I put the longer theme answers first, and then black squares around them, going for the best fill possible. “I try to make it the most novel idea I can think of, something that will really excite Will. “I think of a sort of theme that I can execute,” says Ezersky. Like with any skill, crossword creation takes trial, error and many hours spent alone. “It’s very hard to find fresh vocabulary in answers of six or fewer letters because there’s not much that hasn’t already been done,” adds Shortz.
‘Makes a mess’ “That’s a fresh answer it probably has never appeared in a puzzle.” When it comes to Ezersky’s puzzles, Shortz starts listing answers that impressed him: “I look for something that is fresh, interesting and consistently done.” Will Shortz receives 75 to 100 crossword submissions a week. “I’d never really told too many people about my hobby.” But once he got the news, “I outed myself.” On July 28, 2012, in collaboration with puzzle creator Victor Fleming, he had his first puzzle published in the New York Times, becoming the sixteenth-youngest crossword publisher since the paper began keeping track in 1942. “My first puzzle being accepted was just insane to me,” he says. It was in March of 2012 when Ezersky, then 17, had his first crossword published in the Los Angeles Times. “I wanted to be one of those people one day, creating things like that.” “They blew the other crosswords out of the water,” Ezersky says. And I felt like I didn’t know anything.”īut a turning point came when he was 15, and his mother got him a book of New York Times puzzlemaster Will Shortz’s (Law ’77) best crosswords.
“At first I didn’t like crosswords,” Ezersky says, “because you actually had to know stuff. As a 12-year-old, Ezersky watched his stepfather complete crosswords in the Washington Post. It wasn’t about finishing all the puzzles, he says, “I was more interested in how worked.” Instead, he was immersed in a book of puzzles. He remembers another day soon after: His mom pulled him around their neighborhood in Northern Virginia in a little wagon, encouraging him to look around, take it all in.
He picked up a magazine and started flipping through, and inside found a Fill-It-In, a kind of puzzle that gives the reader a word bank to complete a grid. Sam Ezersky (Engr ’17) remembers being 5 or 6 years old and sitting in a Hair Cuttery, bored, waiting for family members to get their haircuts. At age 17, Sam Ezersky had his first crossword published in the Los Angeles Times.
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