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New York Times
27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
How New York Times Game Designer Heidi Erwin Creates Variety Puzzles
Claire Merchlinsky By Heidi Erwin Most of my work as a Senior Game Designer at The New York Times is oriented around the design and development of larger puzzle games, but one unexpected and delightful part of my job for the past two years has been writing variety riddles for The New York Times Gameplay newsletter. As someone who loves to see the process behind the scenes of the media I enjoy, I wanted to share the experience of creating Brain Ticklers. What are Brain Ticklers? 'Brain Ticklers' is inherited from Will Shortz, and how his variety puzzles have run over the years. Will's variety puzzles are typically word puzzles, and ask solvers to anagram phrases or build words from other words, for instance. In fact, I sometimes catch myself writing 'Brian Tickler' by accident in my TODO list; I guess Brian's a hidden fictional character associated with these puzzles who exists only in my mind. Brain Ticklers are variety puzzles that could run in print (do not require a digital interactive format to be solved), whether that puzzle asks the solver to use deductive logic, wordplay, lateral thinking, visual analysis, or something else. We run one each week in The New York Times Gameplay newsletter, as well as in other parts of the print paper. Here's one that ran shortly after my puzzles began running in the newsletter in January of 2023: Move the following five letters into the grid below, such that you spell two words that form a phrase meaning 'personal perspective.' Be creative! The answer to this one is at the end of this blog post! Process Overview The end-to-end process for creating a Brain Tickler generally involves the following: A source of inspiration A first draft Editing A final graphic. More on each of those steps… Inspiration Inspiration could be anywhere! One of my favorite parts of writing these puzzles is that I feel encouraged to look at the world through different lenses when I'm out and about. Inspiration could come from a sign on the street in the real world (that's right gamers, I'm touching grass), a format restriction, a puzzle I play online — the world is full of puzzle potential. Three contexts in which ideas for Brain Ticklers spawn for me are 1. Being out and about interacting with the world, 2. NYT Games team activities that prompt thinking about puzzles, and 3. other media (art, books, games, puzzles). For example, here's a Brain Tickler from 2024: What item might be seen with each of these five shapes? Solution: A bicycle. They're all bike rack shapes! This puzzle was inspired by the bike racks I was seeing on runs around Queens. I started photographing them for reference; you can tell that the puzzle graphic pulls pretty directly from these! There are several opportunities to participate in new game ideation within The New York Times Games team. One of these is the game jams the team hosts, where people on the team put aside their other work for a couple days to ideate, prototype, and pitch. At one point, some work friends and I pitched a Venn diagram puzzle game during game jam, which did not turn into a full game, but did inspire this Brain Tickler (solution at end): I've also been inspired by the formats of other cool puzzles out in the world. In March 2023, we ran 5 puzzles for a 'March Matchsticks' puzzle series (like March Madness). These puzzles riff off of the classic matchstick puzzle format. Here are two from our month of matches (answers at the end of this blog post): In the puzzle below, 18 matches spell out the word 'sled.' Rotate one thing to 'make friends.' Editing Every few weeks or so, when I have anywhere from three to eight new puzzles drafted, I hop on call with our Puzzle Editor Sam Ezersky, where he plays the puzzles in real time. Watching someone else solve a puzzle in real time is helpful in shaping it further: Sometimes it becomes immediately obvious that the setup of a puzzle is unclear if I observe Sam heading down an unintended path. But on top of that playtester feedback, it's awesome to witness Sam's puzzle brain in action. A recent example: I proposed a Brain Tickler where solvers were asked to untangle letter sequences to reveal four phrases of the format '____ in ____.' Sam took one look at 'TJIUMSTE' and said, 'Just in time.' This was followed by seeing 'WLAIAITIDNYG,' immediately thinking out loud, 'Lying in wait? No! Lady in waiting!' and then rapid-fire recognizing 'CEDHITIOERF' and 'LSOANW' as 'Editor in chief' and 'Son in law.' Sometimes I wonder if Sam solving a puzzle really says anything about whether the puzzle is fair to the average solver, but fortunately he definitely also has puzzle design sensibilities tailored to a general audience. Reviewing puzzles with Sam is a moment to test the accessibility of a puzzle so we can adjust the framing, presentation, or even concept, as needed. Here's another recent puzzle that became more elegant during the editing process. What I initially presented to Sam: [Spoiler Warning] The solution is that Marie likes Juliet, because Marie likes words that start with a shortened month name: aprons (Apr), mayonnaise (May), jungles (Jun), and Juliet (Jul). He noticed that April, May, and June were all consecutive, and offered up 'Romeo and Juliet' as an alternate fourth pair to continue the consecutive months using the 'Jul' in 'Juliet' for July. This is the kind of small adjustment that makes a puzzle that's mostly solid feel tighter and more elegant. For this type of puzzle, I include an easter egg where the character's name hints at the quality of words they like. In this case, Marie also begins with a shortened month name: Mar. Here are two more of this puzzle format for you to solve. In terms of graphics, the Brain Tickler graphics are fairly simple, and typically I make them in Figma. For some puzzles, being precise with graphics matters more: My younger self would be in awe at the opportunity to work with so many brilliant puzzle minds, all in one place. Working on these puzzles has made me a stronger designer and solver, and I feel gratitude for all of the thought that goes into puzzles across the team, and all of the thought solvers put into playing our games: Humans make our puzzles what they are. Below is the answer to the puzzle from the start of this piece: And here are other answers to puzzles in this post: Rotate the image 180 degrees. It now reads as 'pals.'
New York Times
12-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Brain Trust
Last Friday afternoon, in the lobby of a Marriott in downtown Stamford, Conn., attendees of the 47th American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, the annual confab of word nerds hosted by The Times's puzzle editor, Will Shortz, joyously convened. Veteran puzzlers greeted old friends with the excitement of a homecoming. First-timers smiled nervously, eyeing others' name tags in hopes of catching a glimpse of a favorite crossword constructor. Some broke off into groups to chat or work on one of the many crosswords stacked on the welcome table. 'Electric!' I scrawled in my notebook, smiling eagerly at the scene despite my efforts to be a dispassionate observer. Before last weekend, I thought of myself as a crossword person, insofar as I do the Times puzzle regularly and with some speed. I had, since seeing the 2006 documentary 'Wordplay,' dreamed of attending the tournament, but only idly, sometimes musing to my one crossword friend about how it might be fun to spend an entire weekend doing puzzles. I had no idea what an amateur I was. At the tournament I encountered puzzlers who can finish a Saturday puzzle in three minutes. I met a fan who can, when presented with a constructor's name, recall with precision just how many crosswords that person has had published in The Times. I witnessed a die-hard dressed as a cruciverbalist Phantom of the Opera, replete with grid-printed cape and mask and a rose whose stem was a giant pencil. 'There are no casual puzzle people here,' I wrote in my notebook after the late-night wine-and-cheese reception where I sipped pinot grigio and listened to two constructors try to articulate the ecstasy they feel when, while painstakingly crafting a crossword, they realize the grid is actually going to come together, that they're going to be able to complete an elegant puzzle. On Saturday, I did six timed puzzles with the competitors, only one of which I didn't manage to complete in the 30 minutes allotted, and I felt some measure of pride that I wasn't totally out of my league. But like a majority of the nearly 1,000 people at the tournament who had no hope of making it to the final round (grand prize: $7,500) my times were beside the point. The point was the community, the shared love and language participants possessed. In the hotel elevator after the first puzzle session, strangers became immediate comrades in arms as they commiserated over the clues they didn't get: 'Wait, how is POT a three-letter word for 'Cash on hand'?' The puzzles they'd all just completed were enough of a connection to start a conversation, to linger and chat when they got to their floor, then make plans to get lunch together. This kind of fast intimacy is nearly impossible in the real world. If we take the time to even acknowledge a stranger in an elevator, we're apt to nod, smile politely, look down at our phones: I see you, I recognize your humanity, but I have no desire to take this liaison any further. At a conference of enthusiasts, this impulse to withdraw is inverted. You're there because you want to connect, because you've been doing puzzles alone in your kitchen for the past year and this is your one chance to geek out with others who share your niche interest. I spend most of my time avoiding eye contact with strangers; at a summit of the devoted, everyone is wide open, gazes get met eagerly. Here we are, all of us with this one passion in common, so we have common ground on which to establish a warm and satisfying chat, if not a lasting friendship. On my way home from the conference, I stopped in to see my old friend Peter, whom I've known since college. As much as I'd marveled at how easy it was to bond with strangers over crosswords at the tournament, it was a relief to be around someone who really knew me, to relax into the easy flow of our shared history. Meeting new people is exciting, but it's also exhausting. What would be ideal, I thought, was if Peter were into crosswords — then I could have the excitement of this shared interest within a rich, established relationship. That's unlikely to materialize though; he's shown no interest. But for many years, we've both convened regularly with a group of friends for 'Cookbook Club,' a roving potluck where everyone prepares a dish from the same cookbook. It's our own sort of conference, based on an existing shared interest in cooking and eating. For several years, I sampled a different grape varietal every month with a group of friends at 'Wine Club.' My friend Avi jokingly calls our weekly dinners out 'Restaurant Club.' Eating and drinking with friends is hardly an arcane interest akin to speed-solving puzzles. But putting some structure around our everyday enthusiasms elevates them, adds some of the pageantry of the fan conference to an ordinary gathering, rendering the goings-on of ordinary life a little more exciting. 📺 'The Last of Us' (Sunday): A show to make you think twice about that lunchtime portobello burger or pizza ai funghi, 'The Last of Us' is an unusually stylish and affecting adaptation of a popular video game, and it returns for a second season. Set in a future in which cordyceps mushrooms have turned people into near zombies, the show centers, initially, on Ellie (Bella Ramsey), a mysteriously immune teenager, and Joel (Pedro Pascal), the smuggler who delivers her to what he hopes will be safety. The first season ended with a violent shootout. This one, set several years later, begins more peaceably. (Therapy has returned to the land.) But post-apocalypse, things rarely stay calm for long. For more: Can you tell a clicker from a walker? Test your zombie knowledge with this quiz. Chocolate-Caramel Matzo Toffee Passover starts tonight. If you're looking for a last-minute gift to bring to a Seder, there's still time to whip up a batch of chocolate-caramel matzo toffee. To make it, bake matzo crackers beneath a buttery topping of brown-sugar toffee and then cover it in bittersweet chocolate. You can add any toppings you like (chopped nuts, dried fruit, candied ginger, even crushed potato chips), or leave it pleasingly minimalist with just a sprinkle of flaky sea salt. It will keep up to a week when stored airtight at room temperature, but it rarely lasts that long in our toffee-loving house. The Hunt: A couple scoured pastoral properties in Maine, Vermont and New York for a space where they could live and work. Which did they choose? Play our game. Budding industry: To revive the farm that had been in his family for seven generations, this antique collector chose to plant cannabis. What you get for $1.6 million: A 1875 Colonial Revival house in Kennebunkport, Maine; a converted church in Thunderbolt, Ga.; or a contemporary house in Phoenix. No phone, no guidebook: A writer visited Casablanca, Morocco, for the first time — without the internet. Here's how it went. All about looks: Restaurateurs are finding that ambience and branding matter more to some diners than the food. Micro-retirement: Some young people are spending their savings on an extended break earlier in their careers. Green your garden: Read about four ecologically crucial things you should do in your garden. Create an al fresco oasis The right patio dining set can instantly make your home feel bigger and transform your outdoor space. But this furniture is often expensive, and it can be hard to know where to start. Wirecutter's experts recommend considering a few factors. First, the layout: Putting down painter's tape will help you imagine the set's overall footprint. And choose materials you can realistically maintain. Wood, for example, generally requires the most upkeep, but it's also often the most repairable. To help, we spent more than 80 hours assembling and testing sets in all kinds of climates and spaces. Any of our five favorites would make a lovely setting for upcoming spring meals. — Daniela Gorny The Masters golf tournament: Turn up the volume this weekend and enjoy the sounds of Augusta National Golf Club: the thwack of a 7-iron, the polite applause of well-heeled patrons, the chirps of birds greeting springtime. We asked Kathi Borgmann, an expert at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, what types of birdsong viewers might hear this weekend. 'Keep your ears tuned in for the 'peter, peter, peter' of the tufted titmouse and the boisterous 'teakettle, teakettle, teakettle, tea' from the Carolina wren,' she said. 'You might even hear a 'birdie, birdie, birdie' from a northern cardinal, or an announcer getting excited about a good shot.' Today and tomorrow, starting at 2 p.m. Eastern on CBS Oh, about the golf … Justin Rose (-8) leads after two rounds, but Rory McIlroy is closing in. Follow Masters coverage at The Athletic. Here is today's Spelling Bee. Yesterday's pangrams were hollowing and howling. Take the news quiz to see how well you followed this week's headlines. And here are today's Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Sports Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. — Melissa Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@
