Life As a Puzzle Editor: A Guest Post by Joel Fagliano
Puzzlers, gamers, Wordle-heads and crossword fiends — meet your new obsession. This invigorating compendium of mental glee and stimulation from puzzle-making masterminds is a guaranteed good time for you and your brain. Read on for an exclusive essay from Joel Fagliano on creating Puzzle Mania!
Hardcover $38.00
Puzzle Mania!: Wordle, Connections, Spelling Bee, Minis and More! (B&N Exclusive Edition)
Puzzle Mania!: Wordle, Connections, Spelling Bee, Minis and More! (B&N Exclusive Edition)
By The New York Times Games , Joel Fagliano
In Stock Online
Hardcover $38.00
This Barnes & Noble Exclusive Edition features a Super-Mega Crossword additional gatefold and brightly colored stenciled edges in a fun puzzle motif.
From New York Times Games, home of Wordle and Connections, comes a collection that transforms your favorite digital games into a beautifully designed book that’s perfect for solo play, family game night, or gifting to puzzle-obsessed friends.
This Barnes & Noble Exclusive Edition features a Super-Mega Crossword additional gatefold and brightly colored stenciled edges in a fun puzzle motif.
From New York Times Games, home of Wordle and Connections, comes a collection that transforms your favorite digital games into a beautifully designed book that’s perfect for solo play, family game night, or gifting to puzzle-obsessed friends.
I still remember the feeling of finishing my first crossword. The satisfaction of filling in that last square and conquering the puzzle was addictive. I never imagined that chasing that feeling would lead to creating the New York Times’s daily Mini crossword, or working with a dream team of puzzle experts you might know from our other popular digital games: Wordle, Connections and Spelling Bee.
Our new book PUZZLE MANIA! is a celebration of that feeling. It features brand-new twists on our digital offerings, along with crosswords, logic, trivia, brain teasers and more. It’s an attempt to distill everything that I love about my job as a puzzle editor into book form.
But what, you might be wondering, does a puzzle editor even do? Or perhaps more bluntly, “How is that a real job?” After all, there aren’t many Puzzle Studies majors out there. Our editors actually come from a varied set of backgrounds. Wyna Liu, editor of Connections, was an artist and yoga instructor before she joined the Times. Tracy Bennett, editor of Wordle, worked in math textbook publishing.
For me, this is the only job I’ve ever had. I started as an intern for Will Shortz, joined full-time as his assistant more than a decade ago, and never looked back. Today, our team has grown from that early nucleus of Will and me to a group of seven editors, all responsible for different games.
The hub of our daily work is a Slack thread – creatively titled “editors-chat” – where questions fly about the puzzles we’re all working on. When LORIS (a South Asian primate) was chosen as a recent Wordle word, there were passionate pro-LORIS and anti-LORIS contingents, and much philosophical debate about what makes a fair word for the game.
Sam Ezersky, editor of the Spelling Bee, might pop in to ask for a “yes/no” vote on words for his game – recent examples being RADICCHIO, CHROMIUM and TOROIDAL. (I voted yes on the first two, and no on the last, but I’ll let the reader decide what they think.)
The bulk of our work is on the flagship crossword, to which we all contribute editing. Together, we review more than 200 crosswords a week, submitted from puzzle-makers around the world. We gather weekly to debate and discuss the shortlist and select our favorites. It’s a gloriously nerdy deep-dive into puzzle minutiae.
If this all sounds like a dream job … well, it is. We love our work, and the way it brings satisfaction and enjoyment to people’s lives. PUZZLE MANIA! is a culmination of this passion. Whether you’re a puzzle lifer or a newcomer to solving, I hope it will give you that same “last-square” feeling I got all those years ago.
