“Any good puzzle maker is constantly thinking about their solver.”
Joel Fagliano has always thought about puzzles.
“They were… quite bad,” he jokes.
Eurogamer: So you interned with Will Shortz for three summers.
What was it like to work with this NYT puzzling legend as a young fan?
Joel Fagliano:It was amazing.
It was like being a basketball player and getting to train with Michael Jordan.
We sort of edited puzzles side by side, I would act as his sounding board.
He would throw out ideas, we’d be pitching things back and forth.
Tell us about your authoring process.
Do you work on one puzzle at a time or are you working on multiple Minis at once?
How long does each one take?
The Minis don’t always have that.
I might also put in a couple of words I can clue in a fresh or interesting way.
I’m often just working on one puzzle at a time and I work about one week in advance.
In terms of the process of making a Mini: you start with the words and the grid.
This is true of all puzzle making.
So I filed that away.
Often what I’m going for most is just the familiarity of the words.
My audience is people who maybe haven’t done crosswords before and this is the only one they do.
But you also don’t want the puzzle to be so obvious it’s bland.
you should probably give people a little something to tickle their brain - but not too much.
Yes, definitely, I want to make themes.
It’s hard though.
I can just start with that and make the best puzzle I can around it.
It’s useful to have some sort of structure.
I was going to ask about this.
I’m really interested in the constraints you set for yourself and how willing you are to subvert them.
I really liked that, but to me that was quite a subversive thing to do in a crossword!
Are you happy doing that?
so we should have something that theycando every day.
Since August 2014, I’ve made… three thousand?
So yes, new things excite me.
I think, ‘oh I’ve never had an answer like that before’.
Yeah, you caught me with that.
I’d momentarily got it into my head that the US used Video 2000 format… Is that a hindrance?
No, I don’t think so.
With sport sometimes, because we don’t really watch a lot of baseball or American football here.
They will send each other messages saying, “Joel is in a bad mood today”.
Is there any truth in that?
You know, sadly there is truth in that.
A friend of mine says that I use the Mini as my diary.
There are definitely seasonal things in there too.
I go to the laptop everyday and I see what’s interesting to me, what’s calling me.
I have to start the puzzle somewhere, so my frame of mind is always going to impact them.
Are there particular things you do to jumpstart the thought process?
Is that the same for you?
Are there places you go or routines you’ve developed to kickstart your inspiration?
My mind is fresh.
That’s where a lot of themes come from.
Sometimes I’ll go to the NYT homepage and just scroll.
But early mornings and walks are good - I’ll just scribble stuff down.
I always felt like ‘oh, how cool am I?
I’m using emoji!’
But it always helped because it has lots of vowels.
And even mislead them away from that familiar word with the clue I guess?
What’s your feeling on the misleading clues?
I love them, as long as the clues aren’tallmisleading!
I just skip them and then go back.
Is this something you think about?
A lot of solvers seem to have almost a parasocial relationship with puzzle makers.
Any good puzzle maker is constantly thinking about their solver.
I think that’s a good recipe for making bad puzzles.
They’re in my head.
And then my mother-in-law is French; English is her second language.
So she’s there in my head.
But I will alternate days.
And sometimes vice versa.
People think Friday’s Mini is harder than Monday’s.
But they float around - you’ll find them on other days too.
Do you all play each other’s puzzles at the NYT?
Is there a lot of internal QA going on?
Yeah, so Sam has playtested the Mini since he started in 2018.
It felt like walking on a tightrope with no net beneath me.
There are a lot of pedantic people who are just waiting for us to make mistakes!
We have a pretty healthy testing system I would say.
That’s the kind of stuff we’re talking about.
Do you play puzzles outside of the NYT?
Do you play puzzle video games?
I’m not a big video game person.
Back in the day I really liked the Zelda games but I don’t play many now.
I love puzzles but they’re not a big part of my relaxation time.
Yeah, I can’t turn that off.
Every five-letter word, I’m like, “ooh that could be interesting”.
Actually, this can be helpful.
There were just so many cool facts to include.
Books like that are readymade for puzzle trivia.
Are you interested in the UK newspapers and their cryptic approach to crosswords?
I’m interested, but I haven’t dabbled much.
But I don’t do them regularly.
I feel like that’s the next frontier for me, getting into that.
I just can’t do them.
There’s such a meta game to learning the rules.
I’ve not been able to grasp them.
Right, and that’s something I really make a run at avoid.
Like, how would a human being clue this?
Crossword constructors can sometimes forget that because they’re working in this lingo of crossword clueing.
I take a stab at eliminate that as best I can.
What do you think about the increasing role of puzzles in the digital era of newspapers?
The fact that the Play button is right there on the screen of the NYT app.
And it’s a global brand now.
Does that heightened exposure become intimidating?
I find it exciting.
and then they could find themselves doing a crossword.
Making puzzles that appeal beyond the audience puzzles have always appealed to is an exciting thing.
Have you got any little prototypes or concepts on the go?
I’m pretty content where I’m at.
Historically, a lot of our games have been what appeared in the magazine and could be digitised.
I’m excited to keep working on games like that.
