The money is nice, but puzzle-makers do it for other rewards, as well. "We do have the biggest circulation," Shortz said, "It's the most prestigious and we pay the best." A Sunday puzzle begins at $1,500, with $2,250 paid after two have been published. A daily puzzle earns $500, but when one has three or more published, the rate bumps to $750. The more puzzles a creator has accepted by The Times means better payment. "Even in grade school, I was making all these puzzles and trying to get my family to solve them," he said.Ĭharlson said he always admired puzzles that used only one vowel, and he did it himself in 2019. and fifth in Ohio by the North American Scrabble Players Association. An editor's note for a puzzle published this summer, The Times described Charlson as ranked 213th in the U.S. What a great surprise!"Ĭharlson, a native of Galloway who graduated with a degree in English and creative writing from Ohio State in 2018, said he has been a Scrabble and word-play fan all his life. "And then I heard my puzzle was accepted. There was the COVID stuff, and then we had to move out of our (campus) apartment because of a rat infestation," she said. She had a couple of puzzles rejected before one was accepted in April. Seikel, a senior majoring in economics and history, made a 2019 New Year's resolution to create a puzzle and get it published in The Times. For my first published puzzle, all the theme answers had two XXs in a row, like (the actor) 'Redd Foxx.' " "Once you come up with those set of answers, you have to put the black squares around them so your skeleton will look well. The websites and, for example, offer tools for construction and all sorts of information about words, clues and puzzle solutions.ĭaily Times puzzles are constructed in 15-by-15 squares, and Sunday puzzles are 21 by 21.With a Sunday puzzle, which often has a theme, "you have to figure out your theme answers first," Charlson said. Contemporary puzzle-makers work digitally and use online thesauruses, dictionaries and other resource materials. In "ancient" puzzle history - like a few decades ago - constructors built their puzzles with graph paper and pencil. Then he would work on creating his early puzzles during a two-hour commute between Philadelphia, where he lived at the time, and New Jersey. "I did some research, and after the kids went to sleep, I got started." "I loved solving crosswords and got interested in how they're made," Abel said. There are difficult words, and that's interesting, but if you're asking for a bug genus or a 50-mile river in Romania, that's not valuable."Ībel, who majored in English at Cornell University in New York and is an attorney who now works in real estate, said his interest in creating puzzles grew naturally. "I look for the quality of the vocabulary with as little stupid obscurity as possible. "If it's a themed puzzle, I look for something fresh, interesting, narrowly focused and new," he said. Shortz and two other editors review the submissions and select and edit the puzzles. "I feel like a fire hose has been turned on me." "We're getting more than 200 a week," he said. Will Shortz, crossword editor for The New York Times since 1993 and puzzlemaster for National Public Radio, said that since the pandemic started - and a change in policy that allows puzzle-makers to submit digitally to The Times - submissions have mushroomed. For example, "Beam me up, Scotty" was the answer to one clue, followed by the answer to another clue: "Captain Kirk." You get so absorbed in it, you lose track of time," Abel said.Ī 2019 Sunday puzzle that he had created, titled "Don't Quote Me," incorporated famous quotes and the characters who actually never said them. "I love getting the idea and then into the process of constructing a puzzle. His first came in 2003 in the Los Angeles Times. Seth Able, 53, of Bexley has had 13 Times puzzles published, and more than 40 additional puzzles run in other publications.
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