![]() And the answer to the clue about tomorrow’s top story could be either BOB DOLE ELECTED or CLINTON ELECTED. “ Black Halloween animal” could be either CAT or BAT “ French 101 word” could be LUI or OUI “ provider of support, for short” could be IRA or BRA. An entire section of the grid had bivalent answers. The genius of the puzzle was that there were two possible answer sets. How dare the Times presume the winner of the election? Furious solvers called in accusing Shortz of being biased, presumptuous, wrong, and worse. The crossword provoked something like a popular uprising. Two of the answers were clued as “ lead story in tomorrow’s newspaper!” The second word was ELECTED, and the first word was seven letters. The most offended people ever got, Shortz says, was by a puzzle that ran on the day of the 1996 presidential election. Her reply, too, was in the crossword, under the clue, “ hoped for response.” The answer was YES. He got down on one knee and asked for her hand. One of the answers was THIS DIAMOND RING, a ’60s hit by Gary Lewis and the Playboys another was WILL YOU MARRY ME, the title of a Paula Abdul song. “Oh, my name’s in here, too,” she said a few minutes later. “Oh look, your name’s in here,” she said at a certain point. The theme of the puzzle was “ A Modest Proposal,” the title of a Jonathan Swift pamphlet. He’d only slept 15 minutes the previous night. He pretended to read the front page, but in reality, he was watching her. On the agreed-upon day, the man and his girlfriend went out for brunch, and on the way, they picked up the Times, just as they always did.Īt the restaurant, she opened the crossword page, as was her custom, and started doing the puzzle. ![]() But the more he thought about it, the more he realized it could be “very cool.” So he assigned the crossword to one of his regular creators, and coordinated with the boyfriend about when the puzzle would appear in the paper. It was no place for dispensing personal favors. The New York Times crossword was an august institution, a puzzle consumed by a huge global audience. Shortz’ first reaction was that it was a preposterous idea. His favorite is the time he got a call from a young lawyer who wanted to propose to his girlfriend through the crossword. It’s through those letters that Shortz grew to appreciate just how important the Times crossword is to people. The best part of the job, Shortz says, is getting correspondence from puzzle solvers. In the 1990s, the Times rejected one of Shortz’s crosswords because it contained the answer BELLY BUTTON, which the editor considered to be of questionable taste. In the old days, the Times crossword was strictly by the book, and that book was the dictionary. Under Shortz’ reign, the Times has hauled crossword puzzles into the 21st century, making them more relevant and less formal by injecting answers from pop culture. Moses” becomes the juicier “ she may be off her rocker.” For THEATER, the overly New York-centric clue “ Hirschfeld or Schubert, for example” becomes the clever “ it has wings but doesn’t fly.” Under the sharp point of his wit, the clue for DERRIERES goes from the predictable “ tushes” to the devilish “ many moons?” For GRANDMA, the elementary “ folk artist ……. Shortz, an avuncular, mustachioed man of 53, has become famous for his clues. As puzzle author David Levinson Wilk explains, the need for originality means an answer like ADAM is clued not with a bland “ Biblical man,” but rather with something culturally relevant like “ funnyman Sandler” or something punny like “ first of all?” In any given puzzle, about half the clues are his. ![]() He doesn’t write them all himself-he relies on a stable of freelance puzzle creators-but he is charged with ensuring that every puzzle is at the right level of difficulty and that the clues are fresh and interesting.īoth responsibilities require Shortz to rewrite clues. As crossword puzzle editor of the New York Times, Will Shortz is responsible for 365 crossword puzzles a year.
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