Andrea tested out each of Nathan’s puzzles and had a good feeling about the one that was ultimately accepted. They are avid solvers of the Times’ popular Sunday puzzle going back to their law school days at the University of Chicago. His parents, Andrea and Steve, inspired him to take up puzzle construction. That’s not cheating when you’re making the puzzle.” If I don’t know something, I can just look it up. But “you don’t need to be good at solving them to make them,” he explained. Surprisingly, he is not a puzzle solver himself because he said he has mostly eschewed popular culture, which is the basis for many clues. He only began constructing crossword puzzles last August, using various online tools and databases to create the grids and come up with the “fill,” or the intersecting words in the grid. “I thought it would happen at some point, but I did not think it would happen so soon.” “It was a long-shot goal to get a puzzle published in the New York Times,” Hasegawa said sheepishly in a Zoom interview. Hints about the puzzle’s unique theme are scattered throughout this article. The clues include nods to both his Jewish heritage (12 down: “Observe Yom Kippur”) and his Japanese heritage (13 across: “Dish that may be eaten with either chopsticks or a spoon”). (Puzzles get harder as the week goes on). His Times-worthy puzzle appeared on April 14, a Wednesday, meaning Shortz and his team considered it moderately challenging. Hasegawa accomplished his goal with more than a month to spare. And he wanted to do it before he graduates in June. The 17-year-old Oakland resident set an ambitious goal of getting one of his puzzles published in the New York Times, the most prestigious puzzle platform in the United States - something that fewer than 50 teenagers have done since 1994, according to the Times’ puzzle master Will Shortz. Nathan Hasegawa decided to try to master the art of crossword puzzle construction. For their yearlong capstone projects, seniors at Jewish Community High School of the Bay in San Francisco have engaged in all manner of pursuits, from learning a new skill such as baking or photography, to training for a triathlon, to volunteering in a retirement community.
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