This article is from the source 'nytimes' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/26/briefing/a-crossword-anniversary.html

The article has changed 5 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 1 Version 2
A Crossword Anniversary A Crossword Anniversary
(32 minutes later)
Will Shortz celebrated his 30th anniversary as The Times’s Crossword editor this week. He is one of only four Crossword editors since 1942, when the paper began publishing puzzles as a way to offer relief to readers overwhelmed by war news. “It is possible there will now be bleak blackout hours — or if not that then certainly a need for relaxation of some kind or other,” Lester Markel, the paper’s Sunday editor, wrote to Arthur Hays Sulzberger, the publisher, two weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor.Will Shortz celebrated his 30th anniversary as The Times’s Crossword editor this week. He is one of only four Crossword editors since 1942, when the paper began publishing puzzles as a way to offer relief to readers overwhelmed by war news. “It is possible there will now be bleak blackout hours — or if not that then certainly a need for relaxation of some kind or other,” Lester Markel, the paper’s Sunday editor, wrote to Arthur Hays Sulzberger, the publisher, two weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
To mark Will’s anniversary, I interviewed him by email for today’s newsletter. I’m grateful to crossword devotees who suggested some of today’s questions.To mark Will’s anniversary, I interviewed him by email for today’s newsletter. I’m grateful to crossword devotees who suggested some of today’s questions.
David Leonhardt: You made some big changes to the puzzle when you took over in 1993, introducing more wordplay and popular culture, among other things. But what have been the biggest changes to the puzzle during the past 30 years?David Leonhardt: You made some big changes to the puzzle when you took over in 1993, introducing more wordplay and popular culture, among other things. But what have been the biggest changes to the puzzle during the past 30 years?
Will Shortz: Those are the two biggest changes. But in addition I’ve tried to broaden the range of contributors. When I started, most of the contributors were older (early 50s on average) and overwhelmingly white. Now the average age is probably in the mid- to late 30s, and the people making puzzles are much more diverse.Will Shortz: Those are the two biggest changes. But in addition I’ve tried to broaden the range of contributors. When I started, most of the contributors were older (early 50s on average) and overwhelmingly white. Now the average age is probably in the mid- to late 30s, and the people making puzzles are much more diverse.
In the whole history of the Times crossword before me, only seven teenage constructors are known to have been published. I’ve published 57 teens.In the whole history of the Times crossword before me, only seven teenage constructors are known to have been published. I’ve published 57 teens.
David: What’s one of your favorite puzzles? And clues?David: What’s one of your favorite puzzles? And clues?
Will: My favorite crossword is the Election Day puzzle from 1996, which appeared to predict the result of that year’s presidential contest between Bill Clinton and Bob Dole — but actually had two different solutions. That got a lot of publicity.Will: My favorite crossword is the Election Day puzzle from 1996, which appeared to predict the result of that year’s presidential contest between Bill Clinton and Bob Dole — but actually had two different solutions. That got a lot of publicity.
David: Have you ever been the answer to a clue?
Will: Maybe in some other puzzle. I wouldn’t do that in The Times.
David: Do you do other crossword puzzles? And what other puzzles or games do you enjoy playing?
Will: Occasionally I solve crosswords elsewhere, especially when I’m on vacation. But that’s a busman’s holiday.
My favorite board games are Boggle and Razzle. Not many people can beat me at those. Of The Times’s games, I play Wordle and Connections every day. My favorite game of all is table tennis, which I have not missed a day of since Oct. 3, 2012 (over 4,050 days and counting). I own my own table tennis club — one of the largest in North America — and travel all over the world to play (44 countries so far).
David: You’re a Hoosier. Do you make INDIANA an answer more often than it otherwise might be?
Will: Inserting my interests into the Times crossword would be self-indulgent, so I try not to do that. I work hard to make the puzzle for everyone.
Sometimes constructors try to ingratiate themselves by including things of interest to me, like table tennis, but I ignore that.
David: Who are a few modestly famous people who’ve appeared multiple times because their names are particularly conducive to crosswords?
Will: Any famous or semifamous person with a short name consisting mostly of vowels is going to appear in a lot of crosswords — even after their time has come and gone. Examples that jump to mind are the actresses OONA O’Neill and UTA Hagen, the Bolivian president EVO Morales, any of baseball’s ALOU brothers and NORA of the “Thin Man” movies.
David: What complaints do you get most often?
Will: That the crosswords have too many names, especially unfamiliar ones. I’m very mindful of that. I try not to overdo the names — and never let obscure ones cross.
David: When you became the puzzle editor, you made Monday and Tuesday even easier than they had been and the end-of-the-week puzzles even harder. I’m sure you enjoy editing all the days. But what’s your favorite day of the week to edit?
Will: Honestly, I like all days. I don’t care if a puzzle is easy, medium or hard. It should just be good.
Maybe my favorite crossword to edit is the Puns and Anagrams, which appears once every eight weeks in the Sunday Magazine. I love the wide variety of wordplay in it.
David: A friend of mine is quite proud of his 1,780-day streak of completing the puzzle. What’s the longest streak?
Will: Hmm, I wouldn’t know. (Note: Our colleagues who oversee the Games app report that several hundred people — but fewer than 1,000 — have streaks longer than 1,780 days.)
The fastest solving time I’ve ever heard of for a daily Times crossword is 45 seconds — by Paolo Pasco, a 23-year-old, Harvard-educated puzzle whiz. He was solving digitally, of course, and typing is easier than writing. But still.
David: Are there clues or answers that you regret over the past 30 years?
Will: I do my best to forget them. :-)
Once I allowed SCUMBAG in a puzzle, clued as “Scoundrel.” The word has an unsavory etymology, and someone high up at The Times politely suggested I not use it again.
David: World leaders, actors, musicians, athletes — many notable people do the puzzle. Can you think of an especially entertaining story one of them has told you?
Will: President Clinton sent a handwritten note to congratulate me on my 50th birthday. He said: “Keep the crosswords coming. Even when I can’t finish them, they’re the only part of The Times that guarantees good feeling!”
David: Crossword puzzles have remained popular for more than a century. Why do you think that is?
Will: Every kind of puzzle has its own appeal. I think, as human beings, we’re hard-wired to be problem solvers.
Crosswords are especially popular though, because they’re so flexible. They can be made easy, medium or hard. They can be small or large. Straightforward or tricky. Modern or classic. There’s a crossword for everyone.
The pattern of black-and-white squares is alluring. As humans we like to fill empty spaces. It’s curiously satisfying to fill in the white squares.
Finally, I’ll say that crosswords are especially well-suited to the modern age, in which the world moves at lightning speed and our minds race from one thing to the next. A typical crossword has 76 or so answers, each on a different subject. The brain jumps from topic to topic to topic. Crosswords today feel more attuned to the times than ever.
For more: Deb Amlen, a crossword columnist for The Times, profiled Will. At the bottom of the profile, you’ll find a puzzle from every year of Will’s career. They’re available even to nonsubscribers until Thursday, Nov. 30.
Hostage-Prisoner Exchange
Hamas released another 13 Israeli hostages overnight, all women and children, as well as four Thai citizens.
Israel released 39 Palestinian prisoners in exchange. The group included Israa Jaabees, a woman whose face was disfigured when her car exploded at a checkpoint, and who was featured in an Oscar-nominated documentary.
The releases came after an hourslong delay that raised fears the cease-fire might collapse.
Freed Israeli hostages have begun to reunite with their families. An emotional video from a children’s hospital showed Ohad Munder Zichri, a 9-year-old hostage, running into his father’s arms.
Thousands of demonstrators gathered in Tel Aviv to pressure the Israeli government to prioritize the return of hostages over resuming fighting in Gaza.
The terms of the truce allow for the cease-fire to be extended in exchange for more hostage releases. A longer pause could jeopardize Israel’s goal of dismantling Hamas, write Patrick Kingsley and Aaron Boxerman.
More on the War
While counts are imprecise, the pace of death during Israel’s campaign in Gaza has few precedents this century, according to experts.
“We went back to the Stone Age”: Faced with fuel shortages, people in Gaza are burning doors and window frames to cook.
Politics
Donald Trump is already talking with friends and advisers about who his 2024 running mate should be. Here are the top contenders.
More than three dozen members of Congress plan to leave their seats at the next election, setting the stage for major turnover. Read a list of the departing lawmakers.
Trump’s pardon of a convicted drug smuggler hampered an ambitious Justice Department investigation into the predatory lending industry.
International
The E.U. considers forced sterilization a violation of human rights. But in some European countries, people with intellectual disabilities are still being sterilized.
Outbreaks of diseases that kill children are on the rise, after pandemic disruption left more than 60 million without a single dose of standard childhood vaccines.
Cockroaches and mountains of trash: A public health crisis is unfolding in a coastal Mexican city, weeks after it was ravaged by a hurricane.
Other Big Stories
Shoulder-fired rockets expose troops to brain injuries, the Pentagon says. Despite that, the U.S. has barely changed the way it uses them.
The stabbing of Derek Chauvin, who was convicted of murdering George Floyd, is the latest in a series of attacks against high-profile inmates, raising questions about prison safety.
Officials in 33 states said Meta had received more than 1 million reports of users under the age of 13 on Instagram, but disabled only a fraction of the accounts.
Technology has sapped our collective attention span. To reclaim our minds, we must relearn how to pay attention, write D. Graham Burnett, Alyssa Loh and Peter Schmidt.
It’s OK to hold onto grief, rather than rushing to get over a loved one’s death, says Mikolaj Slawkowksi-Rode.
Second act: Meet the Russian pop star rebuilding her career in exile after taking a stand against the invasion of Ukraine.
Plane food: Airlines are offering upscale dining options — matcha soufflé pancakes, tapas plates, espresso martinis — for those who can afford it.
Vows: When the socialite and former “Real Housewives” star Tinsley Mortimer met Robert Bovard two years ago, it didn’t take long for her to embrace the serenity of Georgia.
Lives Lived: Catherine Christer Hennix fused her mathematical knowledge with a passion for minimalist music to create drone compositions that seemed infinite. She died at 75.
I spoke with the acclaimed novelist and military veteran Phil Klay about morality during times of war.
War, understandably and probably necessarily in some ways, flattens thinking. But trying to hold on to a morally expansive perspective on war, one in which multiple things could be true at the same time — that the Hamas attack on Oct. 7 was an undeniable atrocity and also that Israel’s military response has been cruelly disproportionate — also seems necessary. Can you talk about that moral tension?
There are people who feel like you cannot acknowledge, or shouldn’t acknowledge too much, horrors that are not ideologically convenient. This is why you’ll have the Palestinian National Initiative on CNN, speaking thoughtfully about the suffering of Palestinians but then denying that Hamas targets civilians, which is an insane thing to say. At the same time, if you listen to more neoconservative commentators, they feel aggrieved that the mainstream media is covering the widespread deaths of Palestinian civilians. People urgently want you to feel the moral horror of what is happening, but within a circumscribed circle. I think that is morally blinkered.
Why?
Out of basic humanist principles, the idea that we must close our eyes to suffering that is not ideologically useful is morally degrading to ourselves. It’s repugnant.
What might crack open in someone that they’re able to see the suffering of civilian others as just as grave a human concern as the suffering of civilians on the side they support ideologically?
In war, there’s a primary experience: a terrified father in Gaza as bombs are falling, unsure of whether he can protect his family; or the Israeli soldier trying to deal with Hamas’s tunnel network. There is a responsibility when you’re thinking these things through to sit with some of those primary experiences to the extent that you can, and think about them without immediately seeking to churn them into something politically useful.
Read more of the interview here.
Stephanie Courtney did not intend to sell insurance. She meant to star on Broadway. For the past 15 years, though, she’s been Flo from Progressive.
Visit your local municipal meeting — part theater, part dirge, occasionally part circus.
“Critical Hits”: In an anthology, writers like Hanif Abdurraqib explain what video games mean to them.
“I found a new God”: “Rubyfruit Jungle,” Rita Mae Brown’s breakthrough novel about lesbian identity, was published 50 years ago.
Our editors’ picks: “Romney: A Reckoning,” an intimate biography of the senator and former presidential candidate, and eight others.
Times best sellers: “My Effin’ Life,” a memoir by the Canadian rock musician Geddy Lee, enters the hardcover nonfiction best-seller list.
Roast mushrooms and green beans for this casserole.
Buy blankets that are soft yet tough.
Find a great gift for less than $25.
What to Watch For
Tomorrow is Cyber Monday, when online retailers offer discounts, followed by Giving Tuesday, a day for charity.
The Times’s DealBook Summit begins Wednesday. Guests include Vice President Kamala Harris and Elon Musk.
The 91st annual Rockefeller Center tree-lighting ceremony is Wednesday night.
The United Nations’ annual conference on climate change, known as COP, begins on Thursday in Dubai.
What to Cook This Week
If you need a break from Thanksgiving leftovers, Emily Weinstein’s Five Weeknight Dishes newsletter has ideas for some dead-simple dinners, including a five-star shrimp recipe and chile crisp fettuccine Alfredo.
Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were muzzling and unmuzzling.
And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku and Connections.
Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times.
Correction: Friday’s newsletter misspelled the surnames of David Brooks and Charles Peters.
Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com.