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[bright music]
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- Angela Fitzgerald:
Twice each week,
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The Monroe Times hits
the news racks, the post office,
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and then mailboxes
like the Mathiasons'.
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As a kid, Ryan Mathiason
found something in the paper
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that fired his own
newspaper ambition:
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to one day be published
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in no less
than The New York Times.
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- Ryan Mathiason: I think that
was kind of, like,
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a big point for me
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was getting published in The
New York Times as a teenager.
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It's something that 70-some
people have done
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in their 80 years of doing
a daily crossword puzzle.
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- Angela: It was the newspaper's
crossword puzzle
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that inspired young Ryan,
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something introduced to him
by his grandmother.
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- Ryan: My grandma, she would be
solving, like,
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The Monroe Times crossword
every once in a while,
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and she would involve me
by saying,
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"Oh, I think you would know
this answer."
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Cincinnati baseball team,
and I would say "Reds,"
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'cause I would know that.
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So, I thought, "Oh, this is an
interesting thing.
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I'm gonna try to start
solving them."
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And you start solving them
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and you think,
"Hmm, can I try to make this?"
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- Angela: Ryan was determined
to solve
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how the puzzles are made.
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As he entered the world of the
crossword constructor,
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he learned it was key to start
with a theme.
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- So, you're trying to come up
with some clever thing
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that is tying these answers
together.
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- Angela: The puzzle
Ryan is working on now
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has the theme "Cold Opens,"
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with words beginning
with synonyms for cold.
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- Ryan: Cool beans, bittersweet,
frozen asset,
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and then cold opens.
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Kind of getting colder
as we go down.
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So, now that we have the theme
in place,
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we have to put in the blocks.
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- Angela: After the blocks comes
what is called the fill.
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The words not on theme, some
suggested by the computer.
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- Ryan: I'm just trying to find
lively fill to put in there.
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So, maybe we'll put entrée
and then desert.
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It kind of looks like entrée
and dessert, which is fun,
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but it's actually entrée
and desert.
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- Angela: Words in place,
it's time for cluing.
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And Ryan is on his own
with no computer assist.
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- Ryan: Then we have PBS
in the middle,
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so we could do
Wisconsin Life channel,
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something like that.
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- Angela: Since becoming
a constructor,
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Ryan gets crossword inspiration
everywhere he goes.
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- Ryan: I was sitting
in Spanish class
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and I heard my teacher say
"language barrier,"
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and I thought, "That should be
a crossword puzzle."
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The language barrier
could literally be
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the black squares in the puzzle.
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They're separating words where
they can also help my theme.
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So, it would be C-SPAN,
like the TV channel,
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and then Ishmael.
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Spanish would be
in the circled letters.
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Another example would be having
Greek, the end of ogre,
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and then the EK would start
something like eke out,
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like eke out a living.
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- Angela: Ryan is not eking out
a living through puzzles,
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but he is getting paid.
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The Wall Street Journal bought
his language barrier puzzle,
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one of several
Ryan has published
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while still a teenager.
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- So, my first-ever published
crossword was when I was 17
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in Universal,
which was a syndicate.
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And my next published puzzle,
I had turned 18,
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was in the USA Today.
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- Angela: Time was running out
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on Ryan's New York Times
teenage dream,
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but he never gave up.
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- Ryan: It was my 40th
submission to The New York Times
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is when I first got
an acceptance letter.
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When I finally saw that email,
I was like, "I've done it."
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- Angela: At 19, Ryan Mathiason
reached the pinnacle
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of puzzle publishing, from
The Monroe Times inspiration
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to The New York Times
publication.
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- Ryan: You have, I don't know,
how many hundreds of thousands
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or millions of people solving
a puzzle that you created.
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So, I think it's kind of cool
to know
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that some of their excitement
for the day
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is coming from something I made.
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- Angela: Sharing with his
fellow crossword lovers
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is the best part.
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- Ryan: There is a world out
there who is doing my puzzle.