Wonderful World of Words

A composer and orchestrator, Greg Pliska has been solving and creating puzzles since he could read. His latest venture is the daily PUZZLER podcast on iHeart, which he co-hosts with AJ Jacobs. He contributed the contest puzzle hunt to last year’s New York Times Puzzle Mania edition, and he has been a puzzle writer and presenter for public radio’s Ask Me Another and A Way with Words, as well as a regular contributor to the MIT Mystery Hunt. Under the auspices of his company, Exaltation of Larks, he creates puzzle hunts for Web3 clients, universities, and others. In his other career, Greg has scored films, television shows, musicals, and opera, and his orchestrations can be heard every morning on NPR and at night on CBS Evening News. He is developing two new musicals, and most recently wrote incidental music for the Broadway play SUMMER 1976, with Laura Linney and Jessica Hecht (now available on Audible).

Will Shortz is the crossword editor of The New York Times, the puzzlemaster for NPR’s Weekend Edition, and the founder/director of the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. He directed ‘Words’ from 2007 until 2019 and holds the distinction of being the only person to have attended every ‘Words’ weekend since its inception in 1982. In August, Will married for the first time to a partner he met through table tennis, which both play every day. Will will challenge anyone to a game of ping-pong in Mohonk’s Game Room on Saturday afternoon during ‘Words’ weekend!

Eric Berlin has had dozens of crosswords and other puzzles published in The New York Times, and he is the author of “The Puzzling World of Winston Breen,” a trilogy of puzzle-filled mysteries for kids. He creates live puzzle events for schools, museums, and organizations — his work has been seen at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, New York City’s Museum of Mathematics, and most recently, the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Eric is the constructor behind Puzzlesnacks (http://www.puzzlesnacks.com), and collections of his puzzles can be found on Amazon.

Ellen Jovin is a cofounder of Syntaxis, a communication skills training firm, and the author of several books on language, most recently the national bestseller Rebel with a Clause: Tales and Tips from a Roving Grammarian (HarperCollins, July 2022). She is also the creator of a traveling pop-up grammar advice stand called the Grammar Table, whose adventures serve as the basis of that book. Ellen has a B.A. from Harvard College in German studies and an M.A. from UCLA in comparative literature and has studied twenty-five languages for fun. She lives with her husband, Brandt Johnson, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

David Feldman is the author of 13 books — 11 of them being collections of Imponderables, including the national bestsellers Why Do Clocks Run Clockwise?, When Do Fish Sleep?, and Do Penguins Have Knees?  He is also the co-creator of the board game, Malarky.  Since retirement from writing, Dave devotes most of his energy to supporting the Posse Foundation, playing duplicate bridge, consuming popular culture in all its forms, and hunting for great food in unlikely places.

Nicole Holliday is an Assistant Professor of Linguistics in the Department of Linguistics and Cognitive Science at Pomona College in Claremont, California. She received her Ph.D. in 2016 from New York University. Her work focuses on sociophonetic variation, especially intonational variation, among African Americans as well as other speakers with multiple, complex identities. Nicole is also interested in issues of linguistic profiling and inequality, especially as they relate to speech technology and algorithmic bias. Her teaching and public work focuses on bringing students and community members into scholarly discussions about sociolinguistics. Professor Holliday’s research has appeared in such venues as Journal of Sociolinguistics, American Speech, and Language in Society, and she has received grants from the National Science Foundation and the Mellon Foundation. She previously hosted the Slate language podcast Spectacular Vernacular alongside lexicographer and journalist Ben Zimmer, and she has discussed language issues in venues such as the New York Times, NPR, and the Washington Post.