WEBVTT - How Does the New York Times Crossword Puzzle Work? 0:00:01.920 --> 0:00:07.120 Welcome to Brainstuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff, 0:00:07.160 --> 0:00:11.240 Lauren Vogelbaum. Here, we have a subset of folks around 0:00:11.320 --> 0:00:14.920 the office who love crosswords. It's a favorite happy hour 0:00:14.960 --> 0:00:18.000 pastime for a few of us. Solving these puzzles can 0:00:18.040 --> 0:00:20.720 be relaxing, fun to do alone or with a buddy, 0:00:20.960 --> 0:00:24.000 and research shows that it's good for your brain and 0:00:24.280 --> 0:00:27.720 pushing eighty years old. The New York Times Daily Crossword 0:00:27.760 --> 0:00:32.080 in particular, is an American institution. Strangely enough, The New 0:00:32.159 --> 0:00:35.640 York Times was the last major metropolitan daily newspaper in 0:00:35.640 --> 0:00:39.040 the country to start a crossword. When the crossword puzzle 0:00:39.040 --> 0:00:42.040 craze gripped the United States in nineteen four, the paper 0:00:42.120 --> 0:00:46.440 publicly condemned the fad, publishing a scornful editorial in which 0:00:46.440 --> 0:00:49.360 it called crosswords the latest of the problems presented for 0:00:49.440 --> 0:00:53.680 solution by psychologists interested in the mental peculiarities of mobs 0:00:53.760 --> 0:00:57.000 and crowds, which was a pretty sick burn. Back in 0:00:59.160 --> 0:01:02.760 Simon and Schoose published the first crossword puzzle book that year, 0:01:03.120 --> 0:01:06.279 and most American newspapers started a cross word between nineteen 0:01:06.319 --> 0:01:09.480 twenty four and nineteen twenty six. The holdout of the 0:01:09.520 --> 0:01:11.360 Times might have had something to do with the fact 0:01:11.400 --> 0:01:14.560 that it had never done comics or entertainment features of 0:01:14.600 --> 0:01:18.360 any sort. All that stuff was considered frivolous by its editors, 0:01:19.319 --> 0:01:22.400 but the crossword had staying power, and at the beginning 0:01:22.400 --> 0:01:24.760 of World War Two, the then editor of The Times, 0:01:24.920 --> 0:01:27.520 Arthur Sulzberger, decided it was time for the paper to 0:01:27.560 --> 0:01:31.200 start its own puzzle. We spoke with the current New 0:01:31.280 --> 0:01:35.560 York Times crossword editor Will Shortz. He said, the probably 0:01:35.600 --> 0:01:38.880 apocryphal story is that Saulsberger was tired of buying the 0:01:38.920 --> 0:01:43.000 competing New York Herald Tribune to get their crossword. It 0:01:43.040 --> 0:01:44.840 was the start of World War Two and it was 0:01:44.880 --> 0:01:47.120 thought that people needed to take their minds off the 0:01:47.200 --> 0:01:50.520 grim war news. So the Times had the good sense 0:01:50.640 --> 0:01:53.960 to ask Margaret Ferrar to be the crossword editor. She 0:01:54.000 --> 0:01:56.639 had co edited all the Simon and Schuster crossword books, 0:01:56.680 --> 0:02:00.000 going back to the very first one in four. Margaret 0:02:00.000 --> 0:02:03.920 immediately raised the quality of the crossword above anyone else's, 0:02:03.960 --> 0:02:07.400 the intellectual caliber of the puzzle, the cultural references, and 0:02:07.560 --> 0:02:10.960 just the quality of the puzzle, making more interesting vocabulary 0:02:11.080 --> 0:02:16.040 and fresher more on target definitions. Farrar was the Times 0:02:16.040 --> 0:02:19.320 Crossword editor for twenty seven years from nineteen forty two 0:02:19.440 --> 0:02:22.440 to nineteen sixty nine, and the puzzle evolved a bit 0:02:22.560 --> 0:02:25.040 over that time. At the start, she was given the 0:02:25.040 --> 0:02:27.760 directive that the puzzle should reflect the information that the 0:02:27.760 --> 0:02:30.200 reader was picking up in the pages of the newspaper. 0:02:30.680 --> 0:02:32.959 So if you go back to those early puzzles, you'll 0:02:32.960 --> 0:02:36.480 see a lot of war references. But Farrar thought the 0:02:36.480 --> 0:02:39.959 crossword should distract people from the harsher aspects of life, 0:02:40.160 --> 0:02:44.480 which is why over time she began to include more entertainment, literature, 0:02:44.560 --> 0:02:49.400 and non news subjects. Farrar was succeeded in nineteen sixty 0:02:49.480 --> 0:02:52.040 nine by Will Wang, who was the head of the 0:02:52.080 --> 0:02:54.519 Metropolitan desk at The Times before he took the job 0:02:54.560 --> 0:02:58.360 of crossboard editor. Wang was an old fashioned newsman, but 0:02:58.560 --> 0:03:01.640 he had an abiding love crosswords. He had been creating 0:03:01.680 --> 0:03:04.200 puzzles for The Times for years before he became editor. 0:03:05.160 --> 0:03:08.640 Shorts said his greatest innovation for The Times Crossword was humor. 0:03:09.040 --> 0:03:11.040 He was a genuinely funny man, and his sense of 0:03:11.120 --> 0:03:14.400 humor came through in the puzzles. When retired in nineteen 0:03:14.440 --> 0:03:18.480 seventy seven and was succeeded by Eugene T. Moleska. I'd 0:03:18.520 --> 0:03:20.560 say the word play in the crossword themes became more 0:03:20.680 --> 0:03:23.880 varied and sophisticated. Under Moleska, it became more a word 0:03:23.919 --> 0:03:27.440 game than in previous years. But Moleska was a staid guy. 0:03:27.840 --> 0:03:30.320 He had been a school superintendent in the Bronx. He 0:03:30.400 --> 0:03:32.880 loved opera and classical music, and his puzzles had a 0:03:32.880 --> 0:03:37.520 more serious tone than will Wang's. Schwartz became Crossword editor 0:03:37.560 --> 0:03:41.160 in ninetee when Moleska died, and one of his goals 0:03:41.160 --> 0:03:44.160 has been to modernize the puzzle to include more current 0:03:44.160 --> 0:03:48.400 cultural references, more update language, and more playful themes. And 0:03:48.520 --> 0:03:51.880 the audience has broadened under Shorts. He said, it used 0:03:51.920 --> 0:03:53.880 to be you'd think of cross words as being mainly 0:03:53.960 --> 0:03:56.680 for older people, and I think that was true before 0:03:56.680 --> 0:03:59.160 I became editor. I can tell how the audience has 0:03:59.200 --> 0:04:01.760 broadened just of the people who contribute to the puzzle. 0:04:02.960 --> 0:04:05.560 In the whole history of the puzzle, before Shorts became editor, 0:04:05.800 --> 0:04:08.840 only six teenagers had gotten puzzles published in the Times. 0:04:09.320 --> 0:04:12.640 In Shorts's twenty five years as puzzle editor, he's published 0:04:12.680 --> 0:04:15.760 thirty seventeenagers and lots of twenty and thirty some things. 0:04:16.200 --> 0:04:18.760 The average age of contributors has come down by about 0:04:18.760 --> 0:04:22.160 fifteen years from the early fifties to the late thirties. 0:04:22.640 --> 0:04:25.719 The youngest person Shorts has published was thirteen, and the 0:04:25.760 --> 0:04:29.800 oldest person was a hundred and one. Shorts said, it's 0:04:29.839 --> 0:04:32.839 an extremely diverse group of people who make the Times Crossword. 0:04:32.960 --> 0:04:37.400 It reflects the Times readership itself. Shorts, you might have gathered, 0:04:37.560 --> 0:04:40.480 does not construct the puzzles himself, though he does create 0:04:40.560 --> 0:04:45.200 variety puzzles, unique and new variations in crosswords. Shorts and 0:04:45.240 --> 0:04:48.000 his two assistants get between seventy five and one hundred 0:04:48.000 --> 0:04:51.320 puzzle submissions every week, which they look through call to 0:04:51.360 --> 0:04:55.839 select the best ones, then edit for publication. These days, 0:04:55.920 --> 0:04:59.400 most crossword puzzles have themes, which means the long answers 0:04:59.440 --> 0:05:03.520 tied together in some interesting way. When creating a puzzle, 0:05:03.800 --> 0:05:06.960 you put your theme answers in a grid, first, plotting 0:05:07.000 --> 0:05:10.320 black squares around those, which divides the grid into sections, 0:05:10.400 --> 0:05:13.599 which are then filled with words. When you've polished the 0:05:13.600 --> 0:05:16.240 puzzle to the best of your ability, you write the clues. 0:05:17.520 --> 0:05:20.520 The Time's Crossword gets more difficult as the week progresses. 0:05:20.920 --> 0:05:23.159 Monday is the simplest, and the puzzle turns up the 0:05:23.160 --> 0:05:26.279 heat a little each day until the Saturday puzzle, which 0:05:26.279 --> 0:05:30.000 can seem nion impossible. The Sunday crossword is bigger, but 0:05:30.120 --> 0:05:32.960 as far as difficulty goes, it's like a hard Wednesday 0:05:33.080 --> 0:05:36.560 or easy Thursday. Sunday is the biggest circulation day of 0:05:36.560 --> 0:05:39.120 the week, so Shorts wants to make sure the crossword 0:05:39.160 --> 0:05:43.480 is accessible to the broadest possible audience. When Shorts started 0:05:43.520 --> 0:05:47.120 his job in virtually all the puzzles were created by 0:05:47.279 --> 0:05:49.920 hand on graph paper, and all of them were solved 0:05:49.920 --> 0:05:52.120 with a pencil or pen if that's the way you 0:05:52.279 --> 0:05:56.520 roll hot shot. These days, however, most crossword constructors use 0:05:56.600 --> 0:05:59.239 computer software to build their puzzles, and lots of people 0:05:59.240 --> 0:06:04.279 solve the puzzles online or otherwise electronically. Short said, you 0:06:04.360 --> 0:06:06.640 have to subscribe to solve the online version of the 0:06:06.640 --> 0:06:09.440 Times Crossword. Even if you subscribe to the printed or 0:06:09.480 --> 0:06:11.839 online versions of the paper, you have to pay extra 0:06:11.880 --> 0:06:15.599 for it. These days, or hundred and thirty thousand people 0:06:15.640 --> 0:06:18.839 subscribed to just the crossword. It's become a significant source 0:06:18.880 --> 0:06:21.280 of income for the company, and it can be a 0:06:21.279 --> 0:06:24.440 significant source of income for the writers. A successful cross 0:06:24.440 --> 0:06:27.159 word contributor can make between five hundred and two thousand, 0:06:27.160 --> 0:06:30.039 two hundred and fifty dollars per puzzle, depending on the 0:06:30.160 --> 0:06:32.600 day of week and how many previous puzzles they've had 0:06:32.640 --> 0:06:40.839 accepted for publication. Today's episode was written by Jesslin Shields 0:06:40.839 --> 0:06:43.000 and produced by Tyler Clay. For more on this and 0:06:43.000 --> 0:06:45.320 lots of other not so puzzling topics, becasit how stuff 0:06:45.320 --> 0:06:48.200 works dot com. Brain Stuff is production of I heart Radio. 0:06:48.400 --> 0:06:50.359 For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i 0:06:50.400 --> 0:06:53.000 heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to 0:06:53.000 --> 0:06:53.800 your favorite shows.