Riddle me this: I am home to angry words/ The key lies in a turn of phrase or between the lines/ those who open the right boxes find rare joy/ Who am I?Around the 1770s, a man called John Spilsbury mounted a world map on a piece of wood. He cut it into arbitrary pieces to be put together by his students as an educational exercise. He called them dissected maps. Today we know it as a jigsaw puzzle, named after the tool used to manufacture it. This possibly was the origin of puzzles as we know it.Since then, puzzles have entertained us in different forms and shapes, from crosswords, riddles and spelling bees to logic, wordle and sudoku, both on analogue and digital versions.In the 1940s, the New York Times (NYT) had introduced its crossword — after dismising it as a “primitive sort of mental development” two decades earlier — as a distraction in the bleak aftermath of the Pearl Harbor bombing, marking the beginning of puzzles as the entertainment phenomenon we know today. Today, the NYT’s major revenue generator is its games subsidiary – NYT Games. A Statista report published in February 2026, noted, “In the second quarter of 2024, the NYT Games app… generated about 11.2 million USD in in-app purchase revenues worldwide. The gaming app is partially subscription-based.”The credit for the first crossword, though, goes to Arthur Wynne who created a diamond-shaped grid called ‘Word Cross’ for The New York World newspaper in 1913. A subsequent typographic error printed the puzzle as Cross Word and has been called that since.Today, globally, the word games and logic puzzle market is valued at $9.4 billion and is projected to more than double to $20.1 billion over the next decade, according to the Word Games Market Outlook (2025–2034) by Dataintelo.Story continues below this adFor his readers, Wynne intended the crossword would offer an interactive and stimulating experience. And indeed, our minds today are tested for their dexterity, as a combination of words and numbers are thrown into grids making us wrack our brains, sometimes in frustration, and at other times in anticipation, in pursuit of that singular ‘aha’ moment.The Good PuzzleThere are people who are intelligent and then there are puzzle solvers. Their intelligence comes with a vat of patience, allowing them to see beyond, in between and underneath the surface. A solver is curious and their never-give-up attitude nearly epitomises human resilience. But, without a good puzzle, there is no good solver.Will Shortz, the editor of the NYT Crossword, equates a good puzzle with a work of art: an attractive crossword grid, full of interesting, colourful, lively vocabulary, where every square appears in two answers.“The whole point of a puzzle is to entertain the solver. You want the solver to win, and you want to push the solver to reach that goal,” says Shortz, 73, who is arguably one of the few people in the world to have a college degree in enigmatology, the academic study of puzzles, a major he designed himself at Indiana University.Benjamin’s puzzle (AVCX Club, US)Story continues below this adShortz’s all-time favourite clue appeared in the New York Times on November 5, 1996. It was Election Day to call the race between Democrat Bill Clinton and Republican Bob Dole. The clue for the 7-letter ACROSS answer read: ‘Lead Story in tomorrow’s paper!’ The DOWN clues from the answer was created such that it could be the name of either candidate (CLINTON or BOB DOLE)and the grid would still work.It is a delicate balance — not so hard that it would make the solver give up, but not so easy that it doesn’t feel earned. Australian puzzle setter David Astle has the best analogy — an apple tree.“You don’t want a big bowl of apples sitting for you. You also don’t want a tree that is not going to give you any fruits. There are some low-hanging fruits that give you the courage to keep climbing up the tree. Ultimately, it needs to be this slow surrender of delightful apples,” says Astle, who has had an illustrious career as a TV anchor, radio host and author.Simultaneously, the 64-year-old has been setting puzzles for publications such as The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Canberra Times among others, although his “gateway drug” into this world was riddles.Speaking of riddles, do you have the answer yet?Story continues below this adA good puzzle is as much a dopamine hit for the solver as it is for the setter, whose ultimate goal is to create a “satisfying play” achieved with clever clues, fresh angles, snappy language, smart wordplay and, finally, juicy answers. This much sought-after satisfaction depends not only in solving a puzzle but also in the fewer number of hints one requires to reach the goal.David Astle’s puzzle (Australia)At The Times (UK), for instance, the qualification for a puzzle setter is not so much the list on their resume. “We look for people who can write good, fair, concise clues but also have a very good, plausible surface meaning,” says Mick Hodgkin, Puzzles Editor at The Times.The other non-negotiable characteristic of a good puzzle is its ability to evoke a triumphant chortle. “I’d like to make them laugh at some point. I really feel it’s very good to have humour in a puzzle,” adds 66-year-old Hodgkin, recalling a funny crossword clue he liked. It was “Fly back from China in 747?” The answer? TANG, referencing the dynasty.Ben Tausig of the AVCX (American Values Club), an independent puzzles and games outlet, agrees, “Above all else, is the puzzle funny? We want ideas that are humorous, that will put a smile on people’s faces.”Story continues below this adClues Beyond BordersIt was, however, a different time when Shortz, Astle and Hodgkin began setting puzzles. Each of them discovered puzzles in their local newspapers as young boys.It was unlikely that a person in the UK would read an American or Australian newspaper, and the clues were often local references that people outside the community or geography would not necessarily understand. For instance, referring to the Brooklyn-Manhattan transit as BMT.Today, we live in a different world. Out of the 13.35 million total subscribers of NYT Games as of mid-2026, over three million live outside of the United States, which means that while the lived knowledge of culture still remains largely elusive, the chances of a non-American accessing a crossword in an American paper have massively increased. This realisation has pushed setters to expand — albeit very gradually and often relying on stereotypes — their scope of inspiration to a more inclusive knowledge base, spanning age, culture and even gender.Tony Sebastian’s puzzle:Clues referencing Indian food items, cities and personalities frequently reappear in NYT and The Times (UK) crosswords. A Naan is: Indian flatbread; Sari: Traditional women’s draped garment; Assam: Northeastern Indian state known for tea and silk production. A memorable double-meaning clue for the answer Gandhi in The Times (UK) was: ‘Indian spinner who played a leading role in getting England out.’Story continues below this adMost of AVCX solvers are, of course, American, closely followed by British, based in Australia, New Zealand, Germany and other European countries. Asia, including India, also contributes significantly to their subscriber base, which is why their sports clues often vary between baseball and cricket. “There will be quite a lot of cricket references, which probably don’t bother our Indian solvers but the Americans might go, ‘What’s this?’,” Tausig says.To Each their OwnLike most setters, Tausig, 45, started doing crosswords as a hobby, eventually crossing over to the other side. For him, though, setting crosswords soon became a medium of expression, especially when he couldn’t see the voice of his own generation in the puzzles he was solving. “A lot of crosswords felt like they were for people who were old. I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if there were puzzles that had references to things that my generation was interested in?’” That led Tausig to found AVCX in 2006, which either presents traditional topics with a new vocabulary or refer to more recent pop-culture phenomenons like Taylor Swift, which “some of the older solvers may not know about”.What differentiates AVCX from legacy newsroom crosswords — which often carry a uniform, largely objective, non-political voice of the organisation — is the unique voice of the setter. This means that conventionally the solution to the crosswords would draw heavily from general knowledge rather than opinion. With AVCX, it is the opposite. “Puzzles always have some kind of point of view. Our politics are pretty liberal,” Tausig says. One of their unarguably opinionated clues was published in 2016 after Donald Trump was elected president (first term): “Fascist-leaning reality TV star who won the electoral college in 2016”.LA Times’s Patti Varol likes to believe that their puzzles are “completely apolitical” but admits letting her own bias guide what is acceptable and what is not. While she hopes to remain non-controversial, she refuses to not represent the LGBTQ community in her puzzles. “My goal and my job is to make sure that anybody can pick up the paper and feel included. That means I’m going to acknowledge the existence of different pronouns, choices and colours and the whole messy spectrum of human life,” she says, adding, “If you’re triggered by the existence of trans people, I can’t help you.”Mick Hodgkin’s puzzle (The Times)Story continues below this adGender MattersWhen it comes to gender, the world of puzzles is not very different. It has traditionally been a male-dominated field, with few women puzzles editors, but when their voice seeps through the puzzles, it makes all the difference.A woman setter is more sensitive. Varol gives an example: It was women who started clueing Ina (Garten) to reflect the renowned chef as a person — (Be My Guest With __ Garten), not as a modifier phrase — ‘in a’ (___ manner of speaking, Garten), traditionally used by male setters.India’s Sowmya Ramkumar who has set crosswords for several publications, including The Hindu, Boston Globe and Gulf Weekly and is the founder of 1ACross, an independent online platform of cryptic crosswords, has as much fun setting the crossword as she does solving it. One of her favourite things to do as a setter is use female pronouns in clues for professions that have both male and female individuals — doctors, lawyers, economists. “Most solvers immediately make a male association with these professions so a female pronoun throws them off, taking them longer to solve,” says the Bahrain-based setter.In the Time of AIThe individuality of each setter then makes the puzzle one of a kind. As technology — which has helped create a global community of puzzlers — slowly takes over different industries, the inevitable question remains: Can a machine set and solve puzzles?Story continues below this adYes, it can. Like humans? The unanimous verdict: No. At least, not yet.The black-and-white grid became automated long ago, but technology, particularly AI, still has a long way to go as a setter of cryptic crosswords. An improved version of Dr Fill, a computer programme, may have beaten humans at solving certain crosswords in 2021, but, as Indian setter Tony Sebastien says, “AI can now construct a full New York Times-style crossword. What it still cannot really do is set good cryptic clues.”John Henderson, whose extraordinarily challenging puzzles have appeared in The Independent, The Times and The Guardian, says it best. Recalling The Times Crossword Championship in London in 2024, where an AI application — Crossword Genius — solved five of the six puzzles to qualify into the finals. The one it could not crack was Henderson’s cryptic puzzle.John Henderson’s puzzle (Guardian)Note: Once solved, explanations show in the panel next to the clue textPerhaps because a good puzzle is made of just words. It requires an understanding of human behaviour – what they are likely to assume, what will crack them up and ultimately, what will win them over.One of Sebastien’s most outrageous feats as a setter was a crossword in The Hindu that doubled up as a marriage proposal to his now wife, Rosanna Jacob. While the clues alluded to different aspects of a wedding, the first letters of each clue formed the question: “Rosanna Jacob, will you marry me.”Riddle answer: Crossword