7/9/2023 0 Comments Times crossword editor wilThere are a lot of teens and twenty-somethings submitting crosswords to the times for example. My sense is that young people are doing them both ways. TC: Do you think younger people solve it using the electronic methods? I think those are in addition to what's going on in newspapers. WS: There are lots of people who are doing the crossword, solving the crossword online and with the apps. Do you think they'll be popular considering that doing it by hand is a preferred method? TC: There have also been crossword apps coming out for Smartphones and things like that. A lot of newspapers nowadays have two, and on Sunday maybe three, crosswords for different skill levels and different styles. So this is a feature for newspapers and that's why some newspapers are running more than one crossword per day. So crosswords and pencil puzzles are one of the things that newspapers do better than any other medium, and that includes online. There are lots of people doing crossword online now, but you can see all the clues at once when you are doing a crossword on paper, you can move around the grid more easily. WS: With a crossword and other pencil puzzles, it's generally better and more convenient to solve on paper. TC: As far as crosswords going purely digital… It's faster and simpler to read your news online than it is in the newspaper unless your newspaper brings some special feature to the news. I say that because you can get your news anywhere. But crosswords, I think, are one of the most important things that keep people coming to newspapers. The New York Times is the only newspaper that is able to charge for its crossword. TC: For other papers though that's not the case, right? And all that money, all the reprints, flow to The Times, so the crossword is a very successful and profitable feature for the newspaper. There are book reprints and The New York Times' crossword books are about the best selling crossword books in the country. So that's a lot of money for the newspaper. More than 50,000 people have subscribed to the puzzle this way. It costs $39.95 a year to subscribe to the crossword. For The Times, the crossword is the only same-day editorial matter in the newspaper that the website charges for. Lots of people subscribe to The New York Times and other newspapers specifically for the puzzle and it's a fairly inexpensive feature. Everyone knows that the puzzles are an attraction for the newspaper. First of all for the New York Times the crossword is a source of profit. Will Shortz (WS): There are lots of answers to that. Hayley Gold/The Chronicle (TC): A lot of newspapers are folding right now and the budget for puzzle space is often going down. To read about crossword puzzles in the modern age, click here.
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