Voices of the Puzzle

For about 20 years, I've been waking up on Sunday mornings to NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday's puzzle with Will Shortz. That's probably close to as long as it's been on the air.

Back in the day, Will was the editor (and founder) of Games magazine. For a while now, he's been the editor of the New York Times crossword and all-around puzzle maven, going from one Scrabble, sudoku, crossword or general puzzle tournament to another.

Each week he gives a puzzle for listeners to solve, and the winner (randomly selected from the 1,000 - 2,000 correct entries) is on the show the next week, doing a series of word challenges.

One of the things that originally caught my attention was the list of prizes that each weekly contestant receives. I remember when I first heard the segment, I thought, Wow, a Weekend Edition lapel pin!

The list has only gotten longer, including all sorts of Will Shortz swag. Most recently, they've rolled out celebrity readers to relay the information. (I guess host Liane Hansen got tired of spieling it each week.) Several times, it's been Carl Kasell, he of the stentorian voice and name whose spelling is impossible to guess. A week or so ago, it was writer Louise Erdrich.

Erdrich read it as though it were her fiction, with thoughtful pauses and inflections, almost as if she was thinking carefully about what each word meant: "The Scrabble Deluxe Edition from Parker Brothers. [pause] Will Shortz's Little Black Book of Sudoku. [pause] And one of Will Shortz's Puzzle Master decks of riddles and challenges from Chronicle Books."

I can't wait to see who's reading it next week!