Q&A: Puzzling Out PAW’s Game Creators

Perhaps it was inevitable that PAW would get into gaming. After all, PAW serves an audience of super-smart people who work hard and play hard.

(Are they competitive? No comment.)

Add to this PAW’s new website and two alums who are terrific game creators, and you have this online hub for Princeton-themed games.

Each month, you’ll find a new crossword puzzle created by Stella Daily Zawistowski ’00 and a selection of logic puzzles by Tyler Maxey *23. PAW asked them to share a bit about how they got into the biz.

How did you get into game creation?

Stella: Let’s be real, I started doing crosswords in the common room at Campus Club (RIP) as a way to avoid working on my senior thesis. The year after I graduated, I moved to Norwalk, Connecticut, which is just a town or so over from Stamford, the location of the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. I went to the tournament that year (2001), got thoroughly thrashed, and was so annoyed about my performance that I started solving a lot more to get faster. I did get faster (currently ranked sixth in the country!), and given how many puzzles I was solving, trying to make one seemed like a logical next step.

Tyler: I started making the games for PAW just mid-last year but have made games throughout my life. Growing up, I made up little games for my family. Then in undergrad, I hosted a weekly trivia night. And early last year, I made a word game app called Bilateral! with a friend. So it’s been a long time coming.

Is game creation your full-time job? Who else do you create for, and what else do you to?

Stella: I make about half of my income from puzzlemaking and trivia writing. I'd love to have it be all of my income, but I have a Park Slope mortgage to pay, so I also do freelance copywriting. My puzzles regularly appear in Reason magazine, the Crosswords With Friends app, Vulture.com, and others; less regularly in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Games World of Puzzles, and others. If you run a publication or website and you’re curious about adding crosswords to your offering, hit me up! I have ideas.

Tyler: My full-time job is somewhat related to games, albeit unconventionally. I’m the head of research for a startup that uses gamified experiences to understand a user’s financial preferences (e.g., with respect to risk, time, what kinds of companies they invest in, etc.). Plus, last year I got to teach a game theory class at UC Berkeley. Again, not what we normally think of when we think “games,” but related nonetheless! Plus, I get to publish my puzzle games in PAW, my local paper, and my undergrad alumni magazine. I’m always looking for more, so if you’re interested in your site having daily puzzle games, please reach out!

What do you like about creating games?

Stella: A bad day making puzzles is better than a good day doing just about anything else. I consider myself an intellectual entertainer, and I feel incredibly fortunate to call that my career, not just my hobby.

Tyler: I like creating something new that’s fun for players. Then conditional on that, I like the challenge of making that new puzzle “scalable,” that is, figuring out what characteristics that new puzzle needs to be fun for a player not just once but numerous times. It’s a long iterative process that’s worth it by the end because you’ve created something that people enjoy. That’s one reason games have been part my entire life — even for a single-player experience, games connect people.