From crosswords to quizzes, murder mysteries to number puzzles, brain-teasers are more popular than ever. But who are the fiendish minds behind them? The Guardian’s crossword editor introduces six top setters

What a golden age this is, at least for puzzles. As this dour decade progresses, each year brings some comfort and diversion in the form of riddles, enigmas or other intellectual pastimes. In 2022, it was Wordle, the letter-swapping game that spawned Hexordle, Octordle and Hexadecordle as well as Worldle (geography), Nerdle (maths), the Guardian’s own Wordiply and all the rest. This year, it was David Mitchell’s puzzle-minded sleuth Ludwig, in a BBC series for which I had the great pleasure of working as “puzzle consultant”. This boils down to making sure there’s nothing that will infuriate devotees of various types of puzzle, something I tend to keep in mind as the Guardian’s crossword editor. Whenever we see a puzzle in Ludwig’s lonely, unlit study, it’s a genuinely solvable brainteaser. And between Wordle and Ludwig, this paper launched its Quick Cryptic which is converting quick solvers to the cryptic side. But who creates these puzzles, and what is it like to have puzzling as the day job? Is their working environment as gloomy as Ludwig’s?

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