Transcript
Speaker: Hello, puzzle people. My name is Daniel Grimberg, and you're listening to episode number 10 of Crosstalk, the crossword construction podcast. In this show, I'll be talking to other crossword constructors to learn more about how they work and what inspires them.
Speaker: Whether you're a current constructor, an aspiring one, or a fellow word nerd who wants to find out how a puzzle gets made, this show will be a forum to share insights and learn from each other.
Speaker: For the 10th episode of Crosstalk, I'm joined by none other than Joe Zhang. Joe is a data scientist based in Seattle, Washington, and has published crosswords in venues such as the New York Times, l LA Times, Fireball, Wall Street Journal, and Universal.
Speaker: Joe, thanks so much for joining me today and giving us a clue about how you work. Thank you for having me. I am so delighted to be here. I'm delighted to have you. Thank you. So to kick things off, I'll ask you what I ask every guest first off, which is what originally led you to begin solving crosswords?
Speaker: Well, once upon a time, i was 18-year-old freshman at Vanderbilt University. Vanderbilt has a school newspaper. It's called The Hustler, which is kind of a weird name for a college newspaper.
Speaker: little bit, yeah. A little weird, right? Yeah. And they published a crossword in it. There was a very cute guy that I had a crush on who was in my econ class who used to fold the paper very neatly to the crossword and solve the crossword. And I just thought, oh, wow, people can solve crosswords.
Speaker: ah so Okay, if he can solve a crossword, maybe I can solve a crossword. So it occurred to me then that it's not just 60-year-old people that solve crosswords. You could be 18 or 19 and try to solve a crossword.
Speaker: So I started to casually solve then, but not seriously at all, and didn't really become a serious solver until about two or three years ago, just after the pandemic.
Speaker: You didn't become a serious solver until two or three years ago? Yeah. yeah yeah Wow. Wow. Yeah, I have done some intermittent solving. If I look at my New York Times history, you can see a lot of Mondays and Tuesdays between 2014 and 2022. It's like only Mondays.
Speaker: Monday and occasional Tuesday and occasional Sunday that's half done. and so it's really actually only when Kevin started, my partner, Kevin Curry, also constructs crosswords. When he started constructing crosswords is when I started more seriously solving crosswords.
Speaker: Fascinating. So how did you then go from solving Mondays and Tuesdays to some of the more challenging days I didn't understand for a long time.
Speaker: This sounds crazy to say this now, but I didn't understand that the puzzles increased in difficulty. And I didn't understand that there were themed crosswords and themeless crosswords.
Speaker: I just had no clue. I think I must have known that Monday was the easiest because by my record, I only solved the Monday and then I got to Tuesday and it got harder. But I went back in the archive, I solved a bunch of Mondays and then I went back and I solved a bunch of Tuesdays. And then once I got to the point where I felt like I could solve Tuesdays regularly, I moved on to Wednesday. And for a long time, I didn't solve themeless.
Speaker: To be honest, I didn't understand the point of a themeless crossword. i just thought, crosswords are supposed to have wordplay or gimmick and seamless puzzles. I didn't get it. And so for a long time, I solved every day, but not Friday, not Saturday. So a little embarrassing to admit, but now I solve every day. So no one writes to me. I solve all the days of the week.
Speaker: Yeah. No, that's fascinating that you started so recently and you've already had so much success as a constructor that's really inspiring I actually think that's part of the reason maybe is that I'm new to solving, relatively new compared to some other people. And so making the journey into construction is a little bit different and probably to my advantage in some ways.
Speaker: Yeah. So going along with that, what then did lead you to start making crosswords of your own? So that cute boy that I had a crush on in college, he's now my husband.
Speaker: yeah Oh, wow. That's a t twist. It is. so I feel a little bit bad because he started constructing crosswords and it was his hobby. And I saw him doing this and I thought, oh,
Speaker: That's a fun little interesting hobby, but I didn't really have a ton of interest in it. And then was in a bit of a fraught time in my life. So I come from a stereotypical Asian and American immigrant family. My parents came here when I was a baby. I've been in the U.S. since I was three.
Speaker: But because of that, I'm an extremely goal-oriented and achievement-oriented person. Nature and nurture, I think. So really hard to disentangle.
Speaker: When I see something and I see, oh, here's a thing I can do, I feel compelled to try to do the thing. And so that manifests in weird ways. I had just quit a job where I had been really achievement oriented, trying to climb the ladder in this fancy tech job and just feeling completely burned out.
Speaker: And so I quit that job, took a new job, and I looked around and I said, where can I achieve? I don't think I did this consciously, but my subconscious is like, okay, you decided you're not going to achieve there. Where can I achieve? And so I see this little hobby that my husband is doing. And I think, I bet I can make a crossword puzzle.
Speaker: and So that's how this all started. it Sorry, Kevin. I stole his hobby. Well, you work together too, so it's not stealing. It's building on top of that foundation. Yeah, that's a generous way of looking at it. He's such a generous person and he's so easygoing. So he kind of laughs at me. he's just like, yeah, you are definitely way more into this than I am. And I say, yeah, that's true.
Speaker: Has he stolen any of your hobbies? Yes, he has. He does yoga now. Yeah. I love that. I do not have the patience for yoga. And then are some of the constructors you were looking to in those first days of your construction process?
Speaker: Because I came to solving later in my life. I'm 40 now. So I started solving what like in my mid thirties more seriously, i didn't even really think about bylines. And what happened was as I started to think more about, well, how would I make a puzzle? What would I do? What are the things that I'm really enjoying?
Speaker: i would pay attention to how a puzzle felt when I solved it. And so there are two people that really stand out for me from that time period. The first one is Rebecca Goldstein.
Speaker: She has made so many fun, interesting puzzles, Back in those days, I would solve the puzzle. And then if i was interested, I would look at the byline and I would see her name all the time. It felt like every other puzzle was like, oh, this is a Rebecca puzzle. i thought she's doing something good.
Speaker: And the second person is Eric Agard. And this took me a little bit longer because he mostly does themelesses. And it took me, as we've said, took me a little while to come to themeless. But every time I would solve an Eric Agard puzzle, I would think, oh, this is very different than the other puzzles.
Speaker: It has a different sensibility. It has a different feel it has a different vibe. And i really liked that. I really liked that I could feel his personality in the puzzle.
Speaker: Yeah, those are both great inspirations. They've both been named on the show several times before. And turning back to your work, you made your debut pretty recently, February 2025. And it was a collaboration with Kevin in the Wall Street Journal.
Speaker: That already is an impressive achievement. But since February 2025, you've somehow published... 19 more puzzles. So I'm curious, how did you create such an impressive rate of publications so quickly?
Speaker: I have had a lot of rejections. I think some of this is just a numbers game. I have made so many puzzles, as every const constructor will say in the early part of their journey, making a lot of bad puzzles, mediocre puzzles, puzzles that don't really make a lot of sense.
Speaker: So I've done a lot of that. I think it really helps. This is cheating, but it really helps to live with somebody who also makes puzzles because they When you get stuck on a theme idea or you have a half-formed thought, you can just say, hey, what do you think about this?
Speaker: And they might come back and say, oh yeah, what about this angle? What about that angle? And so I have that in Kevin. And then my friend Mallory, we try to get together once a month, but it's often less than that. And we will just brainstorm and think about ideas and laugh and and go back and forth. So I think working with other people is really critical for me.
Speaker: And the other thing is I just love making puzzles. And so it's kind of taken over all my other free time. i do my day job. i spend time with my friends and my family. I make puzzles and I run. Those are the four things that I do. And I don't do anything else. I don't even do yoga anymore because now that's Kevin's. so I hear you on the hack of living with a fellow constructor. I don't have that luxury, but once I was stuck on finding a fourth theme answer and my partner happened to come through, he still kind of lords that over me. So
Speaker: maybe I'm sneakily pulling him into my world. We'll see. And then going along with the rate of publication, you've had 10 puzzles in the New York Times in the last 13 months, including seven this year alone.
Speaker: I was going to send you the notes for this conversation to look over, and I thought, let me just wait till 10 p.m. just in case you happen to have one more. And you actually did, which is crazy. oh that's funny So that's how often you're publishing that I think at any given moment you might be publishing another.
Speaker: So how exactly did you manage that feat? And what advice would you give to others who are looking to publish there? I think this is a really tricky question.
Speaker: And so there are may be multiple parts to this, but I'm going to start with a really practical part first, which is you really have to make a lot of puzzles. I can't remember a time where my New York Times queue has not been full.
Speaker: It is basically always full. So maxing out your queue gives you a higher probability of publishing puzzles. The other thing, and this is very silly, but because puzzles with new people don't count, Mallory and I, every time we submitted a puzzle because she was unpublished and I was unpublished, if we submitted a puzzle together, it never counted.
Speaker: We just keep making puzzles, submitting them. I think maybe we only submitted six or seven before we had our first one accepted. And then after you get published, then it counts. So that's not good advice, I don't think, because working with a new person is really fun. But when you're both new, you can't help each other find pitfalls. And so that part maybe brings down the benefit of that.
Speaker: I think there is an element of luck. So because there is an element of luck, like, am I submitting a themeless puzzle in the same week that Rafa... and Katie Hoodie have submitted puzzles? And if so, oh tough luck, Joe. And then the advice that I would give to myself a few years ago is make the puzzles that you like to solve.
Speaker: And if I had to guess, the thing that resonates is that my puzzles feel like they're made by a very human human being. I put in the kinds of things i like and I put in words that I like and i clue things with angles that I like. So it's like, this is very, this is very egocentric exercise, but I make puzzles that I think are funny.
Speaker: And so there's an element of like not trying to guess what funny. popular or what is going to land. I try really hard these days, at least, not to guess what's the thing that they're going to want and instead just make the thing that I want to see. Yeah. I have something kind of similar to that. I judge which puzzle to send just based on which one I'm really excited to send.
Speaker: Yes. Which one is like, oh, yes, this is the one. This is the one I have to get to them as soon as possible. Yeah. Yeah. Yes, exactly. And earlier when I was just learning, it was so fun to fill a grid and so challenging that that part would keep me occupied.
Speaker: And that part would be exciting enough. And then once it was done, i would want to send it. But now if I sit down to work on a puzzle, and I don't feel like I want to work on it, that's how I know, okay, this is maybe not worth doing.
Speaker: Absolutely. So along those lines, let's turn to talking about construction. So when you are starting out on a new themed puzzle, what is your process for getting that underway?
Speaker: Oh my gosh, probably most of my themed puzzles start with me saying to Kevin or texting Mallory something like, hey, what about a revealer of blank with Two themers, half-baked ideas. So I do a lot of sharing half-baked ideas, potential revealers, any evocative phrase that I hear out in the world, I'll write it down somewhere or I'll try to store it in my brain. I'm actually not very good about writing down ideas. I know Most people have notebooks or Google Docs. I take a more laissez-faire approach, which is if I think of it and it sticks with me, then maybe it's good enough. And then if I forget it, then probably it wasn't that good anyway.
Speaker: But yeah, any phrase out in the wild that I hear that is kind of interesting, I think, okay, could that be a puzzle? And then how do you, so you mentioned your memory, but how else do you differentiate the good ideas from the duds? Yeah.
Speaker: This is really hard to do. The thing that I find most helpful is to run it by someone else. What do you think of this? And if they also think it's good, it's much more likely that it's a good idea because my brain can only work in a particular way. And if I've come up with something then sometimes I can't let it go. i will noodle on it and keep turning it over. But if I present that to someone and their face is just flat, then I think, okay, yeah, that's maybe not as good of an idea as I thought. so And then the other thing about this is that sometimes the thing that you thought of is maybe not the best way to make that puzzle, but there's a nugget of an idea that somebody else can take and expand on, and then it is a good idea.
Speaker: So that's also tricky because... There are bad ideas that can become good ideas. There are good ideas that can have really excellent execution that make them even better. There's so many parts to it.
Speaker: Yeah. And are there any really bad ideas you've had either that you submitted or rejected that you'd like to share with us? Oh, I've had so many bad ideas. Yeah.
Speaker: I've had so many bad ideas. There's this one puzzle that I sort of can't get out of my mind because I still think there's something there, even though everybody I've talked to is like, no Joe, there's nothing there. But the revealer is mixed media. And I just think my original conception of this was to have different genres that are portmanteau words because I have an obsession with portmanteau words. This is one of those things where like I think portmanteau words are really fun. Is it good? I don't think so because no one wants that puzzle, but I just think there's something here.
Speaker: I think it could work. yeah i don't want to discourage you. Okay. That's very nice of you. If you want to collab on mixed media, let me know. I mean, I'd rather collab an idea that people like. um Yeah, fair enough.
Speaker: But i'll I'll take the rejects too. That's fine. Okay. And then once you have your theme entries figured out, what is then your process for gridding and filling the grid? I love to grid so much. I find it very soothing.
Speaker: I will lay out the theme answers. I'll put in the black squares. When Kevin taught me how to grid a grid, the way that he explained it to me was take your center column and try to figure out where you want to place your blocks in that center column and then work your way out.
Speaker: actually don't do that. But when he explained that to me, that made so much sense because I realized, oh, okay, the goal is to break up the columns in a way so that words easily fit into the things you've broken up. This seems very obvious, I'm sure.
Speaker: But it really, I think, helped me understand the kind of spatial aspect of placing black squares and, you know same thing for rows. So you want to do that for your columns and for your rows. And so I do that. And then my filling process is a little bit, I don't know if anybody else works this way. And if Kevin is watching me over my shoulder doing this and he can't watch me do this. Cause I think he finds it. So he's like, I cannot believe this is how you fill your grids.
Speaker: but I'm so intrigued about what you're about to say. Yeah. Okay, great. So here's what I do. I work in Ingrid. I will find the most constrained slot. So you know how Ingrid has the color coding. You can see where the slots are constrained. I'll take the most constrained slot and it'll have somewhere between 50 and 500 options, let's say.
Speaker: I will see more until I can see all of the options. Then i will start at the bottom, work my way up, and I will reject all the answers I don't like. And then i will take the next slot that is adjacent to that slot.
Speaker: So if it's across, I'll take the cross right on top or the cross right on bottom or whatever now is the most constrained slot. And I will do the same thing. And I will do that until I have an entire section has rejected all of the entries I don't like.
Speaker: And then I will go through and I will just look. I will pick, okay, what if I did this? What if I did that? What does that mean for this area? What are the other words that fill? This is the lazy person's way of not managing your word list because I'm managing it puzzle by puzzle in a extremely brute force and very mind numbing way, but it works for me.
Speaker: So you don't change the scores of poor entries? I do. i will change scores to zero. And i have done some light wordless management. I've done rescoring of all the threes and rescoring of all of the fours.
Speaker: But beyond that, i have not done much additional. i' delete problematic entries. I learned this from the podcast. Oh, when Cameron Austin Collins was on, he said, just delete those words. And I remember when I heard that, I thought, no, you can't do that. No, that's crazy. And now I just zero, zero, zero, zero just zero. i'm like I don't want to see that word ever again. Zero.
Speaker: Yeah. Cam knows his stuff. He's given me some great advice since then. So always listen to him. And what is your philosophy or approach to cluing? I don't know that I have a great philosophy.
Speaker: I'm not a very good clueler. I'm very slow at clueling. I try to write 10 clues a day. And... Yeah, I don't usually get that. So I'm writing a puzzle for the Bosworth's Fall Theamless League.
Speaker: And because they have three different divisions, I have to write three different clues for each entry. And I have found this to be the most maddening and interesting exercise I have ever encountered.
Speaker: I think that when I am done with this, I will be five times better at crew writing than I was before. Yeah, it is a fantastic exercise. I have suggested it to early stage constructors because it makes you so reflective of tone and wording and how much that affects difficulty levels. So of the three different divisions, which division do you like writing clues for the most?
Speaker: I really like writing for the stormy division, but I find it the most difficult. Stormy is the hardest? Stormy is the hardest. To write a hard and good clue is really satisfying. I've not done that a lot before now. So it's a new skill for me. And I'm just finding it extremely gratifying to write the clue and to just think, oh, I really like that clue.
Speaker: Yeah, I've said this before, but coming up with a clue that hasn't appeared before and works perfectly, that's just one of my favorite feelings in the world. And then turning to collaborations, you've worked with the aforementioned Mallory Montgomery, Raphael Moussa, and even one of your kids, Kayla, along with your most frequent collaborator, Kevin. How does working with other people affect your process?
Speaker: every puzzle that I've made with somebody else is better than the puzzles I've made by myself. This is almost a proof, like an artifact of working with somebody else.
Speaker: And if I have a really high bar for let's say Phil, And then Mallory has a really high bar for something like flow, which is something I, before working together, would never really think about that much. But she really has this eye. She'll say, like I don't like it if there's only one way into a corner. And at first, when she said that, I was like, okay.
Speaker: And then as I started thinking about that more, and as I solved more puzzles, I thought, yeah. I really don't like that either. so it was like, oh yeah, now that you've pointed out, I actually really don't like that. And so it's this kind of thing where, okay, we have to meet the minimum bar of Phil for me and we have to meet this minimum bar of hers. And that's just going to make the product better. for themed puzzles in particular, it's really helpful to work with someone else because they'll come up with different angles, different potential themers, and you just have a different set of possibilities to work with.
Speaker: then your own mind can come up with. So I don't know if this ever happens to you, but I know about myself that my mind will just kind of run in the same circle. I'll just have the same thought over and over again. If there's no kind of interjection by someone else or something new, I will sometimes be moving black squares around in a puzzle and I'll come across a problematic section and I'll think, okay, well, I can fix this by moving this square, moving that square, moving this square. And then I will spend five minutes putzing around with the black squares and I'll look at it I'll think, ah, yes, this is better.
Speaker: And then I'll take it and I'll compare it to the old version. They're the same. no Yeah. And I just think, ah yeah, this is what happens to me with themes too. I just go around in the same old circles. I need somebody else to kind of come and and be like, what about this? What about that? The thing is, though, it does require negotiation and explaining yourself. The one part I don't like about collaborating is having to explain why you like a word, which I just cannot do. i just like well i just like that entry. I can't tell you why. so
Speaker: Yeah, lately, I've had a few people email me asking to collaborate. And I have found that it has really helped for theme generation to just have that back and forth exchange forces you to think in these ways, like you said, you would never think of otherwise.
Speaker: Yeah, and it forces you to widen the possibility before restricting it, which I think is a really important step in theme generation is to always widen, widen, widen, say, okay, well, what else is interesting about this? What's a different way? And having another person helps you just widen it further before you decide, okay, now where do we narrow? How do we make this tight? How do we make this interesting?
Speaker: Exactly. And so you've already told us you first met Kevin in that econ class where he caught your eye with the crossword. And you've now been married for a very impressive 17 years, which you recently celebrated in that wordplay column, which was very sweet. And i really appreciate So what is it like collaborating with your partner versus someone who you might not know as well?
Speaker: The biggest difference is that I'm not worried about hurting Kevin's feelings. Not because I don't care that his feelings would be hurt. I know it won't hurt his feelings if I say, i don't like that.
Speaker: But I would never say to a new, fresh constructor, I don't like that. That feels too blunt, too harsh. I can't imagine myself very easily because this was me just a few years ago. I can imagine myself hearing someone say that and just feeling completely devastated. Like, oh no, my ideas are no good. This is no good. This is no good. And so Kevin and i work together really well because we each are very good at saying to the other person, I don't think that makes sense. I don't think we shouldn't do it that way. And neither of us feels offended by that. We're just like, okay, yeah. Well, what do you think about this instead?
Speaker: And are there areas where you feel like you tend to take the lead and others where he takes the lead? The majority of the puzzles we make, not all, but I think the majority are, I have a half-baked idea and I say, what about blank?
Speaker: What about a puzzle that's an escape room? I'll just say that. That's not even a half-baked idea. That's like a tenth-baked idea, right? There's nothing there. Yeah. Yeah, there's nothing there. It's just, what about that?
Speaker: And what Kevin is really good at is he'll take my, what about and a puzzle that's an escape room? And he'll say, yeah, here's how a puzzle that's an escape room would look. And that step is the hardest step for me. I can come up with an idea. i can come up with a tenth of an idea.
Speaker: But it's really hard for me to get from one-tenth to like a fully formed idea. And he's really good at that part. And so we'll discuss, okay, what's the mechanics of this escape room puzzle? How should it work? What should it look like?
Speaker: And one thing I've learned is that in this stage, he's usually right. He's very good at understanding how should the puzzle be. And then lately, as we've worked more together...
Speaker: I do most of the gridding and filling. He will do the parts where it's like, okay, well, we need a special word list because X, Y, Z. So he'll make the special word list and he often will make a skeleton grid.
Speaker: Here, why don't you take a look at this? And then I'll take his skeleton grid and I'll be like, oh, okay, I see how we can make this work. What if we did this? What if we did that? And then he'll come in and he'll change all of the places where he doesn't like crossing He is very attuned to crossing things that might be difficult. And we'll look at any places where he's like, I don't know about this one letter and he'll change the whole section. I'm starting get jealous of the crossword partner. I feel like that's really cool. It's really nice. Yeah, it's really nice. And it's also really nice because Kevin and I have three kids. They're eight, 10 and 12. And at this stage of our lives, we're just coming out of the stage of parenting where we're
Speaker: really just treading water, we've come out of that and we're in the stage where we have a little bit more time. And I think it can be very easy to just hyper focus on your kids and then have all your conversations be about kids and logistics. And so it's really nice for us to have this other thing that we do that's not related to the kids.
Speaker: Yes, I get that. And since you brought up the escape room puzzle, I did want to touch on that because I remember that really grabbing my attention when it first came out. So this was your Sunday, July 6, 2025 puzzle.
Speaker: And it was a collaboration with Kevin, as you mentioned, and it was also your new York Times debut. you maybe walk us through how it evolved from there? Yeah, I can remember actually turning to Kevin and saying in our kitchen, saying, what about a puzzle that's an escape room?
Speaker: And he said, no, surely it's been done. And so then he went searching databases looking. He's like, I don't think it has been done. And then he said, if it hasn't been done, there might be a reason why.
Speaker: so we have this conversation about, okay, well, it's kind of an obvious thing to do. I don't know if it's obvious, but it's kind of like, okay, it seems like there should have been one. The fact that there hasn't doesn't mean that nobody would publish an escape room puzzle.
Speaker: And so we've talked about what the escape room should look like. He's like, okay, I think it should have a lock and it should have a passcode. And I said, no no, no, no, no. That's not how it should be. It should be. had this really convoluted idea. So it has to be some sort of Schrodinger where if you don't solve it, it looks like something else. But if you do solve it, it's actually this. And there's one unchecked square so that you can't cheat that square. And Kevin, of course, he was right. He's like, that doesn't make sense.
Speaker: I said, okay, we'll do it your way. So we came up with the four different entries that would be a puzzle in and of themselves, a little bit like a meta puzzle. That first submission actually was not accepted.
Speaker: i would say it was soft rejected. They wrote us and they said, it's not a yes yet or something like that. And was like, ooh, so we're we're close.
Speaker: Okay, so you're saying there's a chance. So they came back to us and they said, we don't like this one. can you give us a different answer? When we got that email, I remember sitting across from Kevin at dinner and just saying like, we're never going to think of anything else. We're just never going to do it.
Speaker: And then, you know, an hour later, he's like, what about this? And I'm like, oh, yes, amazing. Fantastic. ah Yeah, I've had multiple Sundays where they asked me to change something.
Speaker: And there's been a few times where i was like, oh, God, there's really nothing else. Like I've exhausted every possibility. But sometimes I'm like, yay, the fun continues. I get to do this again.
Speaker: Do you find, because you mostly make Sundays now, do you find it extra demoralizing to get rejected on a Sunday? Because it's so much time. I mostly make Sundays because I find the challenge and the investment more engaging. So yeah, it can be a bit demoralizing because you've invested more time and effort into it.
Speaker: But also I'm like, well, I had a great time. No one else will get to enjoy this, but I had two weeks of fun instead of two days of fun. So it's still worth it. Fair. Yeah, I like that.
Speaker: There's only the sadness then of like, if you really loved the puzzle, and they didn't want it for whatever reason, there's the extra layer of sadness of like, well, who's going to solve this now? Right? Well, then you try another venue, you just keep it going, or you just maybe take a kernel of it and apply it to something else. I mean, there's definitely ways it can live on.
Speaker: That's fair. Yeah, or start a blog. Yeah, another good option. And then speaking of Sundays in the Times, two of your children, Kayla and Nate, they, at the ages of 10 and 8, this is already an amazing start to the sentence, constructed 15 by 15 crossword that was featured in the New York Times kids section, which is Incredible. It sounds like a dream come true for any parent who's a constructor or just a crossword fan. So I'm sure a lot of people want to know, how did you manage to raise kids who also shared your interest and your talent?
Speaker: I can really remember vividly when the idea for this puzzle came up. So first of all, I think that they're interested in it because they see Kevin and me on our computers filling grids all the time. And they'll look over my shoulder. What are you working on? What is this? And oftentimes Kayla looks over my shoulder at the grid and they'll say,
Speaker: I don't get it I'm like, okay, well, this is the theme or this is that theme or this is the theme so just having the exposure of it was really interesting to them. And they are both pretty structured kids that would have interest in a kind of activity where you're like, okay, let me try to fill in these blocks, the kind of thing that would appeal to them.
Speaker: And so we were on an extended family trip in Australia and New Zealand. we were away from home for, I think, six weeks. And so we were just together all the time. And Kevin and I were on our computers making puzzles, and the kids were talking about puzzles.
Speaker: And Nate said, well, how do you come up with theme ideas? And I said, well, you just think of things that you like. And then you kind of think like, okay, well, could that be but theme? Like, what would that look like? And so Nate started just listing things. He was like, shower, bathtub, bubble bath.
Speaker: And then Kayla goes, bubble bath. And the letters are in circles, like bubbles. And I said, yes, amazing. That's a great puzzle. I thought, wow, okay, yeah.
Speaker: Then we helped them flesh out the idea like, okay, well, what kinds of words go with bubble? how would we use x expert info to look up the different kinds of words? How do we lay out a grid? How would you fill it?
Speaker: It was really cool. So they submitted that puzzle to the Times and Christina Iverson, I consider her kind of like a crossword fairy godmother. she She sent back just the nicest rejection was like, sorry to say we we didn't choose this puzzle or whatever,
Speaker: but were interested in having it in the kids section of the paper. and i would interview them and we would write a little article. it was really cool. And I just am so appreciative of her for thinking about that as an opportunity. Yeah, that is really nice. That must have been really special.
Speaker: And then I wanted to talk about your first theme list that appeared on Friday, August 14th, 2026. And on discord, you wrote, quote, I always read all the comments and this is the most nervous I've ever been to open them up, maybe tied with my first solo puzzle.
Speaker: Somehow a theme list puzzle feels more personal than a themed puzzle. Could you talk a little bit about what you were thinking there? Yeah. There are more rules to a themed puzzle.
Speaker: And so there are ways that you can assess, is this a good theme? Is there an element of wordplay? Is there something that ties it all together? Is it a tight theme set? Are the answers paralleled? It's easier to kind of understand like, okay, if we're thinking about a theme, there's not infinite number of directions you can go. There are a lot of directions, but they're not infinite.
Speaker: And there's a lot of places where you actually don't have to use a lot of personal judgment. But when I think about a themeless, to me, a themeless is like a free-for-all. This is free verse as opposed to some very organized poetry. It's more just like, oh, I'm just going to pick things that I like.
Speaker: And you may not like those same things. And I think that feels kind of vulnerable to be like, here are things that I like. Do you like them too? And then to kind of hear, but you know, if you're a kid and you're like, hey, I like you. do you like me? And other person's like, no. It's a little bit more like that.
Speaker: And what did you think of the comments you got? I thought people were so nice.
Speaker: In general, i'm I'm pretty good at separating the comments about the puzzle and things that people don't like. And from comments, I don't take them as personal comments about me or my ability as a constructor.
Speaker: And so I think I'm already good at that part. And that helps a lot. But I just thought they were really nice. I thought people were very, very kind. glad to hear that. I mean, it was a great puzzle, so I'm not surprised. And speaking of personal, you've debuted entries highlighting Asian culture like Simu Liu and Aoyai in the Times. So I was curious what your thoughts on the roles of inclusivity and cultural identity in construction are.
Speaker: Yeah, there are some people, and I really admire this about certain constructors, who very much take seriously the opportunity to introduce something new that other people might not know from their culture to take a different angle on a clue or to to add an entry that hasn't been there before.
Speaker: And folks that take that very seriously, and I very much admire that. I am more just coming from, i want to make puzzles that I want to see, and I want to see words that I know and care about. And so this is part of the thing that makes my puzzles feel like a human being made them.
Speaker: I will add entries that other people might think are boring or strange, but I personally like them. And oftentimes that's related to my experience as an Asian American or as a woman.
Speaker: I am super, super excited because I have a themeless coming out. I don't know, sometime in the next 10 years because the cute temper themeless is, who knows? Like some someday it'll come out. And the seed in that themeless, it's a Chinese food. And I am really excited about that.
Speaker: Oh, I can't wait to solve it. I'll be extra happy if it's related to dumplings because i eat dumplings almost every day. And while we're straight into the personal, I wanted to learn a little bit more about you. So if you could share a fun fact about yourself that fans of your work might be surprised to learn.
Speaker: Oh my gosh, I don't have any fun facts. i The fun fact that I usually use in every other setting besides crosswords is that I make crosswords. And so that cannot be my fun fact here. So i have a brother and a sister. My name is Joe, but in Chinese, it means a small boat.
Speaker: And then my brother and sister were born here. So they have just American names. They're Amy and Alex. And then their middle names are also water related. So my family, we all have water related names. Oh, that's kind of cool.
Speaker: Yeah. And what do you do? You've touched on this a little bit, but what do you do when you're not constructing crosswords? The only other hobby that I have is I run. I'm not a super serious runner. I consider myself a recreational runner, but I run most days. I probably run 35 miles a week. And that's actually cross-writing time as well. Because when I'm running, I am often thinking about cross-writing ideas. Kevin and I will sometimes run together and we'll talk about media ideas because... With the MIDI process, you submit a batch. And so we'll try to come up with, if Ian asks for five midis, we'll try to come up with eight or nine because we know he's going to reject half of them. So we just will run together and we'll kick ideas back and forth.
Speaker: And since you brought up midis, did want to ask you how working in that format shapes your approach to constructing? And how do you tell a MIDI idea from a larger format?
Speaker: There are some ideas that really only work in middies and that's just a single joke can kind of work in a small format. Something that is a graphic, just a very simple image of something works really well as a middie. I think you can take a lot of 15 15 ideas and extract a nugget to make into a midi, I find that a little bit easier than going the other way around. If I have an idea and I think it's like a midi idea, there's only a couple of answers that really make sense. They're shorter in length, so they're only eight or nine.
Speaker: And if it can rip off the title, that's even better. i can go from like a 15 by 15 idea and maybe bring it down to a midi, but I can't really upsize my ideas. And so i have a lot of admiration for people like you and John Kugelman, who seem to think in Sundays, I just don't do that. I can't come up with ideas that justify that size of a grid. How do you do that? Do you just naturally think in these bigger ideas?
Speaker: 21 by 21 is challenging. The idea needs to be intriguing enough to keep people solving all the way through. And you want to have eight to 10 answers that feel fresh and unexpected with each of them really earning their place and not feeling tacked on.
Speaker: I think that's why i haven't really made one in a few months. Sometimes the big idea, it's just not there. And that's okay too. It is a big time commitment. So you don't want to rush it if you're not feeling excited about it and you feel like it's not going to be exciting to solvers.
Speaker: So in those kinds of instances, one thing I'll do is I'll go back in the archives and I'll just solve lots of Sundays. And sometimes that will jostle something and hopefully produce that big aha moment.
Speaker: Yeah, you have to try everything and then you have to understand the things that work really well for you. i like the hack of solving a bunch of puzzles as a way to possibly generate ideas. Yeah, you never know what's going to work. You just try everything and hope for the best.
Speaker: And then what's one new thing you've gotten into this year? I've gotten into the idea of a crossword tournament, which I think was very much outside of my comfort zone. I'm an introvert. I really like to be alone at my computer or outside by myself running, you know, just be alone.
Speaker: But I loved going to the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament and volunteering this past year. i really loved going to Westwards. There is a new tournament in Seattle that's going to be in March or April of next year. I'm really excited about that. I'm not involved at all, so I have no idea what it's going to look like. But their website is up, so I'll for sure be attending that in some capacity.
Speaker: Yeah, we'll have to hang at the next ACBT since next year it's in Philly where i live. yeah I didn't know that. Okay, great. And turning to the subject now of favorites, first, what is your favorite part of constructing?
Speaker: Oh, I'm going to be like everybody else. I love to fill a grid. If I could fill grids and just not do anything with them, I would be very happy to do that. i just It's very pleasing to me to lay out the grid, to fill the grid, and to look at the letters in the boxes. I just feel really pleased by that.
Speaker: I feel that too. That's not a wrong answer. Yeah. Well, I want to break your streak, but I just can't. I appreciate that. Book reading is also great. And per the times, days of difficulty, is there a favorite day of the week that you like constructing for?
Speaker: I love solving Thursday. And so I love to construct a Thursday. One thing that I've been having trouble with is calibrating the difficulty level of the puzzles. I realized that it doesn't matter how hard I think my puzzle is, it's still easier than I think it is. And so lately, I've been trying to just write harder clues across the board. Actually, this is something I just realized. When you write an easy puzzle, not all the clues should be easy. Did you know this?
Speaker: Yeah, I've never formally articulated it like that, but i do try to mix in a range of difficulties. Yeah. i think I always thought like, oh, there's very little variation in the difficulty within a puzzle in the cluing. And I realized as I'm solving puzzles and I think about the craft more and more as I solve, I'm realizing, oh, wait a second. No, that's not actually true.
Speaker: There are, of course, the few harder clues in here. Oh, that's why maybe my puzzles are all too easy. I don't write hard clues. So I just thought, okay, this is good. Just filing that away for later. Yeah. I love a Thursday.
Speaker: I really like making a puzzle that's hard to make. I think like you, i like the challenge of, ooh, how will we get this to work? Ooh, can I get this to work? Does this thing actually look like the thing I said it was supposed to look like? Or does it look like something totally different?
Speaker: Yeah, and I did notice that of your 10 times puzzles, five of them so far have been Thursdays. So that does track. Do you feel like you're going be making more themelesses now that you've started to branch into them?
Speaker: I will for sure make more themelisses. Will I have more themelisses? Published is a different question. and Yes, for sure. i will make more themelisses. The nice thing about themelisses is you don't have to have a theme idea to start the puzzle. ah So that's nice if the crossword gods are not being kind.
Speaker: Yeah. And a few times I've been starting a themeliss and as I've been working on it, I figured out a theme. That's another potential little trick. That's fun. That's a good hack.
Speaker: Yeah. And then do you have a favorite puzzle or some favorite puzzles among all the ones you've made so far? Escape Room is very special to me. When that got accepted and then the day that it ran, i had this feeling of, oh, shoot, I've peaked.
Speaker: Shoot, this is the best puzzle I'm ever going to make. I just thought, rats, well, I better enjoy it. Yeah. It's really cool that Kevin and I made that together, that that it worked. Just having that on the world, I i feel like is is really cool. It is a pretty spectacular debut puzzle. I mean, i don't think most people debut with a puzzle that strong. so Thank you.
Speaker: And then one of my favorite clues that you've written is foul play for Duck, Duck, Goose. What are some of the favorite clues that you've written that come to mind? Oh my gosh, Dani. I have written so many good clues in the last six days for boss words.
Speaker: Okay, let me share some of the ones that i really like. They're often covered in French dressing. How many letters? Nine letters. They're often covered in French dressing. i mean, clearly dressing is a pun there, but I don't know what the answer is.
Speaker: Derriere. Oh, that's really cute. That's nice. Thank you. I have another one. I will tell you, I think the best clue I ever wrote is in a puzzle that is in puzzle limbo. It's a collab I worked on with Matthew Stock. And when I wrote the clue, I thought, oh, just like Escape Room, was like, this is the best clue i ever write. I'm just never going to write a clue better than this. It's shot in color.
Speaker: It's nine letters. Why are these all so long? That makes it so much harder. Because they're themeless.
Speaker: They're supposed to be hard. If you got it right away, I would be upset. So this is good. Shot has so many meanings. I'm thinking of shots at a bar. I'm thinking of vaccines. I'm thinking of weapon. Yes.
Speaker: so Oh, paintball. Paintball. Ding, ding, ding. Nice. That is really clever. That's free to a good home. Sorry, Matthew. We're in puzzle limbo and I don't know if I have enough energy to resubmit. The resubmission process is the part I hate the most. Just is like, okay, we already got rejected. What do we do with this puzzle? That's the part I really don't like. And so that clue, answer pair, free to a good home, just shout me out in your wordplay notes.
Speaker: And then what about some favorite entries you've been able to include? Aside from the two that you've mentioned, I feel like all of the entries that please me are ones that I don't see very often from any sort of Asian American food or words that we just don't see much in crosswords. So before I became a person of only two hobbies, I read a lot. And for a period of time, actually, I was having a hard time reading anything serious. So all I read were romance novels and romantic series.
Speaker: series and so There are so many evocative phrases in romance novels and rom-coms that I think are just so fun. And I've seeded some themeless puzzles with those. Those are entries that I really like. We are always seeing baseball. We are always seeing sports ball. I'm not a sports person. And so just stuff that's in the cultural mainstream, but outside of the crossword cultural mainstream. Those are some of my favorite entries.
Speaker: Yeah. And is there any feel you have strong feelings about either positively or negatively? Yeah, I have lots of feelings about Phil. yeah Like everyone you talk to, people have their own just little idiosyncrasies about what they like in Phil, what they don't like in Phil. I will give you one that I think is a little bit of a hot take, which is I don't like anything that has what seems to me like a random letter followed by a word. i don't like those. I don't like t-shirt bra with just the T.
Speaker: That really bothers me. AP, anything. And I know that that is a me thing. I really like those because it has that moment of cognitive dissonance where you're like, is this right? These consonants should not go together.
Speaker: Yes. That's why I don't like it. Because when I'm solving and I have that, I'm like, o what's happening here? Is this right? Is this wrong? So that's what it is. I don't like it when I'm solving it. And so I don't like to construct with it.
Speaker: Fair enough. More for me. And then what about favorite puzzles or clues from other people? I have so many favorite puzzles. How much more time do we have? Do we have the rest of the day? or Okay, I will tell you my favorite puzzle, which I think is a little bit of a controversial one. It's a Thursday puzzle, of course, by Josh Goodman. It's from 2024.
Speaker: All of the theme answers are common phrases that start with don't, don't mess with Texas, don't mix business with pleasure, don't cry over spilled milk. And each of them is portrayed in the grid in this really clever way. My favorite is probably don't put all your eggs in one basket. And you have B-A-S, then rebus all, rebus your, rebus eggs, K-E-T. And I just look at that and I think,
Speaker: That's so cute. I love that you did this. I love that they're all different. As a solving experience, there's nothing more i could want than to solve a puzzle like this. There are two puzzles that i put in the same bucket. The Paolo Pasco, Sarah Sinclair stuffed crust pizza puzzle. I love that one. I love that puzzle. And then Jeremy Newton's hole-in-one puzzle.
Speaker: Yes, also love. The thing that I love about them is how well they evoke a real thing from real life in a really delightful and unexpected way.
Speaker: And then the other puzzle that I wanted to talk about, which I didn't like solving, but I really admire and I think about all the time is art heist. Oh, David Kwong's December 2024 Sunday puzzle art heist, controversial.
Speaker: Controversial. I think about art heist all the time. Just wow. The kind of person who can think of this idea, pull it off. It spells I was framed. Like the whole thing is just so incredible to me.
Speaker: My take on Art Heist is that it's a brilliant puzzle, but the solving experience would have been better if you saw which clue corresponded to which part.
Speaker: I think it was a fail of the UX. People got so caught up on the UX of it that they lost sight of the brilliance of the puzzle. Totally. I 100% agree with that.
Speaker: And I remember solving the puzzle and thinking, oh, no, I am really not enjoying this. And the further and further away I get from it, I'm like, wow, that's really an amazing piece of work.
Speaker: The other day I was just walking down the street and I thought finding Kahlo in Hookah Lounge is so brilliant. There was nothing prompting that. It was just my mind just suddenly went to bed.
Speaker: yeah You're like, hmm, yes, that is a good find. Yeah, the fact that I remember that a year later is definitely telling. And then for listeners who are just getting started, you already offered us some great advice, but do you have any other advice for how aspiring constructors can level up their skills?
Speaker: The two things that I would want to add to what's already been said is one, be yourself. So I think this is really hard when you're new constructor, because for someone like me, who is very goal oriented, and lot of people are wanting to get published in the times wanting to hit for the cycle, whatever the goal is, when you get too attached to the goal, as I have been for sure, then you kind of lose sight of what is it that I'm actually trained to do? want learn something. I want to enjoy the process and I want to create something that other people will enjoy. And so being yourself, keeping that in mind is really helpful.
Speaker: And one thing I would say is just know that it's going to happen for you. If you make enough puzzles, you will get published. I'm trying to talk to the me of 10 rejections and it's like, oh my gosh, I'm never going to get published. And I send a puzzle in that I really like, that I think has a really good chance. And I just get the form response back and I'm devastated. I've cried over rejections. I have been the person who's monitoring the email. Okay, it's been 75 days. Maybe it's today. Maybe it's tomorrow. Refreshing, refreshing.
Speaker: i have been that person. And it will happen for you. And don't take anybody's feedback too seriously, including mine. We can often get stuck in, okay, well, editors won't like this or they won't like that. Or, well, they haven't been publishing this kind of puzzle or that kind of puzzle. And we can overthink. And the best thing to do is to just say, what's the puzzle I want to see out in the world? What do I think is funny? That's the puzzle you should make.
Speaker: Yeah. And one thing I would add along the same lines is try not to compare yourself to others. Everyone has their own journey, their own trajectory.
Speaker: I feel like we're constantly caught up in that and it takes away from the fun. And ultimately, it's not a competition unless you're at a tournament. And even then, don't compare. but but not a competition unless you're actually at a competition, which then it is. Yeah, totally.
Speaker: I think holding it loosely too is really helpful. And the Zen Buddhist practice, hold things loosely, don't hold onto them too tight. And when you do that, actually you have a better chance of success and you enjoy it more. The other very practical piece of advice I would give is If you are a new constructor and you're looking for feedback, find somebody whose puzzles you like and reach out to them personally.
Speaker: Reach out to them and say, hey, I really like your puzzles. I'm a new constructor. Would you give me some feedback? I'm thinking about this or that. Because the one-on-one is so helpful. And i have had that built in right with Kevin. He's in my house. I can just turn to him and be like, what do you think of this idea?
Speaker: That has shortened my process of being able to understand how to make a puzzle in a way that other people don't have. And the crossword puzzle world, as far as I've seen, is just full of the nicest people. I have never emailed someone and not heard back from them. you know like Back before I had published anything.
Speaker: There are a lot of people who would be happy to give you feedback on your ideas, et cetera. And if you can marry a constructor, ideally. Yes. yes Ideally do that. yes And do you have any crossword goals for the future?
Speaker: Oh my gosh. I have so many crossword goals. This was on my list of crossword goals. Oh, wow. Yeah. There's so many people that I admire that you've had on. I thought maybe someday I can be on Crosstalk. And it definitely happened sooner than I thought. i was like, oh, I'll need like 15 or 20 puzzles.
Speaker: My number one goal is to see someone solving my puzzle out in the wild. Have you had this experience? I haven't had it in the wild, but lately people have been finding out I'm a constructor, so they keep asking me when my puzzle's coming out and then telling me about their experience of solving it. People in my neighborhood lately have been like, oh, I solved your crossword the other day because now they know who I am.
Speaker: but I've never seen it in the actual wild. When Escape Room came out, we Kevin and I dragged our kids on the light rail and we just roamed the city. looking for people, hopefully not creepily, but just looking, you know, is anyone solving the crossword? Of course we didn't find anyone. And I thought, okay, well, where would there be the largest conglomerate of people solving crossword puzzles? And I thought, oh, let's go the library. And we went to the library and there's nobody solving crossword puzzles at the library, literally zero.
Speaker: What would you have done if you found someone? Would you have gone up to them? Oh yeah, absolutely. Just tap on the shoulder, tap, tap, tap, and then ask them to take a selfie with me. Someday it'll happen for me.
Speaker: And then is there anything you hope to see change or emerge in the world of crosswords in the future? I really like a lot of the things that are already happening.
Speaker: There are a lot more voices in crossword construction I can feel it when I solve too, that the diversity of entries is increasing too, as the diversity of constructors changes and increases as well.
Speaker: i would really like to see for context, I guess, I read the Wordplay blog and the comments every day, even if it's not my puzzle. I read through the comments. I like to just understand how people are reacting to the puzzle.
Speaker: I'll read Rex Parker's blog every day. i don't read the comments every day, but I often do. And I think one thing I would love to see is people be a little kinder in those spaces.
Speaker: There are so many young constructors that are being published. If my kid was making their debut at the age of like 18 or 19, and I read some of those comments, I just think, oh, I would not want my kid reading these comments about something that they made So understanding there are real people that are involved in every step of this process, including the editors, right? Yeah. And that's not even taking into account the ones that don't make it past the moderators.
Speaker: That's true. We're only seeing a selection. Yeah. You can be constructively critical while still upholding a certain level of kindness. So I hear you on that.
Speaker: So that is everything that I had for you today. Is there anything else you wanted to share with our listeners? Just remember, if you are a new constructor and you're in the valley of despair, which I have been in, it will happen for you.
Speaker: Just keep going. It will happen for you. Yes. And also don't despair no matter what. At the end of the day, it's about fun. It's about play. It's about creativity. It's not worth despairing about.
Speaker: Amen. All right. Well, on that non-despairing note, this is Daniel Grimberg with my special guest, Joe Zhang. Thanks so much to Joe for joining me today. and thanks so much to all of you for listening to episode number 10.
Speaker: Hit me up with any feedback or ideas you might have at the crosstalkpod at gmail.com. And join me again next time for another constructor conversation coming your way soon. Until then, wishing you inspired constructing and happy solving.
