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5 Questions with Tanya Thompson of ThinkFun

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Welcome to the fifth edition of PuzzleNation Blog’s interview feature, 5 Questions!

We’re reaching out to puzzle constructors, video game writers and designers, writers, filmmakers, and puzzle enthusiasts from all walks of life, talking to people who make puzzles and people who enjoy them in the hopes of exploring the puzzle community as a whole.

And I’m excited to have Tanya Thompson as our latest 5 Questions interviewee!

Tanya is Head of Inventor Relations at ThinkFun, literally traveling the world to meeting with inventors and puzzle innovators in order to create new puzzle game products under the ThinkFun brand. She was part of the team that made Laser Maze a reality — check out our review of Laser Maze — and in the photo, she’s playing around with their latest puzzle game, WordARound (another coup for her and the ThinkFun team).

Tanya was gracious enough to take some time out to talk to us, so without further ado, let’s get to the interview!

5 Questions for Tanya Thompson

1.) What in your estimation makes for a truly great puzzle or puzzle game?

Good question. It depends on the context. If you’re asking me personally, as an avid gamer and puzzler, I like puzzles that are new or innovative. I have over 1000 puzzles in my collection and I attend the International Puzzle Party (IPP) where some of the brightest puzzle minds (creators and solvers) gather. I love it when I see something truly new, whether it be a mechanism, a component or a solving technique.

If you’re asking me what I look for regarding a ThinkFun puzzle or puzzle game, that’s different. For ThinkFun it needs to be commercially viable. It has to be interesting to the masses, not just puzzle nuts like myself. If it can sit on the shelf and cause people just walking by to pick it up and play with it, then it might be right for ThinkFun.

As for my favorite puzzles – That’s a tough question. I have a lot of favorites. I love Rush Hour because I think ThinkFun revolutionized the toy and game industry with it. This was an entirely new way of doing puzzles. Of the classics, I love the Soma Cube, both for its elegance and its mathematical completeness.

I must mention designers here too. I love Iwahiro because he always surprises me with his puzzles. One year he’ll do wood, then aluminum, then cloth. He is so creative. Vesa Timonen and Timo Jokitalo develop wonderful single player games as well as aha-style. Oskar van Deventer has revolutionized twisties. Akio Kamei creates the most beautiful puzzles that look like everyday objects and the key to their solutions lie in those objects. Kagen Schaefer does exquisite puzzle furniture. I could go on and on!

2.) What ThinkFun products are your favorites, and which are you most proud of? Is it difficult to walk the tightrope of producing challenging, educational, AND fun products?

I love ThinkFun and what we stand for. We produce addictively fun games that sharpen and challenge your mind. We want to make the world better thinkers. I think our products do just that. I’m especially proud of this year’s releases Laser Maze and Word Around because I championed them into the company from the inventors. However kudos need to be given to the amazing Product Development team that took the ideas and made them into exceptional products as well as our incredible sales and marketing teams who knew just how to get them out into the world. You asked if it is difficult to walk the tightrope of producing challenging, educational AND fun products, it’s not so much that it’s difficult, it’s more that it is who we are. We’re awesome tightrope walkers!

3.) What’s your relationship to puzzles and games, and how did you come to be an integral part of ThinkFun?

I’ve always loved puzzles and games. My first career was a mathematics teacher and I used puzzles and games in my classroom to inspire my students. One of ways I did this as a teacher was to organize a SNAP Math Fair in my school. It brought puzzles into the classroom.

Through my work with SNAP I met Bill Ritchie, the CEO of ThinkFun. Bill soon hired me, and now I travel the world meeting inventors to bring in the new ideas for ThinkFun, and then work as part of a team that develops the ideas into products. Bill is also very passionate about reaching communities of people that want activities and games to exercise their brains. So I am also on a team of people working on programs that do just that! I love what I do and I’m blessed to have such a great job with ThinkFun!

4.) What’s next for Tanya Thompson and ThinkFun?

What’s next for me? Who knows. I’d love to attend TED someday, I’d love to travel to Asia and I’d love to sit and play a board game with Wil Wheaton. More imminent, I have been asked to launch a puzzle/game newsletter this fall. It will focus on great puzzle/game people in our industry, and will include a puzzle/game takeaway.

I am also excited to soon be off to find our next big thing! I’ve built an incredible network of inventors and creatives and I look forward to the fall when our submission cycle opens back up and I’ll be out there seeing great new ideas again! What’s next for ThinkFun? You’ll have to wait and see but you can be certain that it will be more products and programs that will sharpen and challenge your mind!

5.) If you could give the readers, aspiring inventors, and puzzle fans in the audience one piece of advice, what would it be?

Live passionately and get involved. I am passionate about mathematics, puzzles, games and education. When I was a teacher, I taught with passion. It brought me to ThinkFun and I now have a job that allows me to work within the fields I’m passionate about. 

Also, get involved with other people who share similar passions. I chair a committee called the Gathering for Gardner – Celebration of Mind (G4G – CoM) that promotes Martin Gardner’s life’s work. Martin wrote a column for 25 years in Scientific American called Mathematical Games. He was passionate about math, magic and puzzles.

Around his birthdate of October 21st parties/events occur around the world. Big or small, it doesn’t matter. The important thing is that people gather to share math, magic and puzzles. I was lucky enough to call Martin a friend and I am honored to be a part of this organization.

I am also on the Executive Advisory Board of the Chicago Toy and Game Week, a great series of events held in November for anyone wanting to know more about or to network within the Toy and Game Industry.

Many thanks to Tanya Thompson for her time and ThinkFun for their puzzly camaraderie! With so many interesting and innovative puzzle games in their arsenal, I’m sure we’ll be talking about them again soon.

Thanks for visiting the PuzzleNation blog today! You can like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, check out our Classic Word Search iBook (recently featured by Apple in the Made for iBooks category!), play our games at PuzzleNation.com, or contact us here at the blog!

Going Digital

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Ever since the first crossword puzzle was published on December 21st, 1913, paper and puzzles have been inextricably linked.

Or, at least, they were. But with the advent of the Internet and the evolution of electronic publishing, that link is more tenuous than ever.

“Technology and the opportunities for puzzle creators and solvers to interact with one another will change the ways crosswords are created.” — crossword constructor Robin Stears

Digital puzzle distribution is gaining momentum, and it’s a fascinating time to be part of the puzzle community as individual puzzle constructors and major publishers begin the transition into the electronic market.

Here at PuzzleNation Blog, we’re smack dab in the middle of the revolution. We’re online-only content, representing an online puzzle-game website, and we’ve made recent forays into the mobile market with our Classic Word Search iBook. Digital distribution is literally what PuzzleNation‘s about.

During our 5 Questions interview, Robin Stears had quite a bit to say about the push for downloadable content and digital distribution, and I thought the subject merited its own separate blog post.

Here, Robin champions the move to digital content:

I’m on a mission to change the way crossword puzzles are distributed. Digital collections are easier to share, more affordable for solvers, and most important, they create no physical waste.

While I agree that sometimes there’s nothing more satisfying than finishing the New York Times crossword in ink, and I’ve made a decent living selling puzzles to crossword puzzle books, thanks to Eileen Saunders at Penny Press, I do believe that digital, interactive crosswords are the future.

And she’s hardly alone in that assessment.

Many top-tier constructors are going straight to the fanbase with their puzzles, not only in distributing them, but in crowdfunding their newest puzzle projects through Kickstarter and Indiegogo. (We’ve written several posts about endeavors like these.)

Here, Robin explains the benefits of digital puzzle distribution:

Fans should be able to buy crosswords directly from their favorite constructors at a reasonable price, and be able to share them with their friends even after they’ve solved them — that’s impossible to do with crossword puzzle books, but not with digital puzzles.

From now on, every collection I self-publish will be in digital format, .puz and .pdf files that puzzle fans can solve, share or print as much as they want. Not having them printed and mailed saves me both time and money, so I can publish more puzzles more often for a lower price.

More opportunities to share puzzles will create more crossword puzzle fans, and more puzzle constructors, and that’s good for everyone.

The next few years will no doubt prove critical for the growing digital puzzle market as a whole. It’ll be interesting not only to see how the big print companies adapt, but to watch how individual constructors like Robin Stears lead the charge.

Thanks for visiting the PuzzleNation blog today! You can like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, check out our Classic Word Search iBook (recently featured by Apple in the Made for iBooks category!), play our games at PuzzleNation.com, or contact us here at the blog!

5 Questions with Puzzle Constructor Robin Stears

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Welcome to the fourth edition of PuzzleNation Blog’s newest feature, 5 Questions!

We’re reaching out to puzzle constructors, video game writers and designers, writers, filmmakers, and puzzle enthusiasts from all walks of life, talking to people who make puzzles and people who enjoy them in the hopes of exploring the puzzle community as a whole.

And I’m excited to have Robin Stears as our latest 5 Questions interviewee!

Robin is a puzzle constructor whose crosswords appear not only on her StearsWords site, but have also appeared in Penny Press/Dell and Kappa titles as well as the Los Angeles Times. Her puzzles are clever and topical, often striving to add new entries and wrinkles to the field of crossword construction and cluing.

Robin was gracious enough to take some time out to talk to us, so without further ado, let’s get to the interview!

5 Questions for Robin Stears

1.) How did you get started with puzzles?

Crossword puzzles and word games have always appealed to me, and after my first daughter was born, I was looking for a way to work at home. My mom suggested the idea of constructing crossword puzzles, since I’d been killing time solving them while I was wondering what to do. Armed with a stack of dictionaries, graph paper, and pencils, I created a puzzle, and typed it on my mom’s typewriter, and colored in the black squares with a marker. I sent my first puzzle to Janis Weiner at Kappa, who promptly sent it back with a bunch of notes. I’m very grateful to her for taking the time to explain what I did wrong. It’s because of her I decided to try again. She rejected most of my puzzles at first, but she always explained why. I consider her my mentor, but she probably doesn’t know that.

2.) You recently constructed a puzzle utilizing that most infamous of cinematic weather phenomena, the sharknado. You have a knack for releasing topical puzzles steeped in pop culture. Is this more a case of keeping your puzzles fresh (since so many crosswords slip into archaic terms and dated references), or of you constructing the kinds of puzzles you’d enjoy solving?

It’s a little bit of both. I think language is fluid and crossword puzzles should reflect that. For example, the word “inception” wasn’t quite as popular in everyday conversation prior to the 2010 movie release as it is today. I don’t know about other constructors, but I find it very satisfying to be the first to use a new word in a crossword puzzle; I suspect they do, too, as evidenced by the number of times ZZZQUIL was used in puzzles when that product was introduced.

The fandom crossword puzzles were born from a comment I saw on Tumblr; someone complained that there weren’t any fandom puzzles. It occurred to me that the only specialty puzzle — where all the clues refer to a single theme — was the Bible puzzle, probably because there are nearly 600,000 words in it. There are about the same number of words in the Lord of the Rings books, though.

Nearly every fandom has a wiki, and a plethora of trivia websites, and by exploring them — along with the Internet Movie Database, Wikipedia, Reddit, and other sources, I was able to create several puzzles specifically for certain fandoms, including both Star Wars and Star Trek, “Adventure Time,” and “Doctor Who.” There is so much information online, that I was actually able to create the “Doctor Who” puzzle without having seen a single episode! My younger daughter’s a big fan, though; she inspired the “Adventure Time” one, too. They also allow me to pay homage to the things I love, like Stephen Colbert, Syfy movies, Donkey Kong, and the US Postal Service.

Every constructor’s style is a little different, and like most solvers, I have my favorites — Liz Gorski, Tyler Hinman, Brendan Emmett Quigley, Merl Reagle, Matt Gaffney, Trip Payne, and of course, Patrick Blindauer, whose dollar bill crossword puzzle is my personal all-time favorite. We all put our personal stamp on the puzzles we create. But, the modern crossword puzzle is about to turn one hundred years old, and if they’re going to remain relevant in the modern world, they have to change and adapt to suit younger solvers. That means constructors need to use the Urban Dictionary as well as Webster’s.

3.) You’re also a published author with several titles to your credit. How does the creative process for writing a book compare to that of creating a crossword?

Writing fiction and writing crossword clues are completely different processes. A novel is a long, leisurely cross-country trip, while a crossword clue is a quick peek around the corner. It took me about a year to write each book, after researching it for months, and another six months of editing. Crossword puzzles may take anywhere from an hour to a day to complete, depending on the size and the theme entries. In the past few years, partly for the instant gratification, partly because it’s more lucrative, and partly because it’s more fun, I’ve concentrated more on crossword puzzles, although I do have another novel I intend to finish.

4.) What’s next for Robin Stears?

Well, there’s that novel… eventually. In the meantime, I’d like to attend more puzzle events, like Lollapuzzoola and the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. Last year, I volunteered at my local tournament, and it was fun meeting the participants and discussing the puzzles they’d solved — there’s no substitute for immediate feedback. Solving crosswords is very different from constructing them. I have a database at my disposal, and I have great respect for solvers who have to remember all those clues! I’d like to meet the constructors I admire to exchange ideas and hear their stories, and Amy Reynaldo and Kathy Matheson (Crossword Kathy), whose blogs are so informative and whose ideas and opinions I respect — it’s because of Amy’s “Diary of a Crossword Fiend” blog that I removed certain words from my database, like APER. I’d love to finally meet the people behind PuzzleNation, Cruciverb, Sporcle, and Quinapalus, and all the other puzzle-related sites. Constructing crosswords is a lonely business — I need to get out more.

The fandom trivia puzzles are a challenge, so you’ll probably see more of those. Fans of “Breaking Bad” will see a special puzzle at the end of September for the final episode, and baseball trivia fans can expect their puzzle in October, during the World Series. For Halloween, I’m planning a horror movie puzzle, and of course, I’ll do something for the 100th anniversary of crosswords in December — I’m open to ideas for that one.

Ben Tausig recently pointed out in an article in “The Hairpin” that there seem to be fewer women constructors, and I’d love to help remedy that. When I first started, twenty-odd years ago, constructing a crossword puzzle was difficult and time-consuming — these days, most constructors use software with a built-in database of words and clues. My personal choice is Crossword Compiler. I think anyone with a basic knowledge of the rules and a bit of computer savvy could create and publish a crossword puzzle. I believe there’s plenty of room in the crossword puzzle world for new constructors with new ideas. Technology and the opportunities for puzzle creators and solvers to interact with one another will change the ways crosswords are created. I had a lot of help in the beginning, and I hope to pay it forward to the next generation of crossword constructors.

[[Glenn’s sidenote: Robin also had a lot of interesting points regarding the move toward digital puzzle distribution, and I think that topic deserves a post of its own. Keep your eyes peeled for that post (and her thoughtful comments) in the near future!]]

5.) If you could give the readers, writers, and puzzle fans in the audience one piece of advice, what would it be?

When I construct a crossword puzzle, I always have the fans in mind. I want to create a solving experience that’s fun and enjoyable for them. The entire time I was constructing a special “420” puzzle, which, to my knowledge, had never been done before, I was imagining how surprised and delighted some puzzle solvers would be that week. And like the Super Bowl puzzle and the Harry Potter puzzle, I knew that not everybody would appreciate it, but the ones who did would appreciate it all the more because I constructed it especially for them.

When I construct puzzles for Penny Press/Dell, I also have a certain fan in mind — someone who enjoys an easier solve, with a little less pop culture and a little more word play. No matter which publisher I’m targeting, I’m always thinking about the puzzle solvers and what they might enjoy. Frequently, I construct customized crossword puzzles as gifts; they’re always a big hit because they’re personal.

So, my advice is this: Tell me what you want! Send me an email, tweet me, write on my Facebook or Google+, hit me up on Blogger or Tumblr — StearsWords is not hard to find. I maintain a variety of social media because I want puzzle fans of all kinds to interact with me. Much of my day is spent scanning social sites like Twitter, Pinterest, and Reddit and reading puzzle blogs, trying to find out what kinds of topics might interest puzzle solvers. Anyone can send me an idea for a puzzle, and if I like it, I’ll do my best to make it happen. I’d rather give puzzle fans what they really want than give them what I want them to have and hope they like it.

Many thanks to Robin Stears for her time. Check out her StearsWords puzzles on her website, and follow her on Twitter (https://twitter.com/RobinStears)! I can’t wait to see what puzzly goodness she cooks up for us next.

Thanks for visiting the PuzzleNation blog today! Don’t forget about our PuzzleNation Community Contest, running all this week! You can like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, check out our Classic Word Search iBook (three volumes to choose from!), play our games at PuzzleNation.com, or contact us here at the blog!

5 Questions with Jordan Diehl and The Great Urban Race

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Welcome to the third edition of PuzzleNation Blog’s newest feature, 5 Questions!

We’re reaching out to puzzle constructors, video game writers and designers, writers, filmmakers, and puzzle enthusiasts from all walks of life, talking to people who make puzzles and people who enjoy them in the hopes of exploring the puzzle community as a whole.

And I’m excited to have Jordan Diehl as our latest 5 Questions interviewee!

Jordan is a Senior Manager for the Great Urban Race, a city-spanning puzzle competition that combines puzzle-solving, scavenger hunts, and physical challenges to create a unique, whirlwind challenge based around the landmarks and curiosities of a given city. (Previous GUR events have taken place in Seattle, Minneapolis, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Las Vegas, and many other American cities.)

Teams gather to tackle the numerous mental and physical obstacles in a certain amount of time as they explore the city. Players are allowed to have remote help as well, often recruiting friends as “tech support” to hunt down locations for them en route. (I’ve served as tech support for my sister on several occasions. Check out our previous GUR adventures here.)

It’s a terrific workout, a great mental exercise, and some serious fun.

With the latest edition of the Great Urban Race hitting New York City in two days, Jordan was gracious enough to take some time out to talk to us, so without further ado, let’s get to the interview!

5 Questions for Jordan Diehl and the Great Urban Race

1.) The race is a combination of mental dexterity and physical endurance, often requiring contestants to solve on the fly. How much does each city impact the puzzles the contestants encounter? Do you choose certain cities with puzzles/questions already in mind, or do the cities dictate the puzzles?

Great Urban Race is all about finding the hidden gems of the city we are in, so we like to incorporate interesting and historical facts about the city whenever possible when creating puzzles!  We have a group of cities that are perfect for Great Urban Race, and we love visiting those on an annual basis. (Full list on our website here) There are some types of puzzles that we can incorporate in multiple cities, but in general we like to be pretty city-specific.

We do puzzles of all levels of difficulty, but some of our favorites are Sudoku, logic puzzles, as well as word-puzzles.  Our site is actually being updated now with some example clues—those can be found here.

2.) The Great Urban Race has held events all over America. Which city offered the most challenging race, either in terms of puzzles or the physical challenges?

The cool thing about Great Urban Race, both as a participant and as an Event Director, is that every year AND every city are completely different and pose their own challenges.  Each race has at least one challenge that will put Masterminds (what we call our participants) out of their comfort zone in either a fun or scary way—some past examples of this have been jumping off a 50 ft platform onto a large inflated airbag, rock climbing, walking on fire, and eating some pretty gross things.  It’s our favorite to plan but also the most challenging piece of each race for us as well!

3.) How many people contribute to each race’s puzzles? Do you have a resident puzzlesmith, or does everyone get a chance to contribute?

We have a team of eight dedicated Event Directors for Great Urban Race.  Everyone gets a chance to contribute to the city’s puzzles, but we do have one “Cluepervisor” who is our resident expert on writing clues and thinking of new and exciting challenges.  The Cluepervisor and her team have a pretty awesome job—they take everyday items and think of how to make it a fun challenge for our participants and do a LOT of puzzle solving for inspiration.

4.) What’s next for The Great Urban Race?

Our regular season is in full swing and will conclude November 2nd in San Diego.  We are so excited to announce that our 2013 National Championship will be held in San Juan, Puerto Rico.  The top 25 teams from each city qualify for this event where the stakes are even higher and the cash prizes are much bigger as well.  New this year, we will be distributing the cash prizes as a total of $10,000 between our top 8 teams.  We’ve also re-launched several of our 2014 locations and registration is available now!

5.) What is one thing you’d like every competitor (and aspiring competitor) to take away from the experience?

We are focused on providing a fun and unique experience for our competitors. We want you to be challenged both mentally and physically, but also give you a Saturday to remember! The cool thing is that it can really be what you make of it—you could run upwards of 8-10 miles and have a really great body and mind workout or take public transportation and run less than 2 miles but learn a lot about your city and complete some really fun challenges along the way.  There’s definitely something for everyone in Great Urban Race!

Many thanks to Jordan Diehl for her time. Check out the Great Urban Race on their website for plenty of race pics and details! I can’t wait to see what they’ll cook up next.

Thanks for visiting the PuzzleNation blog today! You can like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, check out our Classic Word Search iBook (three volumes to choose from!), play our games at PuzzleNation.com, or contact us here at the blog!

5 Questions for author Robin Sloan

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Welcome to the second edition of PuzzleNation Blog’s newest feature, 5 Questions!

We’re reaching out to puzzle constructors, video game writers and designers, writers, filmmakers, and puzzle enthusiasts from all walks of life, talking to people who make puzzles and people who enjoy them in the hopes of exploring the puzzle community as a whole.

And I’m excited to have Robin Sloan as our latest 5 Questions interviewee!

Robin Sloan is the author of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, which has garnered critical acclaim for both its writing (named one of the best 100 books of 2012 by the San Francisco Chronicle) and its cover design (named one of the 25 best book covers by Bookpage).

The book spent time on the New York Times bestseller list (Hardcover Fiction section) and was named Editor’s Choice by the Times. (Check out our review of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore here!)

Robin was gracious enough to take some time out to talk to us, so without further ado, let’s get to the interview!

5 Questions for Robin Sloan

1. Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore has that wonderful new-medium-vs.-old-medium conflict at its heart, but as a puzzle fan, I found a similar conflict beneath the surface. Some puzzles are too tough, some answers will elude us, and that’s part of what makes the challenge so enticing. But there’s also the disappointment that can follow victory. After all, if the unsolvable puzzle turns out to be solvable after all, the answer might be unsatisfying. And where do you go from there, once the quest is over?

Were those questions that were important to you during the writing of the book? How do you view the puzzle at the heart of the story?

J. J. Abrams often talks about something he calls the Mystery Box—basically, it’s the secret at the center of a story. And it’s amazing how potent it can be; I mean really, you just close a door or lock a chest and suddenly, you’ve got the basic kernel of a narrative; you’ve got a reason for readers to ask, “What happens next?” But it’s a double-edged sword: the heavier you lean on a Mystery Box for narrative momentum, the higher the stakes for the ultimate reveal. It turns out there aren’t too many secrets that can stand up to a book or movie’s worth of anticipation. So, I think it’s a balancing act: you can set up your Mystery Box, but it can’t be the ONLY thing drawing readers forward. You need to buttress it with smaller challenges; with fun characters; with a compelling voice.

2. The book also features a truly high-end bucket list item of mine: uncovering and infiltrating a secret society. Penumbra and his fellow devotees are like many hardcore puzzle fans, operating by an internal logic and set of rules entirely their own (as most fandoms and hobby groups do). Was there a particular group or organization that served as inspiration for you?

None of these are nearly as arcane as the secret society in Penumbra, but I do have a real fondness and respect for old-fashioned private lending libraries. I’m thinking, for instance, of the New York Society Library in Mahattan, or the Mechanics’ Institute Library & Chess Club here in San Francisco. I love public libraries too, of course; but every time I’ve walked into one of these private libraries, I’ve gotten a little thrill that is, I imagine, similar in flavor—if not magnitude—to the feeling of discovering an honest-to-God secret society.

3. If you’d been presented with a mystery like the one in your book, would you have taken the Google road or the slow-and-steady grind of Penumbra’s visitors?

Oh, Google all the way. I mean, we live in a remarkable time! It’s possible for anyone with a modicum of technical ability to sign up for Amazon’s cloud services and bring dozens—or hundreds, even thousands—of virtual computers to bear on a problem. I’ve poked at those tools around their edges—when I worked at Twitter, for instance, I got to know the distributed data-processing software called Hadoop—and I find them totally thrilling. It’s a different kind of problem-solving… a different way of using your brain and, ultimately, your time.

4. What’s next for Robin Sloan?

I’m working on another novel. It’s not perhaps quite as puzzle-y as Penumbra, but I think there will be plenty of secrets waiting in this book’s plot, too.

5. If you could give the readers, writers, and puzzle fans in the audience one piece of advice, what would it be?

Well, following up on what we were talking about earlier, I really do think that, in the year 2013, people ought to know how to code, at least a little bit. The good news is that there are better resources to learn than ever before—services like Codecademy. You can find tutorials for almost any kind of programming problem; I feel like I’ve learned to code mostly through the Google search prompt. And finally, some people share their own tales of learning; Diana Kimball’s post here is a great example. It all starts with a problem you yourself want to solve—something small, something personal. Maybe even… a puzzle?

Many thanks to Robin Sloan for his time. Check out Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore on his website, and follow him on Twitter (@robinsloan)! I can’t wait to see what he’s got for us next.

Thanks for visiting the PuzzleNation blog today! You can like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, check out our Classic Word Search iBook, play our games at PuzzleNation.com, or contact us here at the blog!

5 Questions for Crossword Constructor Ian Livengood

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Welcome to the inaugural edition of PuzzleNation Blog’s newest feature, 5 Questions!

We’re reaching out to puzzle constructors, video game writers and designers, writers, filmmakers, and puzzle enthusiasts from all walks of life, talking to people who make puzzles and people who enjoy them in the hopes of exploring the puzzle community as a whole.

And I’m proud to have Ian Livengood as our first 5 Questions interviewee!

Ian has constructed puzzles for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, building a reputation as both a savvy constructor and a crafty cluesmith. He spends his days as a crossword editor for Penny Press, in addition to his extracurricular puzzle constructing. (And he even found time to contribute some terrific entries to two clue-centric PN blog posts earlier this year!)

So, without further ado, let’s get to it!

5 Questions for Ian Livengood

1. How did you get started with puzzles?

I started solving crosswords in high school as a way to pass the time. I was a pretty horrible solver at first, obviously, but stuck with it. I tried my hand at constructing a puzzle when I was 19 or 20 and the results were, uh, less than stellar. I think I used 82 words (78 is the limit in most outlets) with some suspect fill. I got the constructing “bug” again in my mid-20’s. I didn’t even know construction software existed — I was using Microsoft Excel and a crude wildcard search engine — but I eventually stumbled on some nice software and began to study exactly how puzzles were made. 

2. Who are three creative types that inspire you?

It’s tough to identify specific people, but I certainly respect certain types of puzzles. I really enjoy a smooth and easy Monday, a diabolically tricky Thursday-level puzzle and a tough themeless puzzle. I really admire “smooth fill.” These are the non-thematic entries in a puzzle that avoid “crosswordese” (entries you only encounter in crosswords) and that are fun and interesting to solve. Frankly, it’s really hard to pull off, and I recognize and respect the skill it took to create ’em.

3. What puzzly endeavors are you currently working on?

I teach a crossword construction class every Sunday in the Spring and Fall in New York City to a group of seniors. As a class, we go through the process of picking a puzzle theme, building a grid, filling the grid and writing the clues. The goal is to get the collaborative puzzle into the New York Times.

Also, I have a book coming out in Spring 2014 called “Sit and Solve Sports Crosswords” through Sterling Publications. As you might guess, the book has 42 easy-medium 10×10 sports-themed puzzles. Since I’m a sports nut, this was a really fun one to make. Available wherever books are sold.

4. You were recently interviewed by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation regarding your crossword construction class. What was that like, and how did that affect how you see yourself as a constructor?

Yeah, that was a lot of fun. A Canadian NPR producer was solving a recent Sunday New York Times puzzle that class made and thought it would be fun to interview the seniors that helped contribute to the puzzle. I can’t say my Q-rating has really spiked, but it’s always nice to get positive feedback from solvers.

5. If you had a million dollars and three Hawaiian islands, what would you do with them?

Well… since I’m a skier and not much of a beach guy, I’d sell the islands and just go heli-skiing everyday. That sounds pretty nice.

Many thanks to Ian Livengood for his time. Check out his ebook of 25 easy puzzles here, and keep your eyes peeled for his work in the New York Times (Monday’s puzzle is a Livengood original)!

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