The New Yorker:

From 2023: The veteran Times puzzle editor discusses his favorite clues and unexpectedly finding his first serious romance.

By Liz Maynes-Aminzade

When Will Shortz took over as the crossword editor at the Times, in 1993, he set out to make the puzzle younger. He published more contributors in their twenties and thirties, and favored clues with a modern sensibility: Greek prefixes and musty arcana were largely swept away, replaced by sitcoms, snack-food brands, and sprightly wordplay. Now, at the age of seventy, and approaching his thirtieth anniversary at the paper, he is a member of the established cohort he once defined himself against. Part of his job, as he sees it, is to adjudicate what any puzzler should know. But he is a self-described “older white guy,” and his judgments have drawn criticism, at times, for catering narrowly to his demographic. To a rising generation of crossword enthusiasts, he is at once a revered maestro and a frustrating embodiment of the Old Guard.

Although he resists crossword-clue relativism, and maintains that some references are simply more significant than others, Shortz has changed with the times in certain ways. He now shares his duties with a team of associate editors, and he happily acknowledges that their array of backgrounds and habitus has made for a better crossword. Navigating these changes seems to have done nothing to dampen Shortz’s enthusiasm for the job; the man was clearly put on this earth to puzzle. In our conversation, which has been edited and condensed, we talked about some non-puzzle things, too: his love of table tennis, his cameo on “The Simpsons,” and the surprise of finding his first serious romance, late in life. Afterward, he sent me a few of his favorite crossword clues, which you can attempt to solve below.

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