‘The Pyrotechnics of Puzzles:’ How NYT Games Are Made

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I'm Rachel Abrams, and welcome to our first subscriber-only episode of The Daily.

We are going to be making these from time to time, in part because there are just things we don't do on the show that could be interesting and fun.

At least fun for us, but hopefully also fun for you, our listeners, who go the extra step of subscribing and supporting our work.

So for our first episode, we asked all of you for questions about how we make things at the times, and we heard from a lot of people about one topic in particular.

Games.

Crossword, Wordle, connections, spelling bee.

You all had a lot of questions, so we assembled an all-star team of editors and game makers from the New York Times Game Department to tell us how they work.

We got them into a room on a call, we asked them your questions, we asked them some of our questions.

I definitely asked them at least one question from my dad, and here's that conversation:

I'm Rachel Abrams, and this isn't the daily.

Okay, I am so excited that we are going to get to talk about New York Times games today.

It's one of my favorite parts of this company.

I am here with three New York Times games editors.

Guys, you want to introduce yourselves really quickly?

Tell us your name and what game or games you work on.

We'll start with you, Winna.

Yeah, hi.

My name is Winna Liu.

I am a puzzle editor on the games team, and I write the Daily Connections puzzle and also edit the crossroad.

I'm Joel Faliano.

I created the mini Crossroad for the the New York Times and work on many other games here.

I'm Sam Zerski, digital puzzles editor for The Times.

Most of you all know me from editing the Daily Digital Spelling B as well as Letterboxed, but I also still lend a helping hand with the crossword, which is how I got my start.

So I feel like people have really strong relationships and associations with New York Times games.

I will share my own, which is during the pandemic, my dad and I, my dad lives in California, we played the crossword every single day together over the phones.

We each have our phones out and would be solving it together.

My dad also can solve a Saturday crossword.

I'm not even kidding, without cheating in 12 minutes.

Respect.

Speedy speedy.

Yeah.

My very first question is, do you ever cheat?

I have a story about cheating versus not cheating.

Excellent.

Let's start there.

I can't wait to hear this.

So when I started solving the New York Times crossword in the paper, you know, you get to fold it up and it's this nice little packet.

By hand, you started solving it by hand.

Every time I didn't know an answer, which was most of the time, I left it blank and I never looked up the answer from the next day.

It was like some sort of like weird punishment for myself to be like, I didn't earn the answer, so I didn't get it.

And as a result, I never learned any of those words.

And so I didn't really get better.

And I kept on making the same mistakes over and over again.

And so now I recommend that like cheating is great or looking at the answers.

Time take cheating is great.

Quote Winnaloo, cheating is great.

Let's get that out there in the world.

Okay, let's just end the subscriber content now.

I think we got what we we need.

When it's so funny, I have a very similar story to that, which is the very first puzzle book I ever got, really, the first puzzle I ever solved was like a vacation I was taking with my mom in seventh grade, and she got me a New York Times Crossword book.

And it was like Monday puzzles, and I was so excited.

And I was like, here we go.

And I got two answers on the first puzzle.

And I was like, okay, maybe this one was like a hard one.

And I like flipped it and I got like one answer on the next one.

And I was just defeated.

I literally put it down and didn't look at New York Times puzzles for like two years and kind of like got back into it later.

And I wish I had just asked somebody like, oh, so what is Elvis Presley's middle name or whatever the crazy trivia was at the time?

A-R-O-N.

Yeah.

Aaron, the things you learn from doing the New York Times crossword every day and the things you absorb when you're making useless knowledge you learn is really what you're trying to say.

Yeah.

But yeah, I mean, I think it's the lesson from that is that.

People think of puzzle solving as this solitary thing.

And it's really much better when you kind of like welcome more people in when you're, you're able to make it a communal thing and a learning thing.

Sam, what about you?

Yeah, I was just going to say, like, I guess I'm taking this from the great New York Times crossword editor, Will Schwartz, who himself took this from the great Will Wang.

Now I'm the third generation to say it is your puzzle.

You get to solve it however you like.

And I will personally say, I really just don't believe there's anything such as cheating unless it is cheating to you.

I think crosswords are so cool because you get to learn these new things, whether you decide to solve in pencil or pen on paper, whether you use auto-check to help you out, whether you just skip and Google things to help with a tough crossing that you wouldn't have known otherwise.

I think it's just cool to be able to have your own individualized, satisfying puzzle-solving experience.

All that being said, Googling the Wordle is cheating.

I just want to make it clear.

Google the Wordle.

Okay, yes.

That is a depth to which you none of the three of you will sink.

Yeah.

It's your puzzle, solve it however you would like.

Okay, so how does one end up working as an editor for the New York Times game section?

I mean, I can start.

I joined the earliest of the three of us here.

So myself, Winna, and Sam all got our start making crossword puzzles for the New York Times.

So one of the really cool things the New York Times puzzle team does is accept crossword submissions from around the country.

Anybody can send a puzzle in and you hear back from the editors with feedback.

So all of us got into crosswords and realized, you know, somebody must be making these, started sending in our puzzles.

So that was me in high school.

You sent in a puzzle because you wanted the New York Times to publish it.

To publish it, yeah.

I had that hubris as a high school editor.

Well, don't publish my stuff.

Yeah.

I mean, my dad was a daily New York Times crossword solver and he started photocopying the puzzle for me.

And I just thought, okay, somebody's making these.

I'll try.

I made them for my dad first.

I sent them into the New York Times and got an email back from Will Shorts saying, yeah, you know, it's not very good, but this part was good.

This part was interesting.

And after a number of attempts was finally published.

So that following summer.

Wait, how old were you when you got a crossword?

I was 17.

Oh, wow.

And then that following summer, when I was a freshman in college, I didn't have a job for the summer.

I was pretty panicked.

I was thinking like, what could I do?

What could I do?

And I just sort of cold emailed Will Shorts and was like, do you have an intern?

Is that a thing you would be willing to entertain?

He actually did.

And then that person dropped out.

He emailed me a couple weeks later.

Do you still not have a job?

I still didn't have a job.

And

I guess the rest is sort of history.

That was 2011.

And then I officially joined in 2014.

It's luck.

A big part of it is luck.

A big part of it is you kind of making your own luck.

But I don't think,

I don't want to speak for us, but none of us thought we would be puzzle editors growing up.

It's not really a real thing that you aspire to be.

But just by happenstance, sort of

made it our careers.

I love that.

I love that Will Schwartz actually wrote back to you.

I feel like people are in this newsroom are often so incredibly busy that like just hearing that somebody took the time to respond to a high schooler who wanted to submit a puzzle, that's like, that's so deeply charming.

Yeah, and we try to pay it forward to this day.

Anyone who sends in a puzzle to us, one of our editors writes them back with feedback on how they can get better.

Sam, how did you end up becoming an editor at the game section?

So I also, you know, Joel gets to tell the story of like his parents doing this and like he at least got to look over their shoulder and he just kind of happened to dabble in high school.

I was just a giant nerd.

I don't really have like that cool of a story other than I was into fill it in puzzles, which look just like crosswords, but instead of clues, it gives you a list of answers alphabetized by length.

And at some point along the line, I think it was my dad just in trying to get me into crosswords, got me this book of Will Schwartz's favorite favorite crosswords and that like i must have been like 12 13 years old um that was like a monumental change for me because it wasn't just like

all right i get it like i don't know all this trivia that i'm supposed to know and it's that these grids just looked so cool these themes were so interesting you could write multiple letters into a single square you could stack three 15 letter answers at the top like i was so into just the patterns and the pyrotechnics if you will of puzzles so i was just as interested in the puzzle making side of it.

Of course, not really knowing that normal humans just made puzzles for the times, but went down this deep, dark rabbit hole in middle school and high school, found out that there is, in fact, this burgeoning community of puzzle-making people that I've now been welcomed to the ranks of.

And I also had my first Times puzzle published when I was 17 and one thing led to another and here I am.

I think I'm going to echo what Joel said in the beginning about luck.

I feel like I've been extraordinarily lucky.

And for me, my crossroad journey was I had a crush on someone who worked at a chess shop and I always saw them doing the New York Times Crossroad.

And so I was like, I also do the New York Times Crossroad.

I didn't.

And so I would, I would, you know, walk by, I would be walking by in the neighborhood and being like, oh, did you do today's puzzle?

Oh, my.

And we would, we would, you know, work on the puzzle together a little bit.

And, you know, we became friends.

And we actually went to tournament together and co-solved.

It's very fun.

But then I got really, really into solving puzzles for a number of years.

And then I was too

like

shy to go to the crossroad tournaments.

There's one local tournament in New York every year, Lalapazula.

It's excellent.

I would go every year, but I would be too like shy to talk to anyone.

So I would go solve the puzzles and like run away.

And then in 2017, I went on a crossroad cruise with my mom because my mom was like, I love cruises.

You love crossroads.

We're doing this cruise.

And that's where I met Joel.

I met Joel on a crossroad cruise in 2017.

Yeah, we need to pause on the crossroad cruise.

That's a phrase, the phrase that's not that common.

It's 15 letters, though.

I could maybe assume what a crossroad cruise is, but.

I think it's what you're imagining.

Yeah, actually, we weren't allowed to call it a cruise because it didn't make any stops.

You were just on a boat.

It was a crossing.

A week and a half.

So it was six letters.

So actually, the story is, it was the New York Times, New York Times, like journeys.

Is that what it was?

The old travel wing of the New York Times.

It was doing the Titanic route in the winter.

So it was the North North Atlantic in the winter with no stops.

And then we did a bunch of puzzles on it.

You just basically like sailed across the ocean doing puzzles.

Yeah.

Not stopping to go on any land.

And then we got off and then flew home.

Wait, I love this.

Also, Sam, I clocked.

It was not lost on me that you immediately said that crossword cruise had 15 letters.

Did you just count that in your head?

Like as we were talking?

Sam can do this.

No, we all can do this through.

I can't.

I need to use my fingers.

Wait, is this a prerequisite for being a puzzle editor?

You have to be able to like count letters in your, your, or is this just something that you comes with a piece of?

Sam is not normal.

This is how, I will say, I think we, we all come to the table with like different secret sauce skill sets.

Like, I guess if Winner and Joel are pointing it out as it is like mine, we're talking again and again about being drawn to patterns with puzzles.

So, in my brain, you can say a phrase, you can say a phrase that's 16 letters.

Um, you just like it's it's just, it's just always, it's just always on crossword brain, 14 letters.

Do Do you ever wish you could turn it off?

Sometimes, yes, but sometimes it also leads to puzzles that I have since made for the times because, you know, you go, oh, wow, I never noticed that that phrase on a sign contains this hidden five-letter word.

Imagine that.

We'll be in a meeting and there'll be

just like a single answer in a puzzle, like I'm trying to, you know.

Oreo cookie or something.

And Sam will go, you know, Bob Klan debuted that phrase in 2005 in his first crossroad.

We'll just look at each other like, who?

Like, we

are in the top 0.1% of people who know stuff about New York Times crossroads.

And Sam is just at the top of the list.

He's got a crazy memory.

It's rich coming from the person who Venmo requested me once for an Uber that we had to share because the Metro North was so messed up in the snow.

And the Venmo caption was, funny how if you remove the H from Metro North, it anagrams to torment her.

So

Joel's got some superpowers, too.

Just another day in the life of a New York Times puzzle editor.

Okay, I want to talk a little bit about how the puzzles are actually put together.

So let's start with the crossword.

Yeah, I guess I'll take this.

So the crossword is the product that we all work on.

Like if you take Connections, that's Winna's and Spelling B, that's Sam's.

Everybody, every editor we've hired all work on the crossword.

And so what does that mean?

So basically, we get upwards of 150 crosswords sent a week to us from people around the country.

And actually the world now.

There are people

sending crosswords from countries we've never received crosswords from, which is really exciting.

But basically, we get all these puzzles, and that's kind of the start of the funnel.

Then our editors review and sort them into different piles, I'll call them.

So there's puzzles that are just no's, and we just, we send some feedback, say, thank you for sending this, but such and such part of the,

you know, you made up answers here, or it's too many words, or the theme wasn't interesting to us.

And then puzzles also make it into what we call like the maybes.

And then when we finally do take a puzzle, it's edited.

And the way a crossword is edited is just mainly just changing the clues.

We rarely change much about the words in the puzzle, maybe occasionally, but it's mainly just changing the clues.

And they're changed for factual accuracy, first of all.

But then, of course, like

those who know New York Times crosswords will know the puzzles are ordered by difficulty so monday's the easiest crossword saturday's the hardest and sunday is really big and is somewhere in in the medium difficulty range and so when we're editing a puzzle a lot of it is actually just changing it for difficulty so it's changing it um to make sure the monday is easy and the saturday is brutally hard wait so okay this is actually something we got a lot of questions about which is like how do you guys decide what is an easy question what's a monday question what's a tuesday question wednesday winner you want to yeah i i i think that um

surprisingly, we'll get a submission and it will often be pretty clear what day of the week that puzzle will run on.

Sometimes there's some ambiguity, is it Tuesday or Wednesday, but like a Monday theme will be really straightforward.

No like weird headings.

Give us an example of a Monday theme.

Yeah, a recent puzzle we ran had Red Bordeaux, Justin Trudeau.

Super Nintendo, and Cookie Dough.

Everybody can figure out that theme.

It's do, do, do, do, do.

And so it's the sort of theme where you don't really need somebody standing beside you being like, so now what they have in common is like, you don't need that extra level of headiness with a Monday theme.

It should kind of come across the page.

Yeah.

How do you guys make a determination about the obscurity of something?

Like that, to me, that's what makes a clue hard, right?

It's like some play or book or actor or piece of like history that you would have no idea about.

How do you guys determine that?

Yeah.

I think it's pretty subjective.

I don't think there's an objective standard, but I feel like you can sort of get a sense of like, was this here intentionally?

Was this like a featured answer, you know, that was featured by the constructor because it's meaningful?

Or is it something that made other words work and fit together?

And you can usually kind of get a sense of which is which.

And I think we like consider that.

We take that in consideration.

I'd be interested in what you guys think.

I think it's changed over time.

Like I think when it was just Will, it was like, well, maybe Will Shorts doesn't know that.

And that's considered obscure.

When it was Will and I, like we probably had our own blind spots we we do have a team now and i think that's part of the helpful thing of having a team of seven editors who are looking at it that if all of us have not heard of something it's not a it's not a great sign but then like a lot of times someone will vouch for something no that really is a big artist maybe a couple of you haven't heard of it and that's the sort of debates we have one of the things that i i really like about this team is i think we're just we're we're really trying to we think about ourselves as solvers, but we're thinking about all the other people that are solving our puzzles.

And we don't want that to be our vibe to be like, you have to know this capital crossing crossed with this other thing you might not know.

And if you didn't, of course, then the crosswords just not right for you.

You'll figure it out next time.

You want it to be accessible and really pull people from all walks of life.

It's interesting to think about the fact that your jobs are basically to figure out something that feels challenging enough for whatever day it is, but also

solvable.

Like hard enough to be difficult, but easy enough to be achievable.

And I wonder if that's kind of how you see it.

Yeah, I think finding the balance is really important.

So we do that sometimes.

I think it was alluded to with the crossing.

So if there is maybe like a trivia answer that we think maybe people might not be familiar with, we'll try to make sure that all the answers crossing that answer are gettable.

You know, you don't want the solver to be stuck on a letter that they don't know.

So you've been talking about like if you have a really hard vertical word, you want the horizontal clues to be easier.

Yes, exactly.

Got it.

And like for connections, if there's going to be like a really tough wordplay category, I'll try to not put like maybe a trivia category in that same puzzle because you just don't, you don't want the solver to get stuck.

So it's okay to have some hard stuff, but it's good to balance it out.

It should be fair, right?

It should ideally be solvable.

The solver should have some kind of in.

So, okay, so the crosswords are submitted by people, but what about spelling B, for example?

How do you create the spelling bee for the day?

So

for those tuning in for the first time, the way Spelling B works is there's seven different letters arranged in like a hexagonal shape.

One of the letters is in the center.

You make words by anagramming.

The only twist, or there are two twists, is you must use the center letter and you can use all of the letters as often as possible.

So with just the letters A, C, and I, you can make acai and you can also make acacia.

So I'm not kicking back in a chair and going, ah, you know what words you can make with seven different letters?

Let's try this and let's just brainstorm all the other words you can make with seven letters.

I have a database at my disposal.

I think I can say that.

You know, theoretically, there are so many different combinations of things that can be made with seven different letters and subsets of them.

My role as editor, which is why I draw the line saying I edit Spelling B versus where I create it from scratch, is my role is to pick out the good puzzles.

You want to be excited by this puzzle.

And then I will also, I already have the pre-populated, if you will, word list that is the theoretical, every last answer that could possibly be made of those seven letters.

And it's my job to go through the controversial job, of course, of deciding which words should be accepted in that puzzle for the day.

So it is data driven, but it is human curated is probably the best way I could put spelling B.

Okay.

How do you decide what words are acceptable?

Yes.

Oh, you've got like three hours for this, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Three hours.

No, we're extending the studio time.

Oh, I can see Joel and Wynn already nodding off.

They're like, here he goes again.

No, I'm curious because I got some nits to pick with you too.

So go ahead.

Of course.

And

as everybody does.

Sharpening the knife.

I'll even like, you know, just to just to, you know, as a little teaser, I would say I as a solver would even pick nits with myself as an editor sometimes.

The vast majority, you know, in spite of how much this is talked about, the vast majority is very easy.

Ball.

Yes.

Call.

Fall.

These are all.

Non-controversial words.

I'm with you.

So there,

yeah, you're following me thus far.

Then there are words.

I'm not, you know, at the risk of one, just totally erring, or two, at the risk of like being squarely in somebody's wheelhouse.

There are words that, you know, we'll call them the scrabble words.

They are things that like are not even listed in some some dictionaries.

They're only found in unabridged things.

It is this genus of shrub that only lives in this one country in the world.

So there needs to be a line drawn somewhere because you want to be able to find as many words as possible.

You don't want the reason you didn't get to genius because they're all these quote-unquote scrabble words, right?

So that's the philosophy around pruning the word list, as I like to say to begin with.

Then you get to, Joel, I'll call you right out.

Then you get to the name of a bird.

Which one?

Joel's a big bird guy.

Which one that you left off?

Joel and Joel's father.

Shout out Joel's dad.

Our big bird guys.

So there are some birds that are in the spelling bee, and there are some birds that aren't.

And it seems really, really arbitrary.

And I'm not like laughing at you going, haha, you'd love niche birds.

No, like birds should be in the spelling bee.

And to be clear, like my stance on this has changed over time, allowing more and more birds in the spelling bee because everybody has their own bits of, we'll call it a specialized thing.

But hey, to you bird lovers out there,

it's probably not seemingly specialized to you, right?

Which birds make the cut?

Let's see.

There are, Joel, you want to say one that doesn't?

One that doesn't is Anhinga, which drives me crazy because you go to Florida, you see Anhingas everywhere.

And then Pica is not in there, which I don't think Pica's in there, right?

Which is just like a rodent.

Sam, your rebuttal?

No, so that, so my rebuttal actually is literally is a non-rebuttal.

I guess what I myself have learned my own journey as editor is it's fascinating just how arbitrary language is, words that are accepted in some dictionaries, but not accepted in other dictionaries.

So spelling bee is just yet another lexicon that just has some things and doesn't have others.

And then there's that extra layer of making it fun and accessible to such a widespread group of solvers out there.

It's It's a journey and it's ever evolving.

Wina, what is your hill to die on bird or other thing that you were like, this must be a clue?

In spelling B?

In any of the games.

Ooh, okay.

I think connections is a good one.

I mean, like, what things have you been like?

I know people are telling me not to do this in connections, but you know what?

I'm in charge of connections.

Okay, we can talk about, we can pivot to Loris for a second.

Loris was in Wordle.

Loris was the Wordle word.

We had

a great discussion.

I was extremely pro-Loris.

Who else was?

I was anti-Loris, just for the record.

Wait, Loris.

I was also.

L-O-R-I-S.

Wait, oh, Loris is.

I was like, is Loris a person?

Is Loris a word?

Sorry, Loris is a word.

Making my point.

Maybe it shouldn't be Lorraine.

Like, slow, Loris.

They're adorable.

They're slow.

Winna, like, put it in a mini, then put it in another mini, then was like, she's just like the biggest Loris fan you'll meet.

I like them a lot.

It's, it's a primate with like a nocturnal primate i think madagascar with like really big eyes and it's very it looks like a what are they furby yeah it kind of looks like a furby and to be clear to the loris hive out there like don't don't cat we we know loris is lor it's not lora

is there a loris hive though like that's what i really like

winna is is there is their champion

loris like like it is their queen

win is the loris queen

my my hope is that you know someone like you will then Google Loris and you will be greeted with all these amazing, adorable pictures of the Loris and you'll be happy.

Okay, but I feel like many, many people would tweet, what the heck is this?

I think that actually happened.

I think that happened.

I think you're right, actually.

I wish I had spoken to you before I made this call.

I feel like one thing you learn working at the New York Times as a journalist is that people in your life, when they have taken issue with a story that you probably had nothing to do with, they will let you know first.

And so I wonder, do you guys have people in your lives who will complain to you about a clue or a puzzle they didn't like?

And how do you respond?

I've got you.

My dad at this point,

there's no context.

There's no even gentle thing, to be clear.

I love my dad.

We have a great relationship.

But dad, he just sends me Google links to words every day.

Wait, does he want them in the spelling B or the

he wants them in the spelling B.

Yep.

And at this point, like, there's no context.

I'm like, come on, man.

Like, not this again.

At this point, like, I just laugh and we have good conversations around it.

But that's my little anecdote of someone close to my life that solves puzzles.

I mean, one of the cool parts about New York Times games being popular is that everyone in my family plays it.

So like when we go on family vacations, like the kind of morning ritual around the coffee is do the spelling bee, complain about the words that aren't there, do the connections.

My mom complains about the purple category to me and tells me to text win it and I don't.

And like, you know, like there's just like

fun.

I think it's part of the, I think it's part of the enjoyment sometimes is.

The complaints.

The complaints.

Enjoyment for other people, I'll say.

For us, I think as editors, you develop a thick skin for one thing, but you also, I mean, you want the feedback to help you become better at your job.

But

you get feedback from people in real life too.

Winna, do you have anybody in your life?

So my parents, unlike theirs, do not play any of the games.

They show me their support support in other ways.

Like my dad wears his Connections baseball cap, which is really cute.

My mom made me this mug that says Winna and Connection on it.

It's very, very cool.

But my dad is like, your cousins say this game is too hard.

And they don't play it.

But

I do hear complaints.

And

it's okay.

It's good.

It's like, I get it.

I love being mad at stuff.

And so I think it's just like cool.

Who among us has Matt complained?

Let me flip this around.

My dad likes to send me screenshots when he gets like queen B on the spelling B or genius, sorry, when he gets genius level or when he completes a crossword quickly.

Do you get unsolicited screenshots from people who want to brag about their scores?

I love it.

I solicit it.

You solicit it.

So I'm like, I think people, I don't know if this is true for you all, but like I think people assume that everyone sends me their scores.

And so people are like, I don't want to send you.

And really, not many people do.

So I've been like, no, you can send me your scores.

I like it.

So what I'm hearing is I should send you my scores.

That's what I'm taking from.

That's what I'm telling you right now.

I'm about to lay down.

We wear what you wish.

Yeah.

I have one last question for all of you guys.

And by the way, Winna, you're about to get so many unsolicited scores right now after this air.

Yay!

Thank you in advance.

I'm going to ask all three of you, generally speaking, what makes a good game?

I like a feeling, I try and put myself in the shoes of the solver.

That's like, I'd say, really, just a lot of what we do in editing our games.

Like, my golden rule is you keep the solver in mind throughout your entire entire process so one of the things for me like

especially puzzles maybe even juxtaposed with games is is you really just want to feel a sense of accomplishment somehow even if that is just your daily jolt from your wordle every day and keeping up your speaker your mini crossword or um you know cracking the code on a tough crossword theme early i think what makes a good puzzle is is is being able to feel a sense of achievement you get for nothing else you get that dose of dopamine that says i did it

joel

So I think unpredictable is a word that comes to mind.

Like there's nothing worse than a stale puzzle.

That's to me,

I'm not a Sudoku person because of that.

I kind of know what I'm going to get with a Sudoku, but I love when I open up connections each day.

It's like, what did Winnet come up with?

Like, what's

Samurai Sudoku?

You're not going to convince me to get into Sudoku's.

It's just not going to happen.

I would say playful.

So like, One thing that's a hallmark of our games is that they're human created, right?

There's, you can feel the spark of another human mind on the other end.

Like anything auto-generated, just you just feel it.

And so I feel like that's something we try to have is just like a playful spirit to the puzzles that you can feel while you're solving them.

And then the last thing is just like solvable.

Like there's nothing worse than opening a puzzle and just not being able to do it either because the puzzle was made too hard or whatever it is.

At the end of the day, we want people to solve our puzzles despite what it might come across.

We really do.

And so yeah, solvable is the last one for me.

Winna?

Yeah, I'd like to echo a lot of those points.

I think that sense of humor, it's nice when things are funny.

I think that

just the fact that, you know, we're all people and the solvers are people and we're sort of communicating in some way like to each other.

And yeah, it's just playful.

Like it's a game.

It should be fun and

solvable.

I do think that that is, yeah, it's true, believe it.

Not impossible.

Solvable.

Right, right.

We do want them to be solvable.

Well, Winna, Joel, Sam, thank you guys so much for joining me to talk about New York Times games.

Thank you.

It's been an absolute pleasure.

Thank you so much.

Today's episode was produced by Anna Foley and edited by Brendan Klinkenberg.

Contains music by Dan Powell, Diane Wong, and Marion Lozano.

This episode was engineered by Katie McCurran.

I'm Rachel Abrams.

See you next time.

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