Word Play with New York Times Game Editors Everdeen Mason & Will Shortz

What's the record for the Sunday puzzle.

Maybe four minutest or four minutes something like that, But there's no reason to race, you know. It's like going to a four star restaurant and thinking how fast can I eat this meal?

Hello everyone, this is Martha Stewart. At four am. When I can't sleep, I do the New York Times Crossword Puzzle, the Mini crossword Puzzle. I do tiles if I like it. I don't like all of the tiles, and I also try wordle and I do letterbox, which I really like, and I'm really good at letterbox. For some reason, many set aside a little or a lot of time, depending on one skill level, on a daily basis to keep their minds sharp and solve what has affectionately become known

Well, of course, the New York Times has had a crossword since nineteen forty two. I started the year after I was born.

They knew I was going to like.

Puzzles, and I started at the Times in nineteen ninety three, I was only the fourth Times Crossword editor, and when I started it was just a department of one. Basically I had an assistant to do proofreading and some other things, but it was just me. The crossword has become more popular, and I think that the world has become more puzzle friendly lately. And I have a couple theories for this. Why there is more interest in puzzles now than ever before.

Well, I noticed it with children. I have two bright grandchildren. Truman. Truman told me about auto check on. I didn't even know that I could auto check my puzzles, of course, but he does all the puzzles every morning. He's ten.

You have a good grandson.

And my granddaughter can do wordle in no time. She they are very good with language, but she's she's twelve and she just does whatever. You know, all the puzzles. They can do it so fast and so now now that I realize it's also a timing thing with like the mini, you should be able to do that? What in a minute? Fifty or what's the record record?

Seconds?

And I know someone who has solved the New York Times crossword, the regular crossword in fifty three seconds.

Fifty three seconds.

It's just online online, of course that's using Yeah, yeah, it's online because you can type faster than.

You can write, right, right, Oh my gosh, that is amazing, that's incredible. Well, how many people really do work on the crossword puzzle itself? This is the big crossword puzzle and the mini. How many people are working on those puzzles?

There are six of us editors and Everdeen as the editorial director, so.

She holds the whip.

The whip.

Yeah no, but but who right? Who makes the puzzles?

So the crosswords, almost all of them come in from contributors. We publish now I think more than two hundred different puzzle makers a year, wow. And they come from all over. It's a very diverse group.

And serious puzzle doers, puzzle solvers or they know the different the different authors, don't they.

We've been publishing a lot of new people as well, yeah, and we got about two hundred submissions a week. Every puzzle is looked at by I think at least two editors, and then the puzzles are winnowed down the ones that are likely yeses or possible yeses, and then we as a group editorial group have maybe's meetings by zoom and we discussed the pros and cons of the puzzles and accept the ones we want.

Do you ever throw out one clue that's inappropriate or well.

Of course we can change clues anytime, and I'd say on average half the clues are ours because we're very handsful. They are, we're very hands on editors. But yeah, sometimes if there's.

This, so what is how does the puzzle come in from a contributor, all with all the words in the puzzle.

So people submit puzzles as they would like it to be published, completed grid and all the clues. Until a few years ago, the puzzles came in by mail hard copy. Now submissions are done digitally.

So the editing really takes place in the clues more than, of course, than the world.

It can be both. We can revise grids as well, say we think it's a great puzzle, but there's a corner with a lot of crosswordies or maybe something obscure or something we just don't like, we can ask for the puzzle to be revised, or sometimes we revise the grade ourselves.

Yeah, and actually I want I want to fall up and say so, I've been on the team now for almost three years, and in those that time, we've made a lot of changes to our crossword submissions and editing process and I'm just like really proud of the team of how much they've been able to adapt and it's just allowed us to do better work and also be able to publish all kinds of people. So, like Will said, we get the puzzles digitally now. We build a new

Are some of the some of the answers? Two words in the crosswords?

Sure, we use lots of phrases.

Why didn't we call it the crosswords? That irritates me that sometimes there's more than one word?

Is really interesting phrases were introduced in the nineteen fifties, actually so long. In the very early days, a phrase would say two words in parentheses afterward.

Yeah, but it doesn't say that anyway.

We don't baby you with that.

No, they do not. And I didn't try Yesterday's a Sunday crossword? Was it hard?

I always think they're it's such a large puzzle. So I don't know if you know, but the Sunday is the same difficulty level as a Wednesday puzzle in terms of like the words that are included in the cluing. But it's just so massive.

It's so massive. And I have one former employee who started doing the puzzle. I probably when he was in college, and he's still a young guy, and he has kept a notebook with all his puzzles, and he finishes every single Sunday puzzle and puts it into his notebook, and it is so beautiful to see his accomplishment because those puzzles are very difficult. And I had another friend I might have mentioned that to you will a long time ago, Dorian Lee, who was Susie Parker's sister. These were two

It would be maybe four minutes or four minutes something like that. Yeah, but there's no reason to race, you know. It's like going to a four star restaurant and thinking how fast can I eat this meal? It makes no sense, you know, sit back and enjoy it.

About how many people do the puzzle every week? Do you have any idea now with the digital world and your app as well as the published edition.

Yeah, well, first of all, the daily paper has the circulation about seven hundred and forty thousand, and my understanding from the past, I don't know what the current figures are. That's something like more than a quarter of New York Times readers solve the puzzle in print. Then the puzzle is.

Also that's only less than two hundred thousand.

And then the puzzle is syndicated to hundreds of other newspapers. I think that probably most the bulk of our solvers now are digital digital.

Yeah, yeah, and we're not allowed to share exact figures, of course, but it's millions of solvers who are solving the many in the crossword alone every week, and then when you add on all of our other games, it's kind of scary a lot.

But both psychologists and other scientists are always saying that to keep up your puzzle solving if you can, just to keep your mind fertile and agile, And it's like going to exercise class, but it's for your brain and your mind instead, and recall is so important as you get older too. I think I think probably many of those puzzle solvers are probably on in age. Yeah.

Yeah. I had a brain specialist at my house a few years ago and we were talking about puzzles and I said, sort of naively that crosswords use all parts of your brain, and he said that's not quite true. They use most of parts of your brain, but not all. And then I mentioned later that I played table tennis every day, and he said, ah, table tennis uses every part of your brain that crosswords don't. So I feel I get a full, full brain workout every day.

I have to take up my I have a beautiful table tennis table up in Maine, and I'm going to make sure I do that. In addition, there you go, my crossword puzzle, oh.

Op, should be the same, don't you think.

Don't you think that the digital world has really and the digital editions of newspapers and books and everything else. I think that has helped the crossword puzzle get even more users because it reaches so so many more people.

It's true, it's more accessible. Yeah, it's more accessible. You know, crosswords have the reputation of being mainly for older people. I think that used to be true. It's not true anymore. Our readers are solvers at the times range from smart kids basically up to as old as people get. I think we're living in a puzzle age. You know, Puzzles have never been better than they are now, and I think more people are doing them than ever as well.

Yeah, well, you have a new puzzle that I just can't understand at all, the one on the upper left. And then I still at the newspaper.

Good for you.

I get the newspaper every day, and I also get that I also have the app and the and the digital news paper. What is that new puzzle called the one with match the dots only two dots on each line and they know two dots can touch?

Oh not touch?

Yeah? Not touch? Yeah?

Yeah.

I hate that one.

I hate it. I don't. I maybe it's because maybe because I'm in the car when I'm trying to do it and it's jostling and you can't really see. It's a little bit obscure to c in the car, do you Oh? I love and I love ken Can. I do ken Can all the time. I do. And my driver is always amazed because I circle it when I finish it, and he said, oh, that was only a few seconds. I said, yeah, Well that's what it's supposed to be, right, Yeah.

So do you go through and you play all the puzzles in the paper and then you do all the ones online.

Well some aren't online, some aren't in the paper, so Letterbox isn't in the paper. And one another one that I do not like is Vertex. I just don't like that. I don't get it. It's like it's like paint by number. I know, but it's so silly. It's silly. I can consider that not worth my time.

So I feel like the game section it's like the newspaper itself. You know, you're not going to read every single article or do everything in the paper. So we hope with the games that there are some that you love and you don't do the ones you don't want.

Yeah, and we're in an exciting time where we get to try a lot of stuff. So I think people don't realize how involved the team is. So like we have I think we have almost ninety people total now on the games team, which includes you know, editorial of course, but we have product designers, we have engineers, and we

Fun to say what's your favorite visual puzzle?

My favorite?

Okay, I do love tiles, Yeah, I do love time.

Are lame.

Okay, I really like our new one. It's called Connections Topeka. Oh, I do love Connections. Your Connections is good. I think that was good. I've been really excited to see that, and I got on it at first, but then it was really good.

That I spend even a half an hour doing puzzles in the morning is so great. It makes me feel good. It makes me feel like I'm ready to get up and do it. Well.

You know, most problems we face in life don't have clear cut solutions. We just muddle through and with crossword or tiles or whatever. When you have achieved the perfect solution, it just makes you feel good and you're ready to go back to everything else.

In life, go back to work. Right, what do you do every day? Will? What puzzle do you do besides the crosswords?

Idle every day?

You and I don't know when this Today was a hard word.

It was hot hard, you know, the the tough. It took me five and I average under four. Today was hard because it was blank, oh, blank blank y and the other why.

As you got why, I got oh, I got O and b.

Well, my first two words I always start with the door because I read.

My granddaughter starts with start for the door.

Actually, I always start with a rose because I read once that that is a great starting word, and that gave me or a yellow O. And then I did tulip, try some different letters. Got nothing at all there, So after two steps, I'm just got nothing.

And if you don't know what we're talking about, you must look at wordle and if you, I mean, it is so much fun to take these, take these hints. A door, a rose, I use alias, I use adios alias.

That's interesting.

Good is good.

A lot of people use a do A d I e U because it uses jew.

I do that one too. My granddaughter uses a jew well mar.

I don't know if you knew, but I do. I have somebody who reviews the world every day. They write up about like their process. No, I read that, but she couldn't. She couldn't solve this one. Oh yeah, and she's very good.

And I'll tell everybody what it was. It was hobby, and I, with so many hobbies, should have gone that in no time.

After the O and the Y, I guess boggy, which was wrong. But I got a yellow B, so then I knew it had to be hot.

That's good. Yeah, yeah, but it was. It is so much fun. And then and you do have a little coterie of friends if you're a puzzler who then they email me and say, oh two, I got it into today. Oh I got it one. Yeah right right, I've only that's happened to me once, and that was it's just pure luck. One, it's just luck. So the mini is is it more popular than the big one?

It is? It's quick, you know, it's free, it's okay, that's something great. And also it's perfect for the modern age because the regular crossword is going to probably take you fifteen minutes to an hour to do, and people's lives are so busy now, yes that a mini is a bite sized puzzle can take you a minute or two to do and then you're off to the rest of life.

And it's faster to make. So Joel Fogliano, who's like, would you say he's your protege, Yeah, yeah, yeah, Joel's fabulous and he writes all of the minis unless like he was on leave and so even I wrote a mini which was really fun, but they it goes faster and so he can be more reactive to like what's

Yeah, how often crosswords have a theme?

Everything from Sunday to Thursday has a theme. Fridays and Saturdays usually not. Those are wide open diagrams, which means lots of white squares, very few black squares. A theme will If you have a lot of theme material in the puzzle, then you're gonna end up with a lot of three, four and five letter answers. And there's not that many of them in the English language, so the

Before, and that happens often. You think now, as slang played a big part in crossword puzzle design. Now, I mean there's so much a slang or new or new usages of words or new words that you don't even think are in the dictionary.

Yeah, we don't necessarily go by the dictionary because there's everything in life can appear in a crossword. I'd like to think that we're sort of arbiters of what's significant. So but once slang sort of permeates society.

It sounds like the philosophy of The New York Times in general.

Yeah, yeah, we debate a lot.

It's kind of hard to note because culture just moves so fast now that like there's no guarantee that anything will be a phrase people use for longer than like a minute. Like remember when everybody like everybody's calling all the gen z.

There's L in the crossword puzzle.

Okay, well o L has been around.

I know, I know, but yeah, you just happen to be there, you know.

Yespression of but we go we Yeah, I think I think we debate about the ones. One of the things that's nice with the larger puzzle editing team is it's a very wide range of people of like race and gender and sexuality and age, and so we can all kind of someone in that room knows that what they're pretty much every thing that's happening.

That's true.

It's kind of amazing. So why does The New York Times take on the world of puzzles in such a strong way? Would you say that you, as an newspaper have the most puzzles. Oh, I don't that's a good question.

I don't know. We have the best puzzles.

Yeah, yeah, and you have very good puzzles, and you spend a lot of money for Wordle. That's true that many years ago, a.

Year and a half, a year and a half, a year on January last year or sometime last year. Yeah. The reason The Times doesn't is because it's profitable.

Mister Wardle, who wrote Wordle, did he bring the puzzle to The Times and say, I'd like you to I'd like to sell it to you.

I think so.

Kind of he wanted it to be us, is my understanding. But obviously I'm sure lots of people asked to buy it, but.

He thought that The New York Times would be a good caretaker for it. Somebody else might cheapen it, yeah, yeah, and he didn't want that.

And we do have. One of the reasons why I like doing games at a place like The Times is even though we're a very separate department, but we still have you know, I an editorial employee, I am still held to the same standards as all of the other editors and journalists in the room. And there's kind of a a level of quality and like sincere rigor and

What prepared you ever doing for your job. Ah, were you always a puzzler? Is that the right word to call you a puzzler? Yeah?

Puzzler?

Yeah, I would say our puzzle editors are all deeply in this world and in this community. And I was not, you know, I was a person who did crosswords with friends, you know, who pass around something at the table or like at dinner, or like I like my little puzzles like video games, you know, so on and so forth. But it wasn't until I started at the Times in earnest that I really the world kind of opened up for me, I would say my preparation is just like

And what everyding's not saying? She was a writer for the Washington Post and especially in science fiction.

Yeah, I was a book calmnist for a while. I was also on the audience team. So I have a really wide range of experiences. So I've been in journalism for fifteen years. I've been a writer and editor. I've done an audience stuff.

Did you go to college?

I went to a hell state. Yeah, so I've kind of like done a lot of production and I really like nothing makes me feel better than like shipping something like we made a thing and now it just gets to go out there. And in this job, I don't think I've ever able to make like so many things, launching newsletters, launching columns, launching new puzzles and then kind of still getting that opportunity to you know, it's kind

So and well, how long have you been at the times you mentioned?

I joined it in nineteen ninety three, so this is my thirtieth year, I think, and having a party, a party. We should have a party, So I have a party. I think the anniversary is some like November twenty one, so we should do something special.

Then, yes, you should, But you've been You've been such a stalwart fan of the entire puzzle world, and so and so outspoken and interesting about the puzzle world, and uh and so and so many people rely on you for their daily good Really, it's an amazing it's an amazing feed.

Actually, well, the best part of the job is the people we come in contact with, both the puzzle makers and solvers, Because puzzle people tend to be smart, interesting, often funny, well rounded people, often with good sense of humor. Uh and maybe a little quirky. And I'm definitely quirky myself, so uh and crossword puzzle people are my kind of people.

Do you read a lot?

Yeah?

I read voraciously, Read voraciously. What's the best book you've read lately?

Huh? I've been a middle of a novel right now called The Puzzle Master. Oh uh. And it's about a man who has a brain injury and uh becomes a savant. He's an expert puzzle solver and this is a real thing, it's not just fiction. And he's called in to to a mysterious case to try to figure out what's going on with this strange prisoner. That's as far as I've gotten.

It sounds like a good book. And what about you, Everdeen?

I also read a lot, and I read very broadly, mostly fiction, though I don't know, I want to escape reality. But I just read It's an old book, but it's all over creation by ruth A Zeki, and I love ruth A Zeki. Her work is just mind blowing. It's like funny and tender and interesting. So I've been working my way through her back catalog since I read her most recent stuff.

Oh great, yeah, great. I find that fiction to me is I live fiction every single day, so I read a lot more nonfiction now than fiction. I have a hard time getting through some story books. I've just read Cornick McCarthy's newest novel before he died, and it was not good compared to his other books. I mean, I just wasn't as exciting as No Country for Old Men, you know, those fabulous books. Well, anyway, how did sudoko come about? Because that's an interesting puzzle.

Right, So I'm actually the person who discovered who invented it? Oh, and I'll tell you how I discovered it was the first one appeared in nineteen seventy nine in a magazine Dell Pencil Puzzles and Word Games, and it had the name number place. Then the Dell magazines didn't do bylines on the puzzles, but at the front of every issue

Was it always called sudoku?

No, we called it numbers place they called it. They introduced the name, so.

I thought it was I always thought it was a Japanese Yeah, it was.

Most people don't realize it was an American invention. And then there was a judge, retired judge from New Zealand in Japan, saw this puzzle, loved it. He created a computer program for generating sudoku. Interestingly, he brought the puzzle to the New York Times around two thousand and five, and I didn't see it. It went to somebody else and the Times rejected it. So we took it to the Times of London. They published it in two thousand

And what inspired the spelling bee? Which is my property manager. He has to do the spelling b before he comes to work.

Gotcha, that's real time late.

And I know it's the spelling bee, and I get really mad at him because he's you know, he's probably way up there in the number of words. When did that start?

It started? I think in twenty fifteen.

Describe spelling be because the.

Spelling bee is a it looks like a beehive. There are seven letters that you can make words from, but the letter in the middle of the hive has to be used in every answer. And the other unusual feature about spelling bee is that you can repeat letters in your word. So if a letter appears, you can repeat it as often as you want.

And the jackpot is always.

If you can use all seven letters, and it's called a pangram and you get bonus.

For that, right, And that is that? And what bother I think? Can you? You can't tell how many words you can make. Nobody tells you that.

I think the reason is that it would set up an impossible expectation. You know, there's a listening for genius, and if you achieve genius level you should feel satisfied. But if we say, yeah, the score, your top score is whatever, then if you're a puzzle fanatic.

We can we find out with AI. Now if I ask my chat bought, can can I find out how many words you could make out of it?

Probably, although we may not accept all of them, it gets at it.

Yeah, I know sometimes you don't accept my favorite words. Then there are really words in the dictionary. How come boy?

We accept It's very subjective.

I said, this is that's a part of the fun of it, like it could it computer human.

It's subjective. Yeah, And if you find a word that's not on our list, well you should count it.

Yeah.

I think I wrote in and they said, well, it's not on our list, so.

We count words that we consider comments.

So, of all the games that are online, and you're offering New York Times online games, which is the most popular word a word word word? Straight away?

Yeah? I mean it was already getting sogular. It was huge, and then it got Huger and now it's kind of like mellowed out, but it's still just still huge, huge, the scale of it.

Some of my friends, I'm getting I'm tired of it, but it's still tantalizing.

Yeah, it's also of those weird things where it's like it's like a yawn, Like if I see somebody on the train playing it, like I immediately like, oh, yeah, I should just like go ahead and knock one out because it's so fast.

That's part of the appeal and the social get back ones.

Can you get former ones? Because if I forget to do it yesterday.

Uh, Yesterday's not yet, not right now, I don't think so. I wish you could maybe eventually.

Editor, editor, would you please put these yesterdays? Well you forgot, here's yesterday.

I'll call my people like Martha says that she wants yesterday's puzzle.

That would just be nice, just because, especially if you have the subscription, you should be able to go back one.

We're working on it. I think people don't realize like that the app's been around for a while, but we've only fairly recently been really investing a lot of resources into it. So if for people who didn't know now pretty much all the games are in the app, including Sudoku tiles. That was not true last year.

You know, I really love the squares, the colored squares.

That one's called oh trect I love uh trect. Yeah, it's like a city in the Netherlands. I don't know why it's named to that.

I love that one. Yeah, and it doesn't come out very often. It's not every week.

No, you can play it all the time. You can always toggle your your Oh you can. Yeah, you can choose every day. Oh I didn't which one? Yeah, I feel like a lot of people. I feel like every week.

I like, what's that you have to get rid of? That one? That is like now you know a friend of mine? Then when came up with Foodle. Do you know Foodle? Have you tried it?

I don't know? Tell us.

Yeah, well it's just like Wordle, only all the answers have to do with food.

And it's always five letters.

Uh huh.

Yeah, it's exactly the same game. How could you do that?

You think you'd run out of five letter of foods after a while.

No, she does it and everybody loves it too. That that's that's online. So how do you make money? On a game like Wordle through subscriptions. No, because it's free.

There's an ad on it now.

I think there's recently an ad was added and also it said it attracts people to the New York Times game, so it pays for itself that way. Well.

And I think a lot of people just didn't realize a that we had multiple games newer to this crossword and puzzling community. I think a lot of people have a lot of preconceived notions about these puzzles, like you have to be really smart, or it's only for older people, or it's so on and so forth. So I think Wordle introduced a lot of people to are sweet and made them realize that this is something that they can do.

Well. My daughter is a puzzler and she's the one who introduced them all to her children children, and they have really adopted them as a way of life. Yeah, and it's really nice and there their phones were blocked from other things they can't but they are not blocked to to puzzles or the New York Times. Yeah. The kids read the New York Times from cover to cover, especially the Boy every single day.

Wow, that's going to be one smart kid.

Oh yeah, and he reads really fast, so he knows if I mentioned anything. I have to argue with him about it because he's already read about it. But it's kind of fun. But it's nice to see them do these puzzles. It's nice to see them use language so nicely. And I think that that really does the word games really help you with language and increase your vocabulary and make your teachers happier so that your essays are more interesting if you increase your vocabulary, That's true.

It doesn't feel like a waste of time. Like if your boss walks by your computerity doing the Crossword, can they really be mad?

I don't know.

I don't think you can't. These puzzles have also been updated, making them younger or more broadly interesting. Is that a big objective of the game world?

Absolutely? We want the crossword and the other puzzles well, we went there in particular. We want the Crossword to reflect the life, culture, and language of everyone who reads The New York Times and the whole history of the Times Crossword. Up to me, there are only six teenagers known to have been published, and a about sixty teens have been published since I started in nineteen ninety three and the youngest being twelve. I think we.

Started a fellowship on the team because we wanted to introduce more people to the art of constructing, and we do have the best buzz letters and constructors. So now we're taking six now and we take them. They each get assigned a mentor, which is one of the puzzle editors, and they work for a period of two months to make a New York Times worthy crossword. Wow and yeah, that submission worthy.

Theyppled it. Apply.

Yeah, so you apply. Yeah, you apply to it. And it's specifically it's called the Diverse Crossword Constructor Fellowship, which is a mouthful. So we take you know, we're looking for people of color, or looking for women, we're looking for people of different sexualities, any age range. We get people from all over there. We get constructors from all

We've done this twice now, and everyone who has been part of the program has had at least one puzzle published in The Times.

Very exciting, it's been. I'm always excited when I'm a clue.

Yeah, okay, yeah. How many times have you been.

I have no idea? I have no idea?

Times four times?

Oh, I've been a clue four times?

Yeah?

Oh hope. It's always fun. Sometimes you have more than you have the same clue in a short period of time. I've always couldn't got always distressed.

Yeah, that happens.

That happens with all those editors. I don't know.

I think you have to sometimes there's only so many ways to say things right.

Although me and my friends we talk about critical I love your puzzles.

When your name appears in the crossroad, do you hear from friends?

Oh? Yes, of course, of course. When I see your friend's name in there, I called my friend too.

There was a newswoman in I think NBC newswoman who wrote me once. She did not realize how many of her friends solved the New York Times Crossroad until the day her name appeared in the puzzle, and she started getting calls and messages at six am.

So it's exciting. Yeah, so get back to this Connections thing, because that's a new beta. You're just still in beda to beta. Yeah. I wondered why I haven't seen it. I don't see it everything.

Yeah, so that means it is every day. It's web only, it is. So our new games process is pretty complicated. So again, we got pitches from all over the company and we review them and we do several rounds of like user testing. But when we got to a point where like we think that this could be really cool, they asked me to find somebody to make these boards, and so we tapped win Aloo. She's all of my the puzzle editors are just like the brains are so

Of some of the New York Times games that are computer generated, but a cool thing about Connections is that it's human generated. It has to be made by a person, so when you're when you're playing Connections, you're matching wits with another human being, not with a computer.

And the reaction has been good.

Yeah, it's been really positive, and it's it's just doing really really well out of the gate. We've made attested other games before, and this one just like took off, which I felt very validated because I love word games, so like all I ever want to work on is word games. So I feel bad because I'm on the green light committee and anything that's not a word game, I'm like, I don't know, I don't know if this

But AI can can create puzzles too, right have you tried that? We have?

It's not very good.

AI can make bad puzzles.

Your job is safe.

Well, I think I'm good for now.

So it can make puzzles though, yes.

Yeah, I mean it can write clues. I don't think AI yet. It can't come up with consistently good clues, can't come up with a great crossword theme, and it wouldn't know what is a good crossword grid and what is not. So it's crosswords are still a very human activity.

So can you tell us any funny stories about puzzlers that your community, the New York Times community, tell us a story? Will you have so many?

Wow?

Well, so wacky. Sometimes I tell stories of my friends and they're like, you're just saying mad lips, and they're like, no, this is.

Sort of a touching story. But several years ago, a woman was was going into brain surgery and her greatest fear was that she would not be able to complete the New York Times crossword after surgery. So when she came to the first thing she asked for was the newspaper, she solved the puzzle and she knew that the surgery had been successful.

As see, that's a very nice story.

Yeah, And the community is so strong, so we have a we have the wordplay column, which deb Amlin was like the main writer for it. Now we have a couple and that community in the comment threads is so loving. They like know each other, they talk to each other.

I don't know, like group culture, and that's true and friendship when people when puzzle people get together either in person or online. Of course some of the conversation is about puzzles, but what we have in common as puzzle people is brains, lively brains, so we connect in many other ways as well.

Yeah, my uh, one of our other commons, her name is Sam Corbin. She started recently and she said something really smart that I loved, which is that like one of the most human things is to like make your own fun and that's like really all that a puzzle or game is, and so you know, people are just naturally drawn to that and they just want to talk about it and they want to keep making fun.

Well, I think schools should also use some of these puzzles as as a I think some do oh way too encourage kids to use their brains even more.

Do we see it in the data actually when schools when school is out, because kids like can play the puzzles on their little school laptops, right, and it's not gonna be like blocked. It's the New York Times, and so we actually see it in the data. It's really funny.

Well, Everydeen and will thank you so very much for joining me here today. You each have a great.

Job, and we really do you do.

I'm envious of your jobs to play many of the games we discussed and to keep your mind sharp, listeners, pick up a copy of The New York Times or play the games at New York Times dot com slash crosswords, or download the New York Times Games app, and good luck with keeping us pleasantly occupied for many many more years to comp both of you. Thank you so much.