Scoring a NYT Crossword (or Two)
October 11, 2026
ACROSS
- Angry-expression riddle
- WashU kid in the NYT
- A brain that never stops
Mac Motz remembers feeling sleepy last year in his Psych 101 class, the professor’s voice receding into the background. “No offense, it’s a great class,” he adds hastily—he is a sweet guy, tall and lanky and eager. But he had let his mind wander, and when he glanced down at his own name, he realized M&M would be a fun theme for a crossword puzzle.
He whipped one up in two weeks and sent it off.
Motz had submitted, oh, fourteen or fifteen puzzles to The New York Times in the past few years, all of them politely rejected. “Of those we received this week, yours didn’t appear as one of our favorites,” or “We liked the theme, but….” or, in respectful insider lingo, “The grid is nearly closed off and has four 3s running sides,” or simply, “It had too much glue.” Meaning too many hard clues in one area, Motz explains, so “it’s like walking through tar,” easy to get stuck there.
Undaunted, he sent in M&M. He had a good feeling about this one. Every single clue contained two words that began with M, and three two-word answers were M&M as well: Mickey Mantle, magic markers, mischief managed. Only twenty-five people had ever built a NYT crossword in which every clue began with the same letter.
Three months later, the usual reply came—except this time it opened with, “Mac, congrats!” He tore out of his studio art class and called his mom, then his dad, then his sister. By the time he got to his grandma, she had already heard the news from his mom.
“The most excruciating part was waiting eight months for it to appear,” he says. You can find it in the paper’s archive as “Miss Badly, Maybe,” the September 2 puzzle. A separate article introduces him and describes the theme, “a clever way for Mr. Motz to introduce himself to The Times’s solving community, and he’s constructed a wonderful first grid” with “some particularly twisty clues.” The reporter had only two mild quibbles: “Nouns generally don’t take articles in the Times Crossword unless the articles are part of titles or direct quotes, so it’s always a surprise to find them.” (His clue was “Maximum measure of attractiveness”; the answer was A TEN.) The second quibble was one that Motz, who grew up in Brooklyn, can blame on moving to St. Louis: “Notwithstanding the fact that New York City apartment buildings rarely include a PORCH, I concede it may be [Many a mailbox locale].”
If that is all you can fuss about, this is a really good puzzle. Still, the crossword community is a persnickety one: “I caught flak from some,” Motz says. “One said they shouldn’t let these young upstarts in.”
He is the 66th youngest crossword creator in The Times’shistory—and the fourth WashU student.
How does he go about it? I picture a tight, systematic, gridlike sequence of tasks….
But no.
“There really is no linear way for me,” he says. “My mind is on at all times. I’m looking at that globe”—he points to a world globe on the shelf at Kaldi’s—“and I’m thinking about countries now, and also the globe is round and the sign is round and now I’m thinking about round things. The other night I wrote down the word ‘gubernatorial’ and that’s it. I like the word.” (He has a notes app he calls The Graveyard; you can imagine how packed it is.)
“So I’ll be thinking of a theme and how things fit together. The next part is the research. Recently I was looking for famous people with names that work a certain way.” Already as secretive as a pro, he tells me no more. “So, countless hours online.” Surely he could use AI, I hate myself for saying. “I don’t touch it. What looks mundane is fun for me. I like to look things up. If I’m bored, I’ll just look at a random Wikipedia page.”
The third step is the actual gridding, with the long, themed answers in parallel pairs, evenly spaced, and of similar length. At least, that is the custom, although young puzzle-makers are challenging all norms.
“I do the longest entries first,” Motz says. “Then it’s just patience. Entering words I like and seeing if they fit. Moving them around. Setting some aside, because you can’t win them all.” Mainly, he works online, but he does use a gridded notebook to sketch possible layouts. “There’s a crossword feng shui,” he explains. You want to avoid a big black square in the middle, so you need plenty of criss-cross.
“There are themeless puzzles too,” he says, “and those are way harder. Although there are people who think themes are harder.” Any act of creation is subjective. Motz is aiming for hard themes and hard puzzles: the Times crossword starts out easy on Monday and gets progressively harder, and his debut was already a Wednesday. “I haven’t made a Monday or Tuesday in a long time.”
“You can probably zip through the Saturday in ink,” I say, awed.
“Oh, no, not at all. What makes crosswords so fun is that you don’t know everything. The whole point is that you’re learning.”
Does he do what I have never let myself do, look up answers? “Oh, yeah. I look it up so I know for the next time.”
So…that’s okay?
“I will give you permission to look things up,” he says solemnly. “But it’s not fair if you just do auto-check.”
Reassured, I brave a complaint. All these clues about Gen Z pop culture—I am floundering.
His grin holds no sympathy. “This is an ongoing discussion in the crossword community. We want more younger constructors out there. I am hopefully representing that generation. I’ll open a crossword and it says ‘Who was the actor in the 1965 film….’ That is not relevant in my life! For a long time, this has been an older person’s game. Now it’s kind of turned the corner. In the 2000s, it shifted younger, and now more young people are both doing and constructing them. So the older people are kind of getting a taste of their own medicine!”
Ahem.
“It’s important to have all sorts of clues,” he continues, mollifying me. “But when you’re making one, it should represent you.”
Which makes me wonder how he came to this.
“I’ve been doing puzzles since I was super small,” he says. “We’d have long Bananagram nights. When I was really young, I’d sell these hand-drawn mazes, fifty cents for an easy one and a dollar for a hard one. And I’d make my own scavenger hunts.”
In high school, he started to take the puzzles seriously, constructing them for his school paper. And during COVID, he, like half the country, got addicted to The New York Times Mini.
“Then I graduated to the full size, big leap. I’ve also done probably a hundred escape rooms.” What can he not do? “Sudoku! I really like words.”
A sophomore at WashU, he is studying anthropology, linguistics, and studio photography. His dad is a chef, author, and photographer; his mom teaches English as a Second Language. “We used to play this game, taking a random word and looking up the etymology. In conversation, I’d say a word and think hmm, where does that word come from?”
His brain reminds me of a happy beehive, always busy. Yet he says “there’s something calming about crosswords,” and I know exactly what he means. You are focused on that grid, and everything else falls away. Yet the focus is playful, nothing at stake except an amusing challenge to yourself, so no real stress to tighten your muscles or race your heart.
Unless, of course, you are the one creating the puzzle that will hold other brains hostage.
“Will you put this on your CV?” I ask, only half teasing.
“I don’t know! Does it go? Maybe it does.”
“Under ‘Publications’?” I suggest. Because I really do consider it an accomplishment.
What does The Times look for when they are choosing, I ask. “I’d love to know! No one knows. On the website they say fresh themes and not obscure clues. But what they actually want, I don’t know, and that’s kind of the joy of it. And the terror.
“I’ve submitted another one; I’m waiting to hear,” he adds. This time I am the one with a good feeling; I hold off writing about his crossword until….
The verdict is in. The Times, queen of crosswords,has just accepted another Mac Motz puzzle. Watch for it in eight months. Keep your pencil sharpened.
