We had this vision that people would - in the way some families will put out a jigsaw puzzle for the holidays - we thought some families would put out this big crossword. But we didn’t want it to be impossible to finish. It’s more difficult than doing a Tuesday / Wednesday. It’s a difficulty level Tuesday / Wednesday, but the sheer size of it of course means it will take a long time to do. It is designed to be a traditional Sunday puzzle, so it’s the most difficult of the week? He wrote it, and Will edited it as he does all puzzles. Was there an entire team behind the Super Mega? I will say pièce de résistance is this crossword we’re calling the Super Mega, the largest ever in The New York Times.
it will be fun for people who are solvers and not. There’s a letter exchange between Will Shortz and Margaret Farrar, the original crossword editor. There’s wonderful sidebars and interviews with the puzzle makers - how they got into puzzles, what writing instruments they use to solve puzzles. It’s for solvers of course, but it’s also just a celebration of puzzles too. You’ve heard of I Spy? Walter Wick created an original I Spy puzzle for this that’s really cool. There’s more than 33 total puzzles in the section. There’s more in the section than just the giant crossword, right? She’s using a lot of the magazine resources to give these sections a magazine flavor.
But Caitlin was someone who came in recently, and a big part of her job is overseeing this special sections. We had the design resources of the magazine, the design department, and the resources of our photo department - a few of the puzzles involve photographs. A lot of what you see on the page is Caitlin’s brilliance as a editor. We recently hired a special projects editor at the magazine that is heading up these sections, Caitlin Roper. Obviously there are digital puzzles, and many people use our crossword app - but there’s a print-centric quality to certain kinds of puzzles, particularly doing the Sunday crossword puzzle. We knew that puzzles would be a good fit for this project, and we also knew that puzzles are also have something inherent. How did a section dedicated to crosswords and puzzles in general come about? What holds them together is that they’re specially designed and conceived of sections that try to create something surprising and delightful that are innovative for the newspaper format, using ideas that are more taken from the world of magazines. They’re all dissimilar in subject, approach, and even design. We took a couple months off and came back with this special section. The big broadsheet format is an interesting one, there’s a lot you can do on those big pages.īack in August, we did one these special sections in the paper of an excerpt of a then-brand-new novel, Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad, which went on to win the National Book Award. The magazine group at The New York Times has been taking on a fun project of building and designing special sections of the paper that will be delivered in print-only format, as a way to explore the potential and possibility and all of the capacities of print as a medium. What’s the origin of Puzzle Mania, and how does it fit with what NYT Magazine has been trying to accomplish lately? This interview has been condensed for clarity. We chatted with Silverstein about Puzzle Mania and the story behind the largest ever crossword puzzle to make it into the NYT. The goal is to take advantage of the tactile, aesthetic, and nostalgic qualities of ink on paper, at a time when the death of print news is but a foregone conclusion for publications whose digital operations cannot keep them afloat. Sharpen your pencils, people: Our special puzzle section is in the paper this Sunday, 12/18, featuring the BIGGEST NYT CROSSWORD ever! /heTEjRxv8c- NYT Magazine December 16, 2016