FAQ

Who are you?
I’m Stella Zawistowski, crossword constructor and trivia writer. You may have seen me on the leaderboard at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, or as a one-and-done contestant on Jeopardy!, Mental Samurai, or The Million Second Quiz.

Where can I solve your puzzles?
You can regularly find my puzzles at Reason, Vulture, Crosswords With Friends, and starting in January 2024, at The Daily Commuter. You can also find my work in Atlas Obscura, USA Today, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, Games World of Puzzles, and other spots. And of course you can solve one of my hard themelesses every other Wednesday right here on this website!

What services do you offer?
If you’re looking to add user engagement to your website or print publication with a crossword or trivia, I’m your girl. I have 12+ years of experience as a trivia writer and puzzlemaker and more than 20 years as one of the country’s fastest crossword solvers, so I’m pretty damn good at making puzzles that are tailored to a particular audience. I make libertarian puzzles for Reason; I make puzzles focused on the very latest in pop culture for Vulture; I make puzzles full of university trivia for alumni magazines.

I also write good trivia. My quizzes and trivia writing have appeared in the New York Times, Geeks Who Drink Presents: Duh!: 100 Bar Trivia Questions You Should Know, and in pub quizzes around the country.

Why shouldn’t I just have ChatGPT or my intern write trivia for my website/corporate event/etc.?
You can, but it probably won’t be great. A lot of trivia written by people who don’t know what they’re doing suffers from one or more of these problems:
– Doesn’t pass the “who gives a @#*&!” test
– Is in the “you either know it or you don’t” category. Solvers have more fun when you give them multiple ways into a question. Consider the difference between “Who was the 34th President of the United States?” and “Which President name-checked in ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’ was the first to ride a helicopter in office?” They both have the same answer, but one requires you to have memorized the list of Presidents, whereas the other offers two ways in: You can run through the song in your head, and/or you can think, “When did helicopters start to be used? What President was around then?”
– Has more than one correct answer. Nobody is more annoyed with you than the person whose answer is correct, but who is marked wrong because the person who wrote the quiz had someone else in mind but didn’t write the question carefully enough to rule out other answers.

Why should I solve cryptic crosswords?
Because they tease a side of your brain that vanilla crosswords, as I call the kind that typically appear in American newspapers, don’t. That dopamine hit when you figure out a very clever cryptic clue is pretty great. The UK, India, Canada, and Australia have realized this. It’s past time we Americans did too.

OK, you’ve convinced me. How can I get better at cryptics?
Check out my Decrypting the Cryptic blog series! It has solving tips as well as resources to find easy cryptics to solve.

How can I get better at solving regular American crosswords?
Don’t bother memorizing lists of words. The best way to get better at crosswords is to do more crosswords. Fortunately, there are lots to choose from. If, like many people, you solve only the New York Times and you’re looking to get better, here are my recommendations based on what day of the week you stop doing them:
– I do only Mondays. Give USA Today or Andrews McMeel a try.
– I can deal with Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Add the Los Angeles Times to your rotation. Like NYT, the puzzles get harder from Monday to Saturday, but unlike NYT, there’s not a “weird Thursday” situation going on, nor are there hard themeless puzzles on Fridays. So Thursdays and Fridays will provide a little stretch to your solving.
– I like weird Thursdays. Subscribe to Fireball Crosswords and/or purchase some of the reprints in books. You will find lots of tough gimmick puzzles this way.
– I can do every day of the week, I just wanna be faster. Try solving some easy (like NYT Mondays) puzzles, but don’t look at the Across clues. This is called Downs-only solving. You will find it quite difficult at first, but having to solve a puzzle with only half the clues will eventually strengthen your pattern recognition skills to the point where, when you go back to solving a puzzle with all the clues, it’ll feel like cheating!