Tag Archives: New York Times Crossword

Puzzles in Pop Culture: The West Wing

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In previous editions of Puzzles in Pop Culture, I’ve recapped classic episodes of M*A*S*H and MacGyver, as well as the numerous puzzly plotlines that’ve been featured on The Simpsons over the years.

But when it comes to erudite, hilarious references to solving crosswords, you’d be hard-pressed to find sharper puzzle-infused dialogue than the moments featured in episodes of Aaron Sorkin’s landmark political drama The West Wing.

Set in the West Wing of the White House, the show focused on the lives of the president and his advisors and staffers as they navigated political situations at home and abroad. To this day it’s a regular feature on most reviewers’ lists of the top television shows of all-time.

And in a show noted for sparkling wit and all kinds of intellectual wordplay, it’s hardly a surprise that the New York Times Crossword was referenced in the very first episode.

In the video below, Chief of Staff Leo McGarry is frustrated with the Times for misspelling the name of Muammar Qaddafi, and his attempts to contact the editor of the Times Crossword and get it corrected are stymied at every turn:

The White House staff’s dubious relationship with crosswords is revisited in the season 3 episode Dead Irish Writers. This time around, as the president’s wife Abbey prepares for both a birthday party and a potential ruling on her medical license, the President busies himself with a crossword in his own inimitable style:

Beyond the spirited humor of both scenes, there’s a marvelous undercurrent of how smart people react when their intellectual superiority is challenged. Leo responds by trying to correct what he sees as an egregious error, while the President bends the rules to suit his own expectations.

In addition to being a wonderful launchpad for the show’s signature rapid-fire banter, it’s a simple and effective way of shedding light on how each character views the world and his role in it. (With writing and direction this layered and engaging, it’s easy to see how The West Wing earned an astounding 26 Emmy Awards!)

Even as subplots in a much-larger narrative, these puzzles added color and personality to scenes that took us inside the minds of these characters. Pretty impressive for crosswords that are only mentioned briefly.

Puzzles… is there anything they can’t do? =)

Thanks for visiting the PuzzleNation blog today! You can like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, cruise our boards on Pinterest, 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 Constructor and Puzzle Archivist David Steinberg

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Welcome to the eighth 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 David Steinberg as our latest 5 Questions interviewee!

With crosswords published in both the New York Times and Los Angeles Times by the age of 15, David practically has crosswords in his DNA. He’s the crossword editor for The Orange County Register’s numerous publications, as well as the founder of the Pre-Shortzian Puzzle Project, an ongoing effort to digitize every New York Times crossword from before Will Shortz took over as editor. And he’s accomplished all of this before the age of 18!

David 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 David Steinberg

1.) How did you get started with puzzles?

I started doing puzzles when I was very young — in early elementary school, maybe even kindergarten, I was doing puzzles in books my parents bought me. I was really into Jumble puzzles — I remember that one year, my elementary school had congratulatory “graduation” ads parents could buy to help support the school, and my mom designed one for me that was a Jumble puzzle.

But I didn’t really get into crosswords until I was twelve. My dad had been trying to do the crosswords in The Seattle Times, and I liked watching him and trying to help. My mom noticed my interest and thought I might like seeing the documentary Wordplay, so we checked it out of the library. I saw how Merl Reagle built a puzzle by hand and thought maybe I could do one, so the next day I did. And that was how I got started.

2.) With the Pre-Shortzian Puzzle Project, you’ve established yourself as one of the key preservers of Puzzle History. Can you give the PuzzleNation readership an update on where the project stands right now and your projections for the future?

Thanks! As I write this, more than 12,100 puzzles have been digitized, or “litzed.” [Glenn’s note: As of publication today, the total is over 12,900.] We’re working backwards in time — we started in 1993 and are now litzing puzzles from 1961. We’re currently proofreading puzzles from 1980; all the pre-Shortzian puzzles from 1981 through November 20, 1993, are posted on XWord Info.

We’re in the middle of our third litzing contest, “Litzstarter,” and the goal is to reach 13,000 puzzles by the end of October. I’m hoping we finish litzing all the available puzzles by the end of 2014. I say “available,” because quite a few puzzles that were scheduled for publication in The New York Times were never published because of newspaper strikes. They likely appeared in other publications, however, and after all the puzzles we have are litzed, I’ll be launching an effort to track down the missing puzzles.

The proofreading is progressing at a slower pace because we only have a few proofreaders. My hope is that after the litzing is done, some of the litzers will become proofreaders. Finishing all the proofreading will probably take several more years, but I want the litzed puzzles to have as few mistakes in them as possible.

(Interestingly, many pre-Shortzian puzzles contain editorial errors — in most cases, we’re leaving those in, sometimes with notes that will be added later, so that the litzed puzzles will be accurate representations of what originally appeared in the paper. When the errors appear to be simply typesetting mistakes, we usually correct them.)

One other thing that’s happened recently is that I won a Davidson Fellows Scholarship for the Pre-Shortzian Puzzle Project. This award was very gratifying, because it demonstrated that the project is of value to a wider community, not just to cruciverbalists.

3.) The hundredth anniversary of the crossword is fast approaching. Given your familiarity with puzzles both past and present, what does the hundredth anniversary mean to you? And what are the odds people in the future will be celebrating the crossword’s bicentennial with similar gusto?

The hundredth anniversary of the crossword puzzle means a lot to me — it shows just how long patterns of black and white squares have fascinated solvers. It’s amazing how much the crossword puzzle has evolved since Arthur Wynne’s first construction in 1913 — from crossing a bunch of words in the dictionary to symmetrical grids and entries from the news to complex themes like rebuses and entries reading backwards!

I wonder how crosswords will continue to evolve as new terms become in-the-language and new theme types become more widely used — perhaps they’ll be superseded by some completely different puzzle type. Either way, I think the 200th anniversary of the crossword puzzle will be very significant!

4.) What’s next for David Steinberg?

Between running the Pre-Shortzian Puzzle Project, editing crosswords for the Orange County Register’s associated newspapers, constructing my own crosswords, and going to school, I don’t have much time to look ahead! But I do plan on going to college in a couple of years and hope to eventually become a software engineer. I plan on continuing to construct and edit crosswords, though, for the rest of my life!

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

One piece of advice I have for puzzle solvers is never to get too locked into answers you fill in that aren’t flat-out gimmes. Crossword constructors like to use a lot of misdirection — at times, I’ve had to erase five or six answers in a single corner before being able to finish! Erasing guesses and starting a puzzle with a clean slate can also be very helpful.

Similarly, crossword constructors shouldn’t get too locked into a particular fill and should explore all options — you never know what possibilities are out there until you explore everything!

Many thanks to David for his time. You can follow the progress of the Pre-Shortzian Puzzle Project on their website, as well as David’s editorial efforts on the Orange County Register website. David continues to set records (most recently for the greatest age difference between collaborating constructors, when he worked with 99-year-old Bernice Gordon), and will no doubt be influencing the puzzle world for a long, long time to come.

Thanks for visiting the PuzzleNation blog today! You can like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, cruise our boards on Pinterest, 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!

Putting the “social” in social media

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One cannot overstate how the advent of social media has changed the way we interact with each other on a daily basis.

Stories and reminiscences that had to wait for high school reunions and family get-togethers are now shared over Facebook every day. Fan clubs and monthly newsletters used to be the only source for new info on your favorite bands and celebrities, but these days, they can speak directly to their fans through Twitter.

We can take people on vacation with us on Instagram and share our deepest thoughts on Tumblr. We can document baby’s first steps on YouTube and delve into virtually any subject on various blogs.

And social media has undoubtedly changed the landscape for puzzles and constructors alike.

There are entire blogs dedicated to dissecting the New York Times and Los Angeles Times crosswords each and every day. Amy Reynaldo (Diary of a Crossword Fiend) and our recent 5 Questions interviewee Kathy Matheson (Crossword Kathy) are both terrific examples of engaging crossword bloggers.

Through Twitter and other platforms, constructors are marketing their puzzles directly to solvers, bypassing publishers and sparking a new wave of entrepreneurial creativity in puzzles.

(For more on this, check out our 5 Questions interview with Robin Stears and our subsequent post on digital puzzle distribution.)

Heck, I’ve seen solvers and celebrities alike asking for help with challenging clues by reaching out to their followers on Twitter. Crowdsourcing at its best!

As PuzzleNation’s resident social media helper monkey, I’ve seen firsthand the amazing changes wrought by social media. I play games and interact daily with PuzzleNationers on Facebook, meet fellow puzzlers and innovators through Twitter, and engage in all manner of puzzly topics on Pinterest.

At the end of every blog post, I offer up links to all of our social media platforms, and every time you tweet or comment or reply or re-pin or email, I’m left in awe by how involved and how passionate the PuzzleNation audience is. Interacting with you guys is by far the best part of this gig, and I can’t wait to see what comes next from the marvelous melding of puzzles and social media.

Thanks for visiting the PuzzleNation blog today! You can like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, cruise our boards on Pinterest, 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 Crossword Pro Kathy Matheson

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Welcome to the seventh 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 Kathy Matheson as our latest 5 Questions interviewee!

Better known as Crossword Kathy to puzzle fans, Kathy is an expert puzzle solver whose writeups on each New York Times Crossword are not only an invaluable resource for new puzzlers, but thoroughly entertaining as well. She’s also the editor of the marvelously puzzle-centric Crossword Kathy Daily, where you can find all kinds of puzzle news.

Kathy 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 Kathy Matheson

1.) How did you get started with puzzles?

The short answer is that I’ve been solving crossword puzzles since junior high, when a friend intent on winning the school’s magazine drive gave me a subscription to Games Magazine as a birthday present. (The editor of Games back then? Will Shortz.)

But I should add that I come from a family of puzzlers. My mom and stepdad solve every puzzle the L.A. Times has to offer on any given day – crosswords, cryptograms, Jumbles, sudokus. When I was a kid, my grandpa would write me letters and include some scrambled words at the bottom; I would figure them out and send him back a few as well. And my dad and I would try to solve a daily newspaper crossword together on our weekly trips to a local coffee shop.

One distinct memory from those days: I filled in the word DIRT as the answer for “Seed covering,” only to have my dad gently correct it to ARIL, which he said was a pretty standard entry for that clue. I was baffled. Who on earth would know the word ARIL? So as an adult, when I heard Will Shortz was trying to take the crosswordese out of crosswords, I knew exactly what that meant. And I thought it was great.

2.) Your analyses of each Times crossword are not only thoughtful and accessible, they’re also very funny at times. Is there a balance you try to strike with each puzzle’s breakdown?

I’m so flattered that you think my posts are funny! I’m not a comedian by any stretch, but I hope my blog is lively and entertaining. I guess it’s just not that much fun to publish only a list of answers or a finished grid. Also, I think solvers are more likely to appreciate the craft of crossword construction if you can help them understand a challenging theme, or commiserate with them over an esoteric answer.

Puzzlers, by their nature, like to learn new things, so I try to add interesting links to current events. And frequent readers know I always look for a way to give a shout-out to my adopted hometown of Philly, one of the most underrated cities in the world. Sure, we have our problems -– including a terrible baseball and football team right now -– but it is a tremendously vibrant, beautiful and historic place.

3.) We’re closing in on the one-hundredth anniversary of the crossword. What, in your estimation, gives crosswords such long-lasting appeal? Do you think the crossword’s bicentennial will garner equal interest?

I think crosswords are still around because they’ve evolved. If they were still constructed the way they were back then, I’m not sure how many people would be interested. Themes, rebuses, clever wordplay and complex puzzles-within-puzzles (like the recent grid in Braille!) are what keep me coming back. I certainly hope crosswords will still be around in another hundred years. People still play cards, and those have been around for centuries, right?

4.) What’s next for Kathy Matheson (and Crossword Kathy)?

Well, I’ve been trying my hand at constructing. So far, my aspirations for a NYT crossword byline have been crushed by the very exacting standards of Will Shortz -– though he was extremely nice in his rejections. One puzzle didn’t meet the technical parameters (the word count was too high), and the other had a theme too similar to one that he ran a few years ago. So… I will soldier on. I have a couple of half-finished grids that I just can’t seem to make work. Turns out it takes a lot longer to build a crossword than it does to solve it. Who knew?

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

Keep solving! Just because one puzzle was frustrating doesn’t mean the next one will be. You never know when the subject might involve your area of expertise. Eventually, things will click. Here’s a confession: I still struggle mightily with British (cryptic) crosswords. But I’m able to solve a lot more clues today than I did a couple of years ago.

Many thanks to Kathy Matheson for her time. Check out her marvelous writeups of NYT crosswords on her website, as well as the latest issue of The Crossword Kathy Daily. I can’t wait to see what puzzly goodness she cooks up 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 (recently featured by Apple in the Made for iBooks category!), play our games at PuzzleNation.com, or contact us here at the blog!

Pencil vs. Pen: Not that big a deal

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With conventions and clubs and the all-access nature of the Internet, it’s easier than ever before to connect with likeminded people who enjoy the TV shows, books, films, and activities that you do. Fandom isn’t simply alive and well these days, it’s positively thriving.

Any devoted fandom will have its talking points, its hot-button issues, and sometimes, its schism-inducing disagreements. (Star Wars vs. Star Trek is probably one that will never ever die, no matter how much we might want it to.)

One prominent example is the recent backlash at conventions and on the Internet regarding “fake geek girls.” Now that many nerdy pursuits have found their way into the mainstream (thanks to Comic-Con, Game of Thrones, The Big Bang Theory, Doctor Who, and many other outlets), lady nerds have been ostracized as not being true fans.

As a proud member of numerous nerdy fandoms — Dungeons & Dragons, Star Wars, and puzzles being but a small sample — it’s distressing to see fans turn on each other for stupid, petty reasons.

The only requirement of fandom should be enjoying something. Period.

The band The Doubleclicks have put together a marvelous video that not only celebrates geekdom in all its forms, but abolishes the ridiculous notion of “fake geek girls” in one fell swoop:

And the puzzle community is hardly immune to such ardent feelings and emotional reactions.

There are entire blogs devoted to dissecting the New York Times and Los Angeles Times crosswords on a daily basis, decrying unfair, misleading, or just plain wrong clues and entries.

And while it’s not nearly as high on the scale of ridiculous schisms as the “fake geek girl” or a given day’s crossword kerfuffle, you’ll get some seriously funny reactions if you raise the question of solving puzzles in pencil or ink.

It’s been said that egotism is doing the New York Times crossword puzzle with a pen. (A quote hilariously misattributed to Ambrose Bierce, who disappeared three decades before the NY Times ever printed a crossword.)

I don’t know about that. I solve in ink, but that’s only because every eraser in my house has long since been rubbed away into nonexistence.

I guess what I’m trying to say is… it’s awesome that people are so passionate about the things they enjoy. Just try to remember that someone can still be just as big a fan as you and still disagree with you.

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 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)!

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!