Stanley Newman interview: A chat with the chief brain games mastermind
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Arkadium has long made classic games for grownups, making mobile games and web games for USA Today, AARP, The Washington Post, and MSN. And it recently announced that Stanley Newman joined the New York company as its first-ever Chief Brain Games Mastermind.
Newman has been the Crossword Editor for Newsday for 33 years, where he is recognized as an expert in customizing crosswords by level of difficulty. In the age of Wordle — a popular word game that spread on social media and was acquired by the New York Times — this could get very interesting.
His new job will be to work with Arkadium to create compelling word games spanning crosswords, word search, trivia, and more. And Arkadium now has access to his archive of award-winning games. That’s a lot of stuff, as Newman has filled more than 200 books with his puzzles and word games.
It will be interesting to see what kind of brain games Newman comes up with. Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.
GamesBeat Summit 2022
GamesBeat: Can you tell me about your background?
Stanley Newman: I’ve been a puzzle professional now for more than a third of a century. My main gig is crossword editor for the Long Island newspaper, Newsday, and very many other things, such as author of more than 200 books. I could stop right there. I was the first winner of the US Open Crossword Championship. As a result of being able to solve crosswords quickly, I got into the business as a hobby, and it became my life’s work after I was involuntarily retired from Wall Street in the crash of the late ‘80s. I was there, but it was very brief.
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