{"id":5481,"date":"2024-10-03T14:01:15","date_gmt":"2024-10-03T14:01:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/ima\/news-connecting-with-the-editor-of-connections-wyna-liu-14\/"},"modified":"2024-10-03T14:01:15","modified_gmt":"2024-10-03T14:01:15","slug":"news-connecting-with-the-editor-of-connections-wyna-liu-14","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/ima\/news-connecting-with-the-editor-of-connections-wyna-liu-14\/","title":{"rendered":"Connecting with the Editor of ‘Connections’, Wyna Liu \u201914"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n\"Wyna<\/p>\n
\n

Wyna Liu ’14 (MPS, ITP), Courtesy of the New York Times | Photo by Caleb Bryant Miller<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
Written by Alex Manges, Assistant Director of Alumni Relations<\/i><\/h6>\n<\/div>\n
\n

In the word game world, the New York Times\u2019 Crossword Puzzle<\/i> has long been considered the gold standard for both avid and amateur puzzlers alike. The Times<\/i> published its first crossword puzzle in 1942, and by 2014, the game had become so popular that the publication launched an entire Games section, both online and in print, with the addition of the Mini Crossword<\/i>. The Mini<\/i> was followed shortly that same year by Spelling Bee<\/i>, and in 2022, the Times<\/i> acquired the viral word game Wordle<\/i> that had so many of us hooked during the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n

The most recent game added to the collection was Connections<\/i> in 2023, which sparked a similar craze to its immediate predecessor. Connections<\/i> is a word game in which the player must take 16 words and find the common thread between 4 groups of 4 words, ranging from the most straightforward to a real head-scratcher (think \u201cBreakfast foods\u201d to \u201cCar companies minus a letter\u201d).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n\t\t\"'Connections'
‘Connections’ Puzzle on October 1, 2024<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n

Like Wordle, Connections<\/i> gathered a near-immediate following and remains on the daily game roster for many English-speaking players a year and a half after its initial release. Players often publicly lament a losing day, taking to TikTok, X (formerly Twitter), or Instagram to gripe about the puzzle or call out the editor herself to explain a category.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt this current time in my life, the tone and vibe of my day is completely determined by my feelings about that day\u2019s New York Times Connections<\/i> puzzle,\u201d TikTokker Jake Cornell said in a video in January. In April, Ioana Burtea published An Open Letter to Wyna Liu, the New York Times\u2019 Connections Editor<\/a>. And in June, when the Times posted a celebratory video on the one-year anniversary of the release of Connections, one user commented, \u201cSo my mortal enemy has a name.\u201d <\/p>\n

That name is Wyna Liu \u201914 (MPS, ITP), a graduate of the NYU Tisch\u2019s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP)<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So, how does Wyna feel about the public attention on her work? She loves it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s amazing,\u201d she says earnestly as we talk over lunch on a hot day in Soho. \u201cI feel incredibly fortunate that something I love doing, that I work hard at and that I\u2019m proud of, is something that people enjoy doing. I\u2019m also happy they enjoy talking about it, and even seem to enjoy being mad at it!\u201d she laughs. \u201cI get it; I love being mad at stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you like getting frustrated by puzzles?\u201d I ask.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do!\u201d she says. \u201cI love that feeling of, like, grrrrrr<\/i> when you\u2019re working on getting something. If it\u2019s too easy, it\u2019s hard to feel like you\u2019ve accomplished something.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some, myself included, may mistakenly believe that Wyna herself created the game. However, Connections<\/i> was born out of a New York Times<\/i> annual event called Game Jam<\/a>, where NYT Games’ staff members explore new ideas for games and features for existing games. Only the best of the best games are greenlit, and when Connections<\/i> was created and approved in 2023, they needed an editor to bring it to life. This is where Wyna, a Puzzle Editor at the Times since 2020, entered the picture.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had never had my own game,\u201d Wyna says. \u201cJoel (Fagliano) had the Mini,<\/i> Sam (Ezersky) had Spelling Bee<\/i>, and Tracy (Bennett) had Wordle<\/i>. I was the only other editor, so they asked me if I wanted to do this game, and I said, \u2018Okay! Sounds like fun!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n\t\t\"Wyna
Wyna and her dog, Polo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n

Like her clues in Connections<\/i>, Wyna herself is many things simultaneously. On top of being a puzzle editor and avid puzzler, she is also a jewelry designer and makes sculptural wearable art<\/a> out of her home in Chinatown, Manhattan. She’s exploring making wax models for casting, taking neon-making classes, and raising her rescue dog, Polo.<\/p>\n

A graduate of Oberlin College, she came to NYU Tisch\u2019s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP)<\/a> in 2012. For those unfamiliar with the program, think of it as a playground for today\u2019s most creatively inclined technical minds\u2014or the most technically inclined creative minds! ITP\u2019s mission is to explore the imaginative use of communications technologies, offering a 2-year MPS degree for working professionals who wish to expand their understanding of the relationship between art and technology.<\/p>\n

So, what brought Wyna here in the first place?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n\"Wyna<\/p>\n
\n

Wyna during her time at ITP<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n

\u201cWhen I was in college, I always loved making things. I came to ITP because I was really trying to figure out how to do something creative that was also practical at the same time. I\u2019ve always had a confused relationship with art. You know, what IS art? What am I interested in making, and why? I knew I just loved making stuff, so I figured the program was a great way to answer some of those questions for myself.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first thing I thought was, \u2018I\u2019m going to learn to program! And that\u2019ll be a useful thing that grounds my creative practice.\u2019 I was very excited about it\u2026and then I realized I was not very good at it and also didn\u2019t enjoy it,\u201d she says, laughing. \u201cIt was a great lesson!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I pivoted to doing more fabrication, which was already more in line with what I had been doing. I took a Kinetic Sculpture class and a Puppet class\u2014which was wonderful and weirdly rigorous!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cUltimately, it was an incredible experience that taught me that the thing I love the most isn\u2019t necessarily the final product of the \u2018art\u2019; it\u2019s the process of creating. The figuring out of how to get from here to there, the discovery, the journey of it all. That\u2019s what resonates with me the most.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then, Wyna excitedly launches into telling me about her thesis project at ITP: studying the infinite possibilities of polyhedra. <\/p>\n

\u201cThrough my classes, I started to become really interested in the idea of structure and form, specifically the Platonic solids (three-dimensional shapes whose faces are identical regular polygons). They\u2019re fascinating! Even though there are an infinite number of regular polygons, there are only five Platonic solids, and they’re made up of just three regular polygons: the equilateral triangle, the square, and the pentagon. Plato used those five solid shapes to describe the geometry of the universe. I loved thinking about the relationship between the infinite complexity of shapes and these elemental units!"\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n\"Wyna<\/a><\/p>\n
\n

Wyna Liu’s hand-crafted jewelery<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n

My takeaway was this: Wyna is fascinated with the multi-faceted. She sees how something can be multiple things simultaneously. It\u2019s easy to see how the structures that informed her senior thesis have transformed into the 16-word, 4-group panel that Wyna puts together every day for us to solve. Each word has multiple meanings, forming complex possibilities and structures\u2014and no two structures look the same in anyone\u2019s head!<\/p>\n

So how does it all come together for her?<\/p>\n

\u201cI experience making puzzles in a similar way to solving them,\u201d she says. \u201cWhen you\u2019re solving a puzzle, you\u2019re trying to get into the puzzle-maker\u2019s head and understand what they\u2019re thinking. Creating a puzzle, though, you\u2019re almost trying to live inside the solver\u2019s head and imagine it from their perspective. They\u2019re two sides of the same process; it\u2019s a very process-driven thing, which is probably why I\u2019m so drawn to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

She starts to show me the way she keeps track of each week\u2019s puzzles\u2014a Google Sheet\u2014and mentions her notebook of ideas that she carries around with her. At this, she pulls out a giant sketchpad full of blocks of words. Should the New York Times<\/i> ever create a museum of historical NYT ephemera, this must surely be featured prominently.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n\t\t\"Wyna
Wyna with her notebook of Connections<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n

\u201cGoogle Sheets is great because it lets me move words around and mix and match, but there\u2019s still a lot of satisfaction in just writing things down,\u201d she says, holding the book up for me to see.<\/p>\n

Like many artistic careers, Wyna\u2019s work seems to be incredibly passion-driven. She genuinely has fun with it, and there\u2019s a childlike excitement as she describes the process of building a puzzle. I ask Wyna about her history with puzzling, and if it was a big part of her childhood.<\/p>\n

She nods emphatically. \u201cOh yeah, it\u2019s something that\u2019s super obvious to me in retrospect. When I was a little kid, my mom bought me all these anthologies of Games Magazine.<\/i> A lot of things were illustrated, or some of them were image puzzles, and most of them were way too hard for me at that age (I think I was eight or younger). I would read the puzzles and then look at the answers and just fell in love with the visual vocabulary of it all.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter that, I forgot about the books for a long time. I started doing crossword puzzles in my 20s and got really into them. I remember going back to my parents\u2019 house one day and seeing these old books that I had as a kid, and I opened them up again and saw the bylines and I recognized the names! It made me tear up a little bit\u2014I was like, I know this person! And this person!<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was nice to see and realize, \u2018Oh, of course, this was always there inside me.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

As we wrapped up our conversation and after I had turned off the recording app, Wyna said something to me that I\u2019ll never forget.<\/p>\n

I had asked her earlier in our conversation what she might say to someone interested in applying to ITP. She spoke enthusiastically about how formative the program had been for her and what a wonderful experience it was for her to get to explore and learn in that environment. As we got up to leave, though, she paused and said:<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know what I would actually say to students at ITP and Tisch in general?<\/p>\n

\u201cTake what you love seriously. We all have interests and pursuits, and it can be easy to push something aside and tell yourself it\u2019s not that important. But if it\u2019s something you love, or even something that interests you, it\u2019s worth pursuing. Take what you love seriously, and others will too.\u201d<\/p>\n

For those pursuing a career in the arts, there is no one \u201cnormal\u201d path. Everyone takes a different route to build their career, taking a million different steps in different directions\u2014but no way is wrong if you\u2019re pointing yourself in the direction you want to go. <\/p>\n

Wyna’s journey illustrates the importance of connecting with one\u2019s passions. By pursuing what she loves, she not only contributes to the vibrant world of word games but also inspires others to take their own interests seriously, reminding us all that every path\u2014no matter how winding\u2014can lead to unexpected and fulfilling connections. \u2666<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NYU Tisch Alumni Relations sat down with Wyna Liu ’14 (MPS, ITP), editor for the New York Times’ puzzle ‘Connections’, to learn more about how she creates the viral game each day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/ima\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/ima\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/ima\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/ima\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/ima\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5481\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/ima\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/ima\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/ima\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}