In America, at least among its estimated 40 million puzzle solvers, there may be no greater glory than having your name appear in the venerable grid. Except having your name appear above it. Shortz, 41, only the fourth editor in the 52-year history of the country’s most challenging newspaper puzzle, has a challenge of his own: to drag the grizzled game into the present. “The crossword has been alien territory, as if the culture had stopped in 1950,” says Shortz. “A good puzzle should test everything in our common culture–all the arts, history, geography, slang, names in the news. I’m trying to have a better balance.”
Less than a day on the job, he demonstrated his equilibrium. Shortz’s first foray was riddled with contemporary references, from Ran (Kurosawa’s Lear) to Ren (Nickelodeon’s Chihuahua). His job is not merely to spot a good puzzle but to make clues sing. (He often rewrites them.) He has a network of contributors but, eager to help budding constructors, also takes on unsolicited pieces. At Shortz’s insistence, constructors now get bylines. “I think it will improve the quality. Some people used to send lesser puzzles to the Times because it didn’t matter. Now I can get their best work.”
License for change does have its limits. Grids must still be symmetrical (they look the same upside down and right side up); two-letter words and obscenities are still outlawed. Shortz looks for “interesting themes, especially ones that carry the idea to the extreme. And I like them to be specific and elegant.” (Last Wednesday’s puzzle included Lord Snowdon, Jonathan Winters and Robert Frost.) He’s cutting back on “uninteresting obscurities” and “words that appear in puzzles but seldom in life, like ’erne’ and ‘Aroa’–a Venezuelan copper center. I’ve read 10 years of National Geographic and still never seen ‘Aroa.” But his greatest gift is for creating smart clues, giddy with puns, jokes and jocular brain twisting. In Shortzspeak, “French bread” is “Franc” and “Discover rival” is “Visa.”
Shortz, the world’s only holder of a B.A. in enigmatology (the study of puzzles), from Indiana University, was destined to be king of puzzledom. He lives in a New York City suburb, in a game-packed house as scrupulously ordered as a crossword. Growing up, he made a bargain with his mother, who’s a writer: “I’d test-read her stories if she’d test my puzzles.” At 14, he sold his first to a Sunday-school magazine. After getting a law degree at the University of Virginia, he passed up fife at the bar for a job at Games magazine, becoming the editor in 1989. He gave it up for the Times but continues to be the bemused, gentle-voiced puzzlemaster on National Public Radio’s “Weekend Edition Sunday.” Hard-core puzzle nuts applaud his style but complain that his Times efforts are too easy. Shortz agrees. “But they’re getting harder. My goal is to be as hard as my predecessors, but less obscure.” Obscurity aside, Mr. Shortz–did you spot the acrostic in this story?
