“And we’re going to be able to model certain things. “I think that in mentoring these constructors, we’re going to learn stuff, too,” Mason said. The fellowship, she hopes, can help kick off a new pattern. “It was becoming clear that people were sending us the kinds of puzzles they thought would get in rather than really pushing the limits and trying to show us new things,” Mason said. Constructors seemed to have a fixed idea of the kind of puzzles that The New York Times chose to publish. Part of the diversity problem was self-perpetuating, Mason saw. The New York Times, even while interviewing Mason for the job, had acknowledged it need to change.

Mason said creating a fellowship has been on her mind from the very beginning. The new constructor fellowship is the brainchild of Everdeen Mason, who joined the Times as editorial director for Games almost exactly a year ago. Only those who have not yet had a puzzle published by The New York Times will be considered. The chosen fellows will receive three months of mentorship from one of five puzzle editors - that’s Liu, Bennett, Joel Fagliano, Sam Ezersky, and the legendary Shortz - as they work to construct a puzzle for general submission.

“There’s an expectation that the person solving your puzzle looks like Will Shortz.” (Until editors Wyna Liu and Tracy Bennett were hired in 2020, the Times puzzle team consisted of three white men.) March 12, 2021“You’ll get a rejection from the Times saying ‘This is not something that the average solver will know,’ which carries with it this connotation that an average solver is a white man in his 50s,” one crossword constructor told me last year.

Nytimes puzzle