker 1: and the mini. How many people are working on those puzzles?
Speaker 2: There are six of us editors and Everdeen as the
Speaker 2: editorial director, so.
Speaker 1: She holds the whip.
Speaker 2: The whip.
Speaker 1: Yeah no, but but who right? Who makes the puzzles?
Speaker 2: So the crosswords, almost all of them come in from contributors.
Speaker 2: We publish now I think more than two hundred different
Speaker 2: puzzle makers a year, wow. And they come from all over.
Speaker 2: It's a very diverse group.
Speaker 1: And serious puzzle doers, puzzle solvers or they know the
Speaker 1: different the different authors, don't they.
Speaker 2: We've been publishing a lot of new people as well, yeah,
Speaker 2: and we got about two hundred submissions a week. Every
Speaker 2: puzzle is looked at by I think at least two editors,
Speaker 2: and then the puzzles are winnowed down the ones that
Speaker 2: are likely yeses or possible yeses, and then we as
Speaker 2: a group editorial group have maybe's meetings by zoom and
Speaker 2: we discussed the pros and cons of the puzzles and
Speaker 2: accept the ones we want.
Speaker 1: Do you ever throw out one clue that's inappropriate or well.
Speaker 2: Of course we can change clues anytime, and I'd say
Speaker 2: on average half the clues are ours because we're very handsful.
Speaker 2: They are, we're very hands on editors. But yeah, sometimes
Speaker 2: if there's.
Speaker 1: This, so what is how does the puzzle come in
Speaker 1: from a contributor, all with all the words in the puzzle.
Speaker 2: So people submit puzzles as they would like it to
Speaker 2: be published, completed grid and all the clues. Until a
Speaker 2: few years ago, the puzzles came in by mail hard copy.
Speaker 2: Now submissions are done digitally.
Speaker 1: So the editing really takes place in the clues more than,
Speaker 1: of course, than the world.
Speaker 2: It can be both. We can revise grids as well,
Speaker 2: say we think it's a great puzzle, but there's a
Speaker 2: corner with a lot of crosswordies or maybe something obscure
Speaker 2: or something we just don't like, we can ask for
Speaker 2: the puzzle to be revised, or sometimes we revise the
Speaker 2: grade ourselves.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and actually I want I want to fall up
Speaker 3: and say so, I've been on the team now for
Speaker 3: almost three years, and in those that time, we've made
Speaker 3: a lot of changes to our crossword submissions and editing
Speaker 3: process and I'm just like really proud of the team
Speaker 3: of how much they've been able to adapt and it's
Speaker 3: just allowed us to do better work and also be
Speaker 3: able to publish all kinds of people. So, like Will said,
Speaker 3: we get the puzzles digitally now. We build a new
Speaker 3: CMS content management system so they can edit online. We
Speaker 3: have processes where we get feedback from testers, multiple testers,
Speaker 3: and everyone can review them. We work for their head now,
Speaker 3: so we can like make last minute changes if we
Speaker 3: have to. What else would you say we've added?
Speaker 1: Are some of the some of the answers? Two words
Speaker 1: in the crosswords?
Speaker 2: Sure, we use lots of phrases.
Speaker 1: Why didn't we call it the crosswords? That irritates me
Speaker 1: that sometimes there's more than one word?
Speaker 2: Is really interesting phrases were introduced in the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 2: actually so long. In the very early days, a phrase
Speaker 2: would say two words in parentheses afterward.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it doesn't say that anyway.
Speaker 2: We don't baby you with that.
Speaker 1: No, they do not. And I didn't try Yesterday's a
Speaker 1: Sunday crossword? Was it hard?
Speaker 3: I always think they're it's such a large puzzle. So
Speaker 3: I don't know if you know, but the Sunday is
Speaker 3: the same difficulty level as a Wednesday puzzle in terms
Speaker 3: of like the words that are included in the cluing.
Speaker 3: But it's just so massive.
Speaker 1: It's so massive. And I have one former employee who
Speaker 1: started doing the puzzle. I probably when he was in college,
Speaker 1: and he's still a young guy, and he has kept
Speaker 1: a notebook with all his puzzles, and he finishes every
Speaker 1: single Sunday puzzle and puts it into his notebook, and
Speaker 1: it is so beautiful to see his accomplishment because those
Speaker 1: puzzles are very difficult. And I had another friend I
Speaker 1: might have mentioned that to you will a long time ago,
Speaker 1: Dorian Lee, who was Susie Parker's sister. These were two
Speaker 1: most beautiful models you've ever seen. Their famous models and
Speaker 1: Dorian would do that crossroad puzzle in like an hour
Speaker 1: and Sunday morning, or maybe even less than an hour,
Speaker 1: but she was so proud of the fact. What's the
Speaker 1: record for the Sunday puzzle must be very short.
Speaker 2: It would be maybe four minutes or four minutes something
Speaker 2: like that. Yeah, but there's no reason to race, you know.
Speaker 2: It's like going to a four star restaurant and thinking
Speaker 2: how fast can I eat this meal? It makes no sense,
Speaker 2: you know, sit back and enjoy it.
Speaker 1: About how many people do the puzzle every week? Do
Speaker 1: you have any idea now with the digital world and
Speaker 1: your app as well as the published edition.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, first of all, the daily paper has the
Speaker 2: circulation about seven hundred and forty thousand, and my understanding
Speaker 2: from the past, I don't know what the current figures are.
Speaker 2: That's something like more than a quarter of New York
Speaker 2: Times readers solve the puzzle in print. Then the puzzle is.
Speaker 1: Also that's only less than two hundred thousand.
Speaker 2: And then the puzzle is syndicated to hundreds of other newspapers.
Speaker 2: I think that probably most the bulk of our solvers
Speaker 2: now are digital digital.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and we're not allowed to share exact figures,
Speaker 3: of course, but it's millions of solvers who are solving
Speaker 3: the many in the crossword alone every week, and then
Speaker 3: when you add on all of our other games, it's
Speaker 3: kind of scary a lot.
Speaker 1: But both psychologists and other scientists are always saying that
Speaker 1: to keep up your puzzle solving if you can, just
Speaker 1: to keep your mind fertile and agile, And it's like
Speaker 1: going to exercise class, but it's for your brain and
Speaker 1: your mind instead, and recall is so important as you
Speaker 1: get older too. I think I think probably many of
Speaker 1: those puzzle solvers are probably on in age. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I had a brain specialist at my house a
Speaker 2: few years ago and we were talking about puzzles and
Speaker 2: I said, sort of naively that crosswords use all parts
Speaker 2: of your brain, and he said that's not quite true.
Speaker 2: They use most of parts of your brain, but not all.
Speaker 2: And then I mentioned later that I played table tennis
Speaker 2: every day, and he said, ah, table tennis uses every
Speaker 2: part of your brain that crosswords don't. So I feel
Speaker 2: I get a full, full brain workout every day.
Speaker 1: I have to take up my I have a beautiful
Speaker 1: table tennis table up in Maine, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: make sure I do that. In addition, there you go,
Speaker 1: my crossword puzzle, oh.
Speaker 3: Op, should be the same, don't you think.
Speaker 1: Don't you think that the digital world has really and
Speaker 1: the digital editions of newspapers and books and everything else.
Speaker 1: I think that has helped the crossword puzzle get even
Speaker 1: more users because it reaches so so many more people.
Speaker 2: It's true, it's more accessible. Yeah, it's more accessible. You know,
Speaker 2: crosswords have the reputation of being mainly for older people.
Speaker 2: I think that used to be true. It's not true anymore.
Speaker 2: Our readers are solvers at the times range from smart
Speaker 2: kids basically up to as old as people get. I
Speaker 2: think we're living in a puzzle age. You know, Puzzles
Speaker 2: have never been better than they are now, and I
Speaker 2: think more people are doing them than ever as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, you have a new puzzle that I just
Speaker 1: can't understand at all, the one on the upper left.
Speaker 1: And then I still at the newspaper.
Speaker 2: Good for you.
Speaker 1: I get the newspaper every day, and I also get
Speaker 1: that I also have the app and the and the
Speaker 1: digital news paper. What is that new puzzle called the
Speaker 1: one with match the dots only two dots on each
Speaker 1: line and they know two dots can touch?
Speaker 2: Oh not touch?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Not touch? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I hate that one.
Speaker 1: I hate it. I don't. I maybe it's because maybe
Speaker 1: because I'm in the car when I'm trying to do
Speaker 1: it and it's jostling and you can't really see. It's
Speaker 1: a little bit obscure to c in the car, do
Speaker 1: you Oh? I love and I love ken Can. I
Speaker 1: do ken Can all the time. I do. And my
Speaker 1: driver is always amazed because I circle it when I
Speaker 1: finish it, and he said, oh, that was only a
Speaker 1: few seconds. I said, yeah, Well that's what it's supposed
Speaker 1: to be, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3: So do you go through and you play all the
Speaker 3: puzzles in the paper and then you do all the
Speaker 3: ones online.
Speaker 1: Well some aren't online, some aren't in the paper, so
Speaker 1: Letterbox isn't in the paper. And one another one that
Speaker 1: I do not like is Vertex. I just don't like that.
Speaker 1: I don't get it. It's like it's like paint by number.
Speaker 1: I know, but it's so silly. It's silly. I can
Speaker 1: consider that not worth my time.
Speaker 2: So I feel like the game section it's like the
Speaker 2: newspaper itself. You know, you're not going to read every
Speaker 2: single article or do everything in the paper. So we
Speaker 2: hope with the games that there are some that you
Speaker 2: love and you don't do the ones you don't want.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and we're in an exciting time where we get
Speaker 3: to try a lot of stuff. So I think people
Speaker 3: don't realize how involved the team is. So like we
Speaker 3: have I think we have almost ninety people total now
Speaker 3: on the games team, which includes you know, editorial of course,
Speaker 3: but we have product designers, we have engineers, and we
Speaker 3: work I get to work pretty closely with them. So
Speaker 3: we're constantly receiving internal like pitches that we have several
Speaker 3: stages of prototyping, and we test them out and we
Speaker 3: toss them out, and we just really want to see
Speaker 3: kind of like the range of what people are into.
Speaker 3: We're known for our word games. I think that's always
Speaker 3: what we're going to look to be best at. And
Speaker 3: but you know, we want to try some visual puzzles.
Speaker 3: We want to try some you know, number puzzles. It's
Speaker 3: been it's been really fun and it's been really.
Speaker 1: Fun to say what's your favorite visual puzzle?
Speaker 2: My favorite?
Speaker 3: Okay, I do love tiles, Yeah, I do love time.
Speaker 1: Are lame.
Speaker 3: Okay, I really like our new one. It's called Connections Topeka. Oh,
Speaker 3: I do love Connections. Your Connections is good. I think
Speaker 3: that was good. I've been really excited to see that,
Speaker 3: and I got on it at first, but then it
Speaker 3: was really good.
Speaker 1: That I spend even a half an hour doing puzzles
Speaker 1: in the morning is so great. It makes me feel good.
Speaker 1: It makes me feel like I'm ready to get up
Speaker 1: and do it. Well.
Speaker 2: You know, most problems we face in life don't have
Speaker 2: clear cut solutions. We just muddle through and with crossword
Speaker 2: or tiles or whatever. When you have achieved the perfect solution,
Speaker 2: it just makes you feel good and you're ready to
Speaker 2: go back to everything else.
Speaker 1: In life, go back to work. Right, what do you
Speaker 1: do every day? Will? What puzzle do you do besides
Speaker 1: the crosswords?
Speaker 2: Idle every day?
Speaker 1: You and I don't know when this Today was a
Speaker 1: hard word.
Speaker 2: It was hot hard, you know, the the tough. It
Speaker 2: took me five and I average under four. Today was
Speaker 2: hard because it was blank, oh, blank blank y and
Speaker 2: the other why.
Speaker 1: As you got why, I got oh, I got O
Speaker 1: and b.
Speaker 2: Well, my first two words I always start with the
Speaker 2: door because I read.
Speaker 1: My granddaughter starts with start for the door.
Speaker 2: Actually, I always start with a rose because I read
Speaker 2: once that that is a great starting word, and that
Speaker 2: gave me or a yellow O. And then I did tulip,
Speaker 2: try some different letters. Got nothing at all there, So
Speaker 2: after two steps, I'm just got nothing.
Speaker 1: And if you don't know what we're talking about, you
Speaker 1: must look at wordle and if you, I mean, it
Speaker 1: is so much fun to take these, take these hints.
Speaker 1: A door, a rose, I use alias, I use adios alias.
Speaker 2: That's interesting.
Speaker 1: Good is good.
Speaker 2: A lot of people use a do A d I
Speaker 2: e U because it uses jew.
Speaker 1: I do that one too. My granddaughter uses a jew
Speaker 1: well mar.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you knew, but I do. I
Speaker 3: have somebody who reviews the world every day. They write
Speaker 3: up about like their process. No, I read that, but
Speaker 3: she couldn't. She couldn't solve this one. Oh yeah, and
Speaker 3: she's very good.
Speaker 1: And I'll tell everybody what it was. It was hobby,
Speaker 1: and I, with so many hobbies, should have gone that
Speaker 1: in no time.
Speaker 2: After the O and the Y, I guess boggy, which
Speaker 2: was wrong. But I got a yellow B, so then
Speaker 2: I knew it had to be hot.
Speaker 1: That's good. Yeah, yeah, but it was. It is so
Speaker 1: much fun. And then and you do have a little
Speaker 1: coterie of friends if you're a puzzler who then they
Speaker 1: email me and say, oh two, I got it into today.
Speaker 1: Oh I got it one. Yeah right right, I've only
Speaker 1: that's happened to me once, and that was it's just
Speaker 1: pure luck. One, it's just luck. So the mini is
Speaker 1: is it more popular than the big one?
Speaker 2: It is? It's quick, you know, it's free, it's okay,
Speaker 2: that's something great. And also it's perfect for the modern
Speaker 2: age because the regular crossword is going to probably take
Speaker 2: you fifteen minutes to an hour to do, and people's
Speaker 2: lives are so busy now, yes that a mini is
Speaker 2: a bite sized puzzle can take you a minute or
Speaker 2: two to do and then you're off to the rest
Speaker 2: of life.
Speaker 3: And it's faster to make. So Joel Fogliano, who's like,
Speaker 3: would you say he's your protege, Yeah, yeah, yeah, Joel's
Speaker 3: fabulous and he writes all of the minis unless like
Speaker 3: he was on leave and so even I wrote a
Speaker 3: mini which was really fun, but they it goes faster
Speaker 3: and so he can be more reactive to like what's
Speaker 3: going on in the world. So every now and then
Speaker 3: he does purposely like put in things that are just
Speaker 3: like things he thought of or things he like heard
Speaker 3: on the radio or in the news, And so I
Speaker 3: think it it's an easier.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how often crosswords have a theme?
Speaker 2: Everything from Sunday to Thursday has a theme. Fridays and
Speaker 2: Saturdays usually not. Those are wide open diagrams, which means
Speaker 2: lots of white squares, very few black squares. A theme
Speaker 2: will If you have a lot of theme material in
Speaker 2: the puzzle, then you're gonna end up with a lot
Speaker 2: of three, four and five letter answers. And there's not
Speaker 2: that many of them in the English language, so the
Speaker 2: same words appear and again, again and again. Once you
Speaker 2: remove the constraint of a theme, then you can open
Speaker 2: the grid to vocabulary you've never seen.
Speaker 1: Before, and that happens often. You think now, as slang
Speaker 1: played a big part in crossword puzzle design. Now, I
Speaker 1: mean there's so much a slang or new or new
Speaker 1: usages of words or new words that you don't even
Speaker 1: think are in the dictionary.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we don't necessarily go by the dictionary because there's
Speaker 2: everything in life can appear in a crossword. I'd like
Speaker 2: to think that we're sort of arbiters of what's significant.
Speaker 2: So but once slang sort of permeates society.
Speaker 1: It sounds like the philosophy of The New York Times
Speaker 1: in general.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, we debate a lot.
Speaker 3: It's kind of hard to note because culture just moves
Speaker 3: so fast now that like there's no guarantee that anything
Speaker 3: will be a phrase people use for longer than like
Speaker 3: a minute. Like remember when everybody like everybody's calling all
Speaker 3: the gen z.
Speaker 1: There's L in the crossword puzzle.
Speaker 3: Okay, well o L has been around.
Speaker 1: I know, I know, but yeah, you just happen to
Speaker 1: be there, you know.
Speaker 3: Yespression of but we go we Yeah, I think I
Speaker 3: think we debate about the ones. One of the things
Speaker 3: that's nice with the larger puzzle editing team is it's
Speaker 3: a very wide range of people of like race and
Speaker 3: gender and sexuality and age, and so we can all
Speaker 3: kind of someone in that room knows that what they're
Speaker 3: pretty much every thing that's happening.
Speaker 2: That's true.
Speaker 1: It's kind of amazing. So why does The New York
Speaker 1: Times take on the world of puzzles in such a
Speaker 1: strong way? Would you say that you, as an newspaper
Speaker 1: have the most puzzles. Oh, I don't that's a good question.
Speaker 2: I don't know. We have the best puzzles.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and you have very good puzzles, and you
Speaker 1: spend a lot of money for Wordle. That's true that
Speaker 1: many years ago, a.
Speaker 2: Year and a half, a year and a half, a
Speaker 2: year on January last year or sometime last year. Yeah.
Speaker 2: The reason The Times doesn't is because it's profitable.
Speaker 1: Mister Wardle, who wrote Wordle, did he bring the puzzle
Speaker 1: to The Times and say, I'd like you to I'd
Speaker 1: like to sell it to you.
Speaker 2: I think so.
Speaker 3: Kind of he wanted it to be us, is my understanding.
Speaker 3: But obviously I'm sure lots of people asked to buy it, but.
Speaker 2: He thought that The New York Times would be a
Speaker 2: good caretaker for it. Somebody else might cheapen it, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: and he didn't want that.
Speaker 3: And we do have. One of the reasons why I
Speaker 3: like doing games at a place like The Times is
Speaker 3: even though we're a very separate department, but we still
Speaker 3: have you know, I an editorial employee, I am still
Speaker 3: held to the same standards as all of the other
Speaker 3: editors and journalists in the room. And there's kind of
Speaker 3: a a level of quality and like sincere rigor and
Speaker 3: ethics that goes into everything, including the puzzles. And so
Speaker 3: I think that, you know, it means that, you know,
Speaker 3: it makes sense that we make puzzles because we have
Speaker 3: all the fact checking resources, we've got the brains in
Speaker 3: the room, we know words like nobody else. But it
Speaker 3: also means that, like we're going to be pretty obsessed
Speaker 3: with making sure that it's above board and that it's
Speaker 3: really positive experience. And so I think it makes sense
Speaker 3: that word will ended up with us. We're going to
Speaker 3: do our best effort to make sure that it remains.
Speaker 1: What prepared you ever doing for your job. Ah, were
Speaker 1: you always a puzzler? Is that the right word to
Speaker 1: call you a puzzler? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Puzzler?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would say our puzzle editors are all deeply
Speaker 3: in this world and in this community. And I was not,
Speaker 3: you know, I was a person who did crosswords with friends,
Speaker 3: you know, who pass around something at the table or
Speaker 3: like at dinner, or like I like my little puzzles
Speaker 3: like video games, you know, so on and so forth.
Speaker 3: But it wasn't until I started at the Times in
Speaker 3: earnest that I really the world kind of opened up
Speaker 3: for me, I would say my preparation is just like
Speaker 3: I love words, I love fun things. I was like,
Speaker 3: oh cool, I can have a job where I make
Speaker 3: people happy all the time. It turns out people are
Speaker 3: mad at me all the time. But I hot it
Speaker 3: would make people happy all the time.
Speaker 2: And what everyding's not saying? She was a writer for
Speaker 2: the Washington Post and especially in science fiction.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was a book calmnist for a while. I
Speaker 3: was also on the audience team. So I have a
Speaker 3: really wide range of experiences. So I've been in journalism
Speaker 3: for fifteen years. I've been a writer and editor. I've
Speaker 3: done an audience stuff.
Speaker 1: Did you go to college?
Speaker 3: I went to a hell state. Yeah, so I've kind
Speaker 3: of like done a lot of production and I really
Speaker 3: like nothing makes me feel better than like shipping something
Speaker 3: like we made a thing and now it just gets
Speaker 3: to go out there. And in this job, I don't
Speaker 3: think I've ever able to make like so many things,
Speaker 3: launching newsletters, launching columns, launching new puzzles and then kind
Speaker 3: of still getting that opportunity to you know, it's kind
Speaker 3: of hard when you become a bureaucrat. You don't get
Speaker 3: to make the thing anymore, and so like, I still
Speaker 3: feel like I get to have my hand in both
Speaker 3: where I can advocate for the team and like make
Speaker 3: sure they get everything they need so that they can
Speaker 3: just make really cool stuff and not have to worry
Speaker 3: about the boring stuff. But I also still get to test,
Speaker 3: and I get to debate, and I get to play
Speaker 3: with everybody else.
Speaker 1: So and well, how long have you been at the
Speaker 1: times you mentioned?
Speaker 2: I joined it in nineteen ninety three, so this is
Speaker 2: my thirtieth year, I think, and having a party, a party.
Speaker 2: We should have a party, So I have a party.
Speaker 2: I think the anniversary is some like November twenty one,
Speaker 2: so we should do something special.
Speaker 1: Then, yes, you should, But you've been You've been such
Speaker 1: a stalwart fan of the entire puzzle world, and so
Speaker 1: and so outspoken and interesting about the puzzle world, and
Speaker 1: uh and so and so many people rely on you
Speaker 1: for their daily good Really, it's an amazing it's an
Speaker 1: amazing feed.
Speaker 2: Actually, well, the best part of the job is the
Speaker 2: people we come in contact with, both the puzzle makers
Speaker 2: and solvers, Because puzzle people tend to be smart, interesting,
Speaker 2: often funny, well rounded people, often with good sense of humor.
Speaker 2: Uh and maybe a little quirky. And I'm definitely quirky myself,
Speaker 2: so uh and crossword puzzle people are my kind of people.
Speaker 1: Do you read a lot?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I read voraciously, Read voraciously. What's the best book you've
Speaker 1: read lately?
Speaker 2: Huh? I've been a middle of a novel right now
Speaker 2: called The Puzzle Master. Oh uh. And it's about a
Speaker 2: man who has a brain injury and uh becomes a savant.
Speaker 2: He's an expert puzzle solver and this is a real thing,
Speaker 2: it's not just fiction. And he's called in to to
Speaker 2: a mysterious case to try to figure out what's going
Speaker 2: on with this strange prisoner. That's as far as I've gotten.
Speaker 1: It sounds like a good book. And what about you, Everdeen?
Speaker 3: I also read a lot, and I read very broadly,
Speaker 3: mostly fiction, though I don't know, I want to escape reality.
Speaker 3: But I just read It's an old book, but it's
Speaker 3: all over creation by ruth A Zeki, and I love
Speaker 3: ruth A Zeki. Her work is just mind blowing. It's
Speaker 3: like funny and tender and interesting. So I've been working
Speaker 3: my way through her back catalog since I read her
Speaker 3: most recent stuff.
Speaker 1: Oh great, yeah, great. I find that fiction to me
Speaker 1: is I live fiction every single day, so I read
Speaker 1: a lot more nonfiction now than fiction. I have a
Speaker 1: hard time getting through some story books. I've just read
Speaker 1: Cornick McCarthy's newest novel before he died, and it was
Speaker 1: not good compared to his other books. I mean, I
Speaker 1: just wasn't as exciting as No Country for Old Men,
Speaker 1: you know, those fabulous books. Well, anyway, how did sudoko
Speaker 1: come about? Because that's an interesting puzzle.
Speaker 2: Right, So I'm actually the person who discovered who invented it? Oh,
Speaker 2: and I'll tell you how I discovered it was the
Speaker 2: first one appeared in nineteen seventy nine in a magazine
Speaker 2: Dell Pencil Puzzles and Word Games, and it had the
Speaker 2: name number place. Then the Dell magazines didn't do bylines
Speaker 2: on the puzzles, but at the front of every issue
Speaker 2: they listed all the contributors in the issue. I collect
Speaker 2: old puzzle magazines, and I went back to my collection
Speaker 2: of these magazines and found that every issue that had
Speaker 2: this puzzle had a certain name in the contributors list
Speaker 2: at the front, and no issue that didn't have this
Speaker 2: puzzle had this person's name. So by process of elimination.
Speaker 2: I discovered it was invented by Howard Garnes, was an
Speaker 2: architect in Indianapolis. The puzzle became a regular, semi regular
Speaker 2: feature in these magazines, and then nineteen eighty four there
Speaker 2: was a Japanese puzzle editor in the United States found
Speaker 2: this puzzle. He couldn't solve our word puzzles, but he
Speaker 2: found sodoku, loved it, took it back to Japan where
Speaker 2: it became successful.
Speaker 1: Was it always called sudoku?
Speaker 2: No, we called it numbers place they called it. They
Speaker 2: introduced the name, so.
Speaker 1: I thought it was I always thought it was a
Speaker 1: Japanese Yeah, it was.
Speaker 2: Most people don't realize it was an American invention. And
Speaker 2: then there was a judge, retired judge from New Zealand
Speaker 2: in Japan, saw this puzzle, loved it. He created a
Speaker 2: computer program for generating sudoku. Interestingly, he brought the puzzle
Speaker 2: to the New York Times around two thousand and five,
Speaker 2: and I didn't see it. It went to somebody else
Speaker 2: and the Times rejected it. So we took it to
Speaker 2: the Times of London. They published it in two thousand
Speaker 2: and four. It was an immediate hit and started appearing
Speaker 2: in all the papers immediately became a collection of Sodoka books.
Speaker 2: Was the number one best selling book in Britain in
Speaker 2: early two thousand and five, those books, and then that's
Speaker 2: spread around the world.
Speaker 1: And what inspired the spelling bee? Which is my property manager.
Speaker 1: He has to do the spelling b before he comes
Speaker 1: to work.
Speaker 2: Gotcha, that's real time late.
Speaker 1: And I know it's the spelling bee, and I get
Speaker 1: really mad at him because he's you know, he's probably
Speaker 1: way up there in the number of words. When did
Speaker 1: that start?
Speaker 2: It started? I think in twenty fifteen.
Speaker 1: Describe spelling be because the.
Speaker 2: Spelling bee is a it looks like a beehive. There
Speaker 2: are seven letters that you can make words from, but
Speaker 2: the letter in the middle of the hive has to
Speaker 2: be used in every answer. And the other unusual feature
Speaker 2: about spelling bee is that you can repeat letters in
Speaker 2: your word. So if a letter appears, you can repeat
Speaker 2: it as often as you want.
Speaker 1: And the jackpot is always.
Speaker 2: If you can use all seven letters, and it's called
Speaker 2: a pangram and you get bonus.
Speaker 1: For that, right, And that is that? And what bother
Speaker 1: I think? Can you? You can't tell how many words
Speaker 1: you can make. Nobody tells you that.
Speaker 2: I think the reason is that it would set up
Speaker 2: an impossible expectation. You know, there's a listening for genius,
Speaker 2: and if you achieve genius level you should feel satisfied.
Speaker 2: But if we say, yeah, the score, your top score
Speaker 2: is whatever, then if you're a puzzle fanatic.
Speaker 1: We can we find out with AI. Now if I
Speaker 1: ask my chat bought, can can I find out how
Speaker 1: many words you could make out of it?
Speaker 3: Probably, although we may not accept all of them, it
Speaker 3: gets at it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know sometimes you don't accept my favorite words.
Speaker 1: Then there are really words in the dictionary. How come boy?
Speaker 2: We accept It's very subjective.
Speaker 3: I said, this is that's a part of the fun
Speaker 3: of it, like it could it computer human.
Speaker 2: It's subjective. Yeah, And if you find a word that's
Speaker 2: not on our list, well you should count it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think I wrote in and they said, well, it's
Speaker 1: not on our list, so.
Speaker 2: We count words that we consider comments.
Speaker 1: So, of all the games that are online, and you're
Speaker 1: offering New York Times online games, which is the most
Speaker 1: popular word a word word word? Straight away?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I mean it was already getting sogular. It was huge,
Speaker 3: and then it got Huger and now it's kind of
Speaker 3: like mellowed out, but it's still just still huge, huge,
Speaker 3: the scale of it.
Speaker 1: Some of my friends, I'm getting I'm tired of it,
Speaker 1: but it's still tantalizing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's also of those weird things where it's like
Speaker 3: it's like a yawn, Like if I see somebody on
Speaker 3: the train playing it, like I immediately like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: I should just like go ahead and knock one out
Speaker 3: because it's so fast.
Speaker 2: That's part of the appeal and the social get back ones.
Speaker 1: Can you get former ones? Because if I forget to
Speaker 1: do it yesterday.
Speaker 3: Uh, Yesterday's not yet, not right now, I don't think so.
Speaker 3: I wish you could maybe eventually.
Speaker 1: Editor, editor, would you please put these yesterdays? Well you forgot,
Speaker 1: here's yesterday.
Speaker 3: I'll call my people like Martha says that she wants
Speaker 3: yesterday's puzzle.
Speaker 1: That would just be nice, just because, especially if you
Speaker 1: have the subscription, you should be able to go back one.
Speaker 3: We're working on it. I think people don't realize like
Speaker 3: that the app's been around for a while, but we've
Speaker 3: only fairly recently been really investing a lot of resources
Speaker 3: into it. So if for people who didn't know now
Speaker 3: pretty much all the games are in the app, including
Speaker 3: Sudoku tiles. That was not true last year.
Speaker 1: You know, I really love the squares, the colored squares.
Speaker 3: That one's called oh trect I love uh trect. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's like a city in the Netherlands. I don't know
Speaker 3: why it's named to that.
Speaker 1: I love that one. Yeah, and it doesn't come out
Speaker 1: very often. It's not every week.
Speaker 3: No, you can play it all the time. You can
Speaker 3: always toggle your your Oh you can. Yeah, you can
Speaker 3: choose every day. Oh I didn't which one? Yeah, I
Speaker 3: feel like a lot of people. I feel like every week.
Speaker 1: I like, what's that you have to get rid of?
Speaker 1: That one? That is like now you know a friend
Speaker 1: of mine? Then when came up with Foodle. Do you
Speaker 1: know Foodle? Have you tried it?
Speaker 2: I don't know? Tell us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well it's just like Wordle, only all the answers
Speaker 1: have to do with food.
Speaker 2: And it's always five letters.
Speaker 3: Uh huh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's exactly the same game. How could you do that?
Speaker 2: You think you'd run out of five letter of foods
Speaker 2: after a while.
Speaker 1: No, she does it and everybody loves it too. That
Speaker 1: that's that's online. So how do you make money? On
Speaker 1: a game like Wordle through subscriptions. No, because it's free.
Speaker 3: There's an ad on it now.
Speaker 2: I think there's recently an ad was added and also
Speaker 2: it said it attracts people to the New York Times game,
Speaker 2: so it pays for itself that way. Well.
Speaker 3: And I think a lot of people just didn't realize
Speaker 3: a that we had multiple games newer to this crossword
Speaker 3: and puzzling community. I think a lot of people have
Speaker 3: a lot of preconceived notions about these puzzles, like you
Speaker 3: have to be really smart, or it's only for older people,
Speaker 3: or it's so on and so forth. So I think
Speaker 3: Wordle introduced a lot of people to are sweet and
Speaker 3: made them realize that this is something that they can do.
Speaker 1: Well. My daughter is a puzzler and she's the one
Speaker 1: who introduced them all to her children children, and they
Speaker 1: have really adopted them as a way of life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's really nice and there their phones were blocked
Speaker 1: from other things they can't but they are not blocked
Speaker 1: to to puzzles or the New York Times. Yeah. The
Speaker 1: kids read the New York Times from cover to cover,
Speaker 1: especially the Boy every single day.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's going to be one smart kid.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and he reads really fast, so he knows
Speaker 1: if I mentioned anything. I have to argue with him
Speaker 1: about it because he's already read about it. But it's
Speaker 1: kind of fun. But it's nice to see them do
Speaker 1: these puzzles. It's nice to see them use language so nicely.
Speaker 1: And I think that that really does the word games
Speaker 1: really help you with language and increase your vocabulary and
Speaker 1: make your teachers happier so that your essays are more
Speaker 1: interesting if you increase your vocabulary, That's true.
Speaker 3: It doesn't feel like a waste of time. Like if
Speaker 3: your boss walks by your computerity doing the Crossword, can
Speaker 3: they really be mad?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't think you can't. These puzzles have also been updated,
Speaker 1: making them younger or more broadly interesting. Is that a
Speaker 1: big objective of the game world?
Speaker 2: Absolutely? We want the crossword and the other puzzles well,
Speaker 2: we went there in particular. We want the Crossword to
Speaker 2: reflect the life, culture, and language of everyone who reads
Speaker 2: The New York Times and the whole history of the
Speaker 2: Times Crossword. Up to me, there are only six teenagers
Speaker 2: known to have been published, and a about sixty teens
Speaker 2: have been published since I started in nineteen ninety three
Speaker 2: and the youngest being twelve. I think we.
Speaker 3: Started a fellowship on the team because we wanted to
Speaker 3: introduce more people to the art of constructing, and we
Speaker 3: do have the best buzz letters and constructors. So now
Speaker 3: we're taking six now and we take them. They each
Speaker 3: get assigned a mentor, which is one of the puzzle editors,
Speaker 3: and they work for a period of two months to
Speaker 3: make a New York Times worthy crossword. Wow and yeah,
Speaker 3: that submission worthy.
Speaker 1: Theyppled it. Apply.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you apply. Yeah, you apply to it. And
Speaker 3: it's specifically it's called the Diverse Crossword Constructor Fellowship, which
Speaker 3: is a mouthful. So we take you know, we're looking
Speaker 3: for people of color, or looking for women, we're looking
Speaker 3: for people of different sexualities, any age range. We get
Speaker 3: people from all over there. We get constructors from all
Speaker 3: over the world anyway. But it's been really cool to
Speaker 3: see the people who apply and have opportunity to work
Speaker 3: with them one on one and teach them how to
Speaker 3: do this, and like Will said, it will naturally just
Speaker 3: reflect who they are. So we've been really trying to
Speaker 3: diversify who we publish as a means of being more accessible.
Speaker 2: We've done this twice now, and everyone who has been
Speaker 2: part of the program has had at least one puzzle
Speaker 2: published in The Times.
Speaker 1: Very exciting, it's been. I'm always excited when I'm a clue.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, yeah. How many times have you been.
Speaker 1: I have no idea? I have no idea?
Speaker 2: Times four times?
Speaker 1: Oh, I've been a clue four times?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Oh hope. It's always fun. Sometimes you have more than
Speaker 1: you have the same clue in a short period of time.
Speaker 1: I've always couldn't got always distressed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that happens.
Speaker 1: That happens with all those editors. I don't know.
Speaker 3: I think you have to sometimes there's only so many
Speaker 3: ways to say things right.
Speaker 1: Although me and my friends we talk about critical I
Speaker 1: love your puzzles.
Speaker 2: When your name appears in the crossroad, do you hear
Speaker 2: from friends?
Speaker 1: Oh? Yes, of course, of course. When I see your
Speaker 1: friend's name in there, I called my friend too.
Speaker 2: There was a newswoman in I think NBC newswoman who
Speaker 2: wrote me once. She did not realize how many of
Speaker 2: her friends solved the New York Times Crossroad until the
Speaker 2: day her name appeared in the puzzle, and she started
Speaker 2: getting calls and messages at six am.
Speaker 1: So it's exciting. Yeah, so get back to this Connections thing,
Speaker 1: because that's a new beta. You're just still in beda
Speaker 1: to beta. Yeah. I wondered why I haven't seen it.
Speaker 1: I don't see it everything.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that means it is every day. It's web only,
Speaker 3: it is. So our new games process is pretty complicated.
Speaker 3: So again, we got pitches from all over the company
Speaker 3: and we review them and we do several rounds of
Speaker 3: like user testing. But when we got to a point
Speaker 3: where like we think that this could be really cool,
Speaker 3: they asked me to find somebody to make these boards,
Speaker 3: and so we tapped win Aloo. She's all of my
Speaker 3: the puzzle editors are just like the brains are so
Speaker 3: special and I knew she would kill it. So we
Speaker 3: asked her to make you know, three two three months
Speaker 3: worth of boards, and we started publishing them. And it's
Speaker 3: doing really well because it's a really fun game and
Speaker 3: we're still experimenting. So we've been reviewing like feedback that
Speaker 3: we're getting, you know, things like solve rates, like how
Speaker 3: hard is it too hard? Is it too difficult? What
Speaker 3: kind of changes we should make, and we'll try to
Speaker 3: incorporate that and then we review every couple of weeks
Speaker 3: to be like, okay, should we keep going? So we'll
Speaker 3: probably decide on whether we want to make it into
Speaker 3: a full game in a couple of weeks to months.
Speaker 3: But it's been a really fun experience.
Speaker 2: Of some of the New York Times games that are
Speaker 2: computer generated, but a cool thing about Connections is that
Speaker 2: it's human generated. It has to be made by a person,
Speaker 2: so when you're when you're playing Connections, you're matching wits
Speaker 2: with another human being, not with a computer.
Speaker 1: And the reaction has been good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's been really positive, and it's it's just doing
Speaker 3: really really well out of the gate. We've made attested
Speaker 3: other games before, and this one just like took off,
Speaker 3: which I felt very validated because I love word games,
Speaker 3: so like all I ever want to work on is
Speaker 3: word games. So I feel bad because I'm on the
Speaker 3: green light committee and anything that's not a word game,
Speaker 3: I'm like, I don't know, I don't know if this
Speaker 3: is the right fit. But so I'm really excited that
Speaker 3: this one's taking off, So I'm feeling really hopeful.
Speaker 1: But AI can can create puzzles too, right have you
Speaker 1: tried that? We have?
Speaker 3: It's not very good.
Speaker 2: AI can make bad puzzles.
Speaker 3: Your job is safe.
Speaker 2: Well, I think I'm good for now.
Speaker 1: So it can make puzzles though, yes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it can write clues. I don't think
Speaker 2: AI yet. It can't come up with consistently good clues,
Speaker 2: can't come up with a great crossword theme, and it
Speaker 2: wouldn't know what is a good crossword grid and what
Speaker 2: is not. So it's crosswords are still a very human activity.
Speaker 1: So can you tell us any funny stories about puzzlers
Speaker 1: that your community, the New York Times community, tell us
Speaker 1: a story? Will you have so many?
Speaker 2: Wow?
Speaker 3: Well, so wacky. Sometimes I tell stories of my friends
Speaker 3: and they're like, you're just saying mad lips, and they're like, no,
Speaker 3: this is.
Speaker 2: Sort of a touching story. But several years ago, a
Speaker 2: woman was was going into brain surgery and her greatest
Speaker 2: fear was that she would not be able to complete
Speaker 2: the New York Times crossword after surgery. So when she
Speaker 2: came to the first thing she asked for was the newspaper,
Speaker 2: she solved the puzzle and she knew that the surgery
Speaker 2: had been successful.
Speaker 1: As see, that's a very nice story.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And the community is so strong, so we have
Speaker 3: a we have the wordplay column, which deb Amlin was
Speaker 3: like the main writer for it. Now we have a
Speaker 3: couple and that community in the comment threads is so loving.
Speaker 3: They like know each other, they talk to each other.
Speaker 3: The spelling beform is also huge, and people they it
Speaker 3: starts always like about puzzles and tips and stuff, but
Speaker 3: then they start talking about their lives and like how
Speaker 3: these puzzles help them connect with other people, how they
Speaker 3: do these puzzles with other people, and it's really, uh,
Speaker 3: it's really validating to see and see that like we
Speaker 3: can kind of facilitate that kind of.
Speaker 2: I don't know, like group culture, and that's true and
Speaker 2: friendship when people when puzzle people get together either in
Speaker 2: person or online. Of course some of the conversation is
Speaker 2: about puzzles, but what we have in common as puzzle
Speaker 2: people is brains, lively brains, so we connect in many
Speaker 2: other ways as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, my uh, one of our other commons, her name
Speaker 3: is Sam Corbin. She started recently and she said something
Speaker 3: really smart that I loved, which is that like one
Speaker 3: of the most human things is to like make your
Speaker 3: own fun and that's like really all that a puzzle
Speaker 3: or game is, and so you know, people are just
Speaker 3: naturally drawn to that and they just want to talk
Speaker 3: about it and they want to keep making fun.
Speaker 1: Well, I think schools should also use some of these
Speaker 1: puzzles as as a I think some do oh way
Speaker 1: too encourage kids to use their brains even more.
Speaker 3: Do we see it in the data actually when schools
Speaker 3: when school is out, because kids like can play the
Speaker 3: puzzles on their little school laptops, right, and it's not
Speaker 3: gonna be like blocked. It's the New York Times, and
Speaker 3: so we actually see it in the data. It's really funny.
Speaker 1: Well, Everydeen and will thank you so very much for
Speaker 1: joining me here today. You each have a great.
Speaker 2: Job, and we really do you do.
Speaker 1: I'm envious of your jobs to play many of the
Speaker 1: games we discussed and to keep your mind sharp, listeners,
Speaker 1: pick up a copy of The New York Times or
Speaker 1: play the games at New York Times dot com slash crosswords,
Speaker 1: or download the New York Times Games app, and good
Speaker 1: luck with keeping us pleasantly occupied for many many more
Speaker 1: years to comp both of you. Thank you so much.