Every day thousands of people vie to outsmart one man: Will Shortz, the New York Times’s crossword editor of almost three decades. In addition to editing the Times crossword, he does a weekly radio crossword on NPR, directs the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament and founded and owns the United States’s largest table tennis club. In 1993, after a successful run as the editor of Games magazine, Shortz became the Times’s crossword editor. “The books are still selling, though the craze has died down.”Shortz plays table tennis at the Westchester Table Tennis Center, which he founded, in Pleasantville, New York. One rising star of the crossword world is Erik Agard, a former champion who became USA Today’s crossword editor after the previous editor was accused of plagiarism.

Source: The Guardian July 15, 2021 06:56 UTC