Will Shortz Edits His 10,000th Crossword
There may be only a handful of people in the puzzle community keeping track of such things, but on April 7, Will Shortz will have edited 10,000 puzzles since joining The New York Times as crossword editor in November 1993. That, of course, is an approximate number, counting from his start date. There are also the Variety puzzles.
If the “10,000-Hour Rule” made popular by Malcolm Gladwell is to be believed — the theory holds that 10,000 hours of practicing an activity is the “magic number of greatness” — then Mr. Shortz would finally qualify as an expert on editing crossword puzzles, if we counted in units instead of hours. In terms of time, he has put in many more hours than that.
Mr. Shortz was kind enough to answer my questions about how he got started, some of the changes that have occurred along the way and what the future of the New York Times Crossword looks like from where he’s sitting.
I was an editor (and then the editor in chief) of Games magazine when Eugene T. Maleska died in 1993. So I applied for the job.
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