The New York Times crossword is something of an American staple today. If you’ve enjoyed a Wordle (perhaps even a Mini Crossword or Connections) game, then you know about The New York Times’ extensive game catalog. What you may not know is why The New York Times has games in the first place.
STR_NGE BEGIN_INGS
Crosswords started gaining popularity right before the onset of World War II. You could argue that this was a manifestation of the latent American cultural need for leisure during the war, but that’s not what this article is about; this article is about crosswords.
The funny thing is, The New York Times prided itself originally on not having games in it. In advertisements, The New York Times would call itself a more serious newspaper than the juvenile ones incorporating crossword puzzles. However, after a final effort by a soon-to-be The New York Times crossword editor, the crossword was added to the paper as a selling point, advertising the puzzle as something to do during war blackout hours.
The puzzle was a hit! Soon after, The New York Times became the king of a category it once mocked: newspaper games. The puzzle has come a long way since its start in 1942, and its excellence has been an object of relish among other papers for a long time. The New York Times crossword isn’t just considered great; it’s widely respected as one of the best crossword publications in the world. So, how does The New York Times make a crossword puzzle?
H_W IT’S M_DE
The New York Times publishes a new crossword every day, and the difficulty of the puzzle depends on the day of the week (with Monday being the easiest and Saturday being the most difficult). With that rate of production, I imagined a crossword war-room situation with different staff crossword writers working nonstop to meet daily deadlines; that, as it turns out, is not really how it works.
The New York Times crossword puzzles are submitted first by freelance crossword makers. This means that anyone can submit a puzzle and theoretically get it published, but it’s a little more complicated than that.
Submitters need to follow the submission rules and recommendations that the newspaper lays out on the submission portal to get published and receive the $500-$1500 compensation. If you’re not intimately familiar with the structure of crosswords, some of these might be confusing. For instance, there are rules on rebuses (squares that contain more than one letter), whether you should submit a 15×15 or 21×21 puzzle, and suggestions on if you should theme your puzzle. Some of these rules produce interesting crosswords that bend the rules of the genre.
Speaking of interesting crosswords, it’s a good idea to make a crossword that sticks out. If you want your crossword to be published by The New York Times, you have to keep in mind that you’ll be competing against about 100 other submissions every week. That isn’t to say that the only way to break into the paper is by making the format your own, but making your puzzle different from others might make it more appealing to long-time puzzle editors like Will Shortz, who has been the lead puzzle editor since 1993 and enjoys the world’s only enigmatology degree.
After the elusive accepted crossword is picked, it’s then edited to perfection. Shortz and his team of editors are not a rubber stamp committee, they’re ruthless fact-checkers and puzzle testers who create about 50 percent of the clues in the final crosswords published. The puzzle goes through the editing team and then gets tested by several designated crossword solvers who give notes on what parts of the puzzle should be changed; a lot of labor from many people goes into each puzzle.
THE S_CRET LIV_S
With that high standard in mind, who are the people submitting accepted crossword puzzles? Their ages range from 13 to 101, and only around 15 percent of them are women. One thing they have in common is that most submit upwards of 10 puzzles before being accepted. The youngest accepted puzzle maker submitted eight puzzles before finding success in his ninth.
Resulting of this competitive process, entire corners of the internet are devoted to the art of crossword writing and the pursuit of crossword publishing. These forums are filled with people trying to help one another, many sharing advice gleaned from scrupulous analysis of rejection emails. The north star for these communities is The New York Times’ “How to Make a Crossword Puzzle: The Series” — a collection of articles detailing how to make a high-quality crossword.
These guides focus on different things throughout the composition process, from how to create a theme that wows editors to understanding the way that puzzles get picked. There’s a particularly lively discussion about what the rejection emails mean; some have hypotheses that the feedback itself isn’t as important as the metadata of how long it took a submission to be replied to. Reading the tea leaves from these rejections that the editing team provides helps applicants narrowly tailor their newest submissions, hopefully resulting in an accepted submission.
If you feel so inclined after reading this, try crossword-writing for yourself. Maybe your first submission won’t be The New York Times-worthy, but crossword publishing is a marathon, not a sprint…good luck!
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