Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - We Interview Dispatch's Aaron Paul, NYT Games Editor - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: November 18, 2025

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Recruitment for Arknight's Enfield beta test two has officially begun. Head to Enfield.grifeline.com and complete the recruitment survey for a chance to join Beta Test 2 when it starts on November 28th. What's up everybody? Welcome to a very special kind of funny games cast for Tuesday, November 18th, 2025. I'm one of your host, Greg Miller, alongside Christmas in November, Joey Noel. It's so close. But do you like that or not like that?

Like your name, when it's Christmas in April, I think that's really quaint. Christmas in December, like people don't get the reference anymore. Yeah, that's just... Maybe you stay off content during December. Yeah, Christmas one is supposed to be. Yeah, it takes a pause during December. Next to you, it's Forbes 30 under 30, AKA, New York Game Awards nominated, AKA A.k.a. Leftover, Poppy, Blessing, Adio, Jr.

Good day, Greg. Hey, good day to you. Thank you. And next to Blessing, it's our esteemed guest, everybody. Let me break out the full title, all right? New York Times. in puzzle editor and published author of the New York Times Games Puzzlemania book. It's Joel Follyano.

Hello, Joel. Yay. Thank you for coming, Joel. This is a very big deal. We get a lot of cold emails. Hey, this person was a background extra in this movie. Do you want to talk to him? And I'm like, I don't even respond.

I throw them away. This one came through like, hey, the New York Times games editor wrote a book called Puzzlemania. Do you want it? And that was an immediate one minute less. Hey, yes, we want it. get Joel in the office. Like, I guess we could get him in the office.

Thank you for coming through, Joel. Yeah, it's awesome to be here. We're going to get into all of this, the new book, everything going on. Blessings got bones to pick already about today's connections. These connections are messed up. Bring it on. But before that, I will remind you, of course, that this is the kind of funny games cast. Each and every weekday, we run you through the biggest topics in video games,

whether they be reviews, previews, interviews, like our Aaron Paul interview that will be the second half of this episode. Of course, dispatches Aaron Paul. I guess he was in a show called Breaking Bad, too. but dispatch. Fingly heard of it. Yeah, no, don't worry about it. Maybe you know them from that.

We do that each and every weekday on YouTube. com slash kind of funny games. Twitch.tv.tvs slash kind of funny games and podcast services around the globe. If you like that, pick up a kind of funny membership. Of course, patreon.com slash kind of funny YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny Games. Apple and Spotify, you can toss us $10.

Get all of our content ad free. That's more than 80 episodes a month. And of course, your daily dose of me, Greg Miller, in a 15 to 20 minute podcast, we call Greg Way. If you have questions for Joel or you want to pick bones about Wordle, the Mini, any other New York Time games, let us know in your super chats. We'd love to hear from you on YouTube.com slash kind of funny games. Housekeeping for you, remember we're an 11 person small business all about live talk shows. Kind of Funny Games Daily already covered the Zelda movie news and images.

And after this, it's the kind of funny podcast that I guarantee you is going to be an instant classic. You will not want to miss this episode. I saw your post about this over the weekend and I was scared. I'm calling on my shot. I'm Babe Ruth. Bless this is going to be an episode. That's what I'm looking forward to. Joel,

I'd like you to make sure you are out of the building before we start this episode of the non-frey podcasts. If you don't mind. I respect you too much for you to be here for them. Appreciate it. After that, it's going to be blessing, Andy beating Eldon,

Ring, Night Rain. Oh, yeah. I don't know. It's not about them. It's been like probably the longest pleasure of had a video game this year. Yeah. Of starting it back in what May when it came out

and still having not beaten the final boss. So, Andy's going to get me there. Okay, good. That's what I want to hear. Game of the year time. Everyone's trying to finish everything up. If you're a kind of funny member, today's Greg Way is all about the Outer Worlds 2 versus Starfield for something like 17 minutes.

Thank you to our Patreon producer's Carl Jacobs, Omega Buster, and Delaney the Somme, Twining. For now, let's begin the show with what is and forever will be topic of the show. Tots, Tots, Tots, Tots, Tos. Joel, your topic of the show. You have a new book called Puzzlemania. I feel like there are so many places to start. When again, the official title is,

New York Time games and puzzle editor. You don't have to do with the glasses. I do. I'm near-sided or far-sided. Whatever makes it work better that way. What is that job? Yeah, that's fair. That's basically the main question I always get is like, oh, you're a puzzle editor.

You just like sit around and do puzzles all day. That would be a fun job. That's not really what we do. But I work on the mini crossword. Have you ever called the mini crosser? The mini is my all-time favorite. I think you say you work on it, but you're also heralded as the creation. I created it. Yeah, maybe that was a humble brag.

Rare air here, everybody. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, you get all the in there. Yeah, so basically, we have a team of editors. We've got somebody who works on the Wordle, somebody works on the connections. I work on the mini. We all work on what we call the big crossword, which is the daily crossword, the super hard one.

And together every day, we're responsible for, yeah, daily set of games. Driving people crazy. And driving people crazy. Yeah. So how many editors are there? You say, you know, you all work in different stuff, but how many people are the puzzle? Yeah, we've got seven now.

So that includes Will Shorts, a long time legend of the puzzle world who I kind of... You were an intern with, right? Yeah, apprenticed with, for lack of a better word. Wineloo, who does connections, Sam Bezerskiu does Spellingby and many others. So it's one person, like, per game. Yeah, it's kind of their little...

Everyone has their own little kingdom, you know? But then we all give input on each other's games. So I was like the main connections tester for a long time. In the live chat, Comic Sam's 3 says, Connections is my personal hell. We kind of like it that way, to be honest with you. It's fun to have a range of difficulties of games. Wordle, I don't think is anyone's personal hell.

It's just sort of like a nice warm blanket. Everybody can do Wordle. Connections is supposed to give you a couple slaps every now and then. So, Blessing, pick your bone. I don't want to start off with picking my bone, because honestly, the bone to pick was just that today's connections whoop my ass. I guess to start off with that, right?

I guess how do you guys determine the difficulty on a given day of a game? I feel like I could wake up and do the connections on a Monday and maybe be able to nail it. And then on a Tuesday, I'm like, what is this? What's going on here? Yeah, I mean, believe it or not, we want it to be solvable, right? We want you to have fun. So we're starting there. All the puzzles are tested first by one of the editors and then by a whole panel of people to make sure, like, I mean, it's just play testing, basically.

And to get feedback and to make sure the thing is solvable. So before we put it out in the world, we have that. That being said, then you put it out to an audience of millions and you find out, for real, whether you did your job right. So much of puzzling is subjective, I would say. You know, with connections in particular, some of the blue and the purple categories, if you know what that means, purple's the evil one. Yeah, the blue ones often got like pop culture, like, no it or you don't. Like, I don't know. There are people who do purple first.

I don't know if you're one of these people. I'm not one of those people. I slowly have started becoming one of those people, though, because I saw, oh, there was some creator on TikTok that was doing like the thing where it is I have to get the purple first or else I lose and I think that's the coolest way to play it it's almost like a self-determined way of like adding a level to the game it's like I'm just gonna sit here and figure them all out without making the guesses and so like as as the puzzle editors like we're we're just constantly trying to figure out like for example you really shouldn't overlap a purple category with uh something that's you know

know it or don't like if you have something that's crazy wordplay and then there's a fifth member that could be in it but that's in a number that's in a number that's in a another category, ooh, people are dead. Oh, let me tell you about today's. Today's had one where I was like, oh, certainly this is the thing, right? Because it's all part of the same category. Hit it? Absolutely not it.

Okay, but I'm curious. So, like, one of the things I think that's built in to make connections a little fair is that when you have those four at the end left, like, you could just reveal them. You don't really need to know. Yeah. So we're just trying to get people just to that. Like, maybe they won't actually get that last category on their own, but like lots of people like to figure it out on their own.

You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah. So my question is, between connections, the mini crossword, spelling B, all these things, what makes a New York Times game? Yeah, that's a great question. So it needs to be clever and rewarding. Are that kind of two words that come to mind?

Because, like, the reason to do a puzzle is to feel better about yourself ultimately. I feel like it's- You don't want to keep ruining people's day. No, you don't want to just knock people's ego down a peg. Like, you want people to, at the end, be like, damn, I'm really clever. Like, I got that. So that's part of our hallmark. And then, I mean, I just think what has to separate our games from other games,

they have to feel like a good use of your time. That's always what comes down to me. Like, there's so many ways to spend your time now. I think what makes New York Times games why people come back to it is like, yeah, that was a good use of my five or ten minutes. I actually feel like I worked my brain. I got smarter. And now with all these social elements of the game,

the way that people can then share it to their group chat, talk to their family about like. We need a whole Slack channel just to share all of our stuff. which has provided different amounts of frustration with each other. That's kind of new because it used to be puzzling. Like when I was growing up, it was just the crossword, right? That was kind of the main thing New York Times did. Like not that many people solved crosswords with other people.

It was just like I sit with my coffee in the morning. I do my crossword. But now with the wordle, like you do your puzzle and then just whole thing afterwards where you get to like kind of talk to people like, oh, I got in three. Like what you get it in? You know, that sort of thing.

And that's added a new dimension to our games, I would say. The thing that really dominated our Slack channel, I think, was the mini crossword. It was specifically sharing our times. It was seeing who can solve the mini crossword the fastest, which was never me. It's always me and Lucy. Yeah, so it was always Joey and Lucy. How often do you see people metagame the crosswords or metagame like the NYT games? Do you see a lot of people create their own fun out of it?

Totally. And the mini is a great example of that. So like when we started the mini, the whole idea was, I mean, if you've done the bigger one, super hard. I have a shot at Monday and that's about it. Yeah, and it's got this built-in difficulty curve. So Monday's the easiest. Saturday's like the hardest thing you've ever seen. And a lot of people don't even know about that built-in difficulty curve.

So they might show up to the app on a Friday and be like, Oh, that's tough. Let me try a crosser today. And it's like, whoa. And so the mini was intended to be just a reason to come back every day, something you could solve. When I started making it, I quickly realized like, no, it's actually just a different audience of people. It's not a ramp up to this other game.

There's a whole set of people who, A, like, being competitive about their time. So they're like, okay, now that I know that I can do this in, let's call it under two minutes every day. Now I want to challenge both myself. Like, can I get my fastest time? But almost more importantly, like, can I beat my friends and family at this? So with my goal of making the puzzle, though, it's like, sure, I could just do pet that meow's for cat, right? Like, that would make it easy. And some people would go fast, but it wouldn't go back to what I said before. Like, it just wouldn't have that clever and rewarding thing. So the fine line is like something that's easy and yet still feels like it fits in. Yeah.

So my question then I guess is from the book, of course, PuzzleMany available now. And amazing, you're not, they're not sponsoring. They should sponsor. Oh, Kevin's got the full me. You know, it's how many puzzles are inside of the book, first off, I guess. Hundreds, yeah. Yeah. If you have someone in your life who loves the games like we love the games here, such a great holiday. I'm really upset that I said Joey could have this one. I'm going to have my copy to have on the coffee table ready to go. But in the opening here, your letter, like I talked to you, you know, before we came on of if you're a kind of funny best friend and you're watching this and not just somebody

in the chat mad that we're not interviewing Aaron Paul yet, I think it's worth, you know, calling out of like, I see so much of my story in yours where I obviously have wanted to do this forever and everybody's heard my story of since the fourth grade, yada, yada, yada, and yours is so the same way, right? where you're talking about in the 10th grade I started to notice that the puzzles had bylines which is like pulled from my story about this right I became obsessive about crosswords reading

every puzzle blog I could find writing down puzzle ideas in the margins of my notebooks doodling little grids in class I began sending my puzzles to the New York Times many polite rejections later later I had my first crossword accepted and published during my senior year of high school that then goes on to you

I think I even put one of the doodles in the book you did yeah yeah yeah I'll spend it on there yeah I wonder where that one's Starts. Border Live, yeah. But then it continues to go on and, like, obviously, puzzles have been in your life for so long. And then I love this over here where you talk about, you give, you know, word'll enters the picture here. You talk about, you know, Josh Wardle making it for his partner. And then overnight, the number of people playing the mini doubled.

It felt like we were an indie band that suddenly was selling out stadiums. Playing New York Time games became inexplicably cool. Perhaps most gratifying, though, puzzles, which had always been a solitary activity associated with sleepy Sunday mornings on the sofa, We're now being played as a social activity. You talk about being on the subway and seeing people with the app and all of a sudden. It was trippy. But I mean, what is that like? Because that's, it's a similar thing of like for me growing up, games being, oh, games were my thing.

They were a nerdy thing. My friends made dabbled, but they didn't play games like I play games, where now video games are just pop culture. Everybody plays games. What you're living that still to this day to some degree where the crossword, which I always thought of like as Grandma Miller's thing, not as something contemporaries we're doing, is suddenly cool. And that's, you know, I don't even, I didn't tell this story in the book. I'm not sure I've ever told this story,

but my first crossword. Excuse of everybody. To this show. So my first crossword ever in the Times was, I was a senior in high school. And it came out and like, I was a huge day for me. I was super excited.

I had told nobody, none of my friends knew that I had basically spent two years at that point submitting crossroads to New York Times. They didn't know you were doing that? They did not know. Did they know that you were like, they knew that I was like into crossroads because like we would do the commuter one. I grew up in Philly, so we would do like the Philadelphia Enquirer and like the Metro one. And we would race in class and see who could do them the quickest that I would win.

Yeah. They knew that. I was good. No big deal. But I didn't tell anyone because it was just sort of like this little secret project I had. I was just like, I don't really know if they like know that I do this at that level. And then so basically I got a call from the principal today. And they said come down.

You know, they say come down to the office. And everyone's go, ooh. And I go down. and she's like, you have a puzzle in the New York Times today? Like we printed it out. We're going to like, we have a little tray and we're going to give it out to everybody. And I go back up into class. We had those smart boards.

Yeah. And they're all looking at the puzzle and like reading the blog about it. And they all thought it was super cool. They're all like, oh, that's amazing. That's awesome. I feel sort of ashamed about it in retrospect. Like I should have just embraced my inner nerd at that point. Yeah.

But I think I hadn't admitted to myself yet. Like, no, this is my thing. Like, even though I have many other, like this is what my calling is. and then, like, even then, I don't think I quite believed it until I interned with Will Shorts and worked with him for a while. I was like, I can do this, but yeah. You talk about it a bit in the intro letter there, which, again, is for the audience, very brief.

Like, this isn't an autobiography. I want to make sure it's a book, but there's not much writing. You pack it. It's just puzzles. It's a great way. But, like, for people who don't know, who is Will. Oh, yeah. So Will Shorts has been the editor of the New York Times crossword since 1993.

Before that, he edited a magazine called Games. I'm trying to think of a corollary for him in like other American life. He's just a larger than life puzzle figure. Like this is a guy who in the 1970s at Indiana University created his own major, called it enigmatology. Oh my God. And he made up a puzzle major for himself and was just like, talk about knowing what you want to be. Like he knew and he pursued it when there was just like not even careers that were available.

He just made the whole thing kind of like built the whole thing himself. And so going to work for him when I was like 17. It was insane. Like you're sitting in his office like spitballing clues with him. I think in the book I say it was like, you know, you like basketball and it's like, oh, do you want to play horse with Michael Jordan? It's like, yeah, I think that sounds fun. I think I would do that.

Like so, and then, you know, you would just be going back and forth and I would say, you know, maybe we clue it this way. And he would be, all right. And he would go in the New York Times. And I was like, you're listening to me? Like, are you sure? You would think about that a little longer? And so we've just had a good working relationship.

I was his assistant for a long time. And now we just both are lead puzzle editors at the times. Question for me, because there was something in your story that scared me. How old are you? Me? Right now? I'm 33. Nice.

When he said smart boards in high school, it's like, oh no. Oh, no, we're not the same. So throughout all this time, you know, learning and understanding how to create all these puzzles, what are some of the guiding principles that you have as a puzzle editor? to create a good puzzle. Sure. So the first thing is you have to think of the solver first. Like a lot of people make puzzles for themselves,

and that's like kind of the cardinal sin. Like you're loading it with references that only you know or things that you find funny, but other people like, I don't really like that pun so much, you know, whatever. So the first thing is understand who your audience is and who you are going to serve up this puzzle to and kind of what they're looking for it in.

That was a big thing with the mini was understanding, oh, no, it's like a new audience and trying to understand the scope of people who were doing it. And then, yeah, I mean, there are a lot of tools now, like computer tools to help make puzzles. I think a big thing is just studying up on the best puzzles now are made by a combination of human brain and computer tools. Like, just straight computer-made puzzles are, they're getting a little better, but they're

still soulless and they don't really feel like it. I think people still want, they don't want to solve something made by a human. They want to connect with another person. Like that's part of the things with connections Is people get so mad at connections But the fact that there's a human on the other end of the line Winna, it was something that came out of Winna's brain You can just curse Winnah to the heavens

You know, that's something Like that to me is something So I think the second point I was just familiarize yourself And there's all these free tools online Like something called crossword compiler And Crossfire That you can just download and start making crosswords yourself

Yeah if you're interested So talking about these things coming from somebody's brain Right like that came from their brain of what that connections is. How tough is it? Because we have the show called Game Showdown where I create trivia all the time for the guys to solve.

The biggest struggle that I have when creating trivia is creating something from scratch. Starting from zero and going, all right, what topic, what game, what thing am I going to reference to try and pull trivia out from it? How do you figure out ideas from scratch? Yeah.

The blank canvas is terrifying. Yeah, yeah, yeah, blank canvas is terrifying. And I mean, I've made the mini every day since 2014. So it's like 4,000 odd minis. And so, like, at a certain point... And the fact that you do it solo is so impressive, too, of, like, not... You have, obviously, the rest of the editors to bounce around,

but that's, like, a lot of pressure to build one for every day. Yeah, and so, I mean, for me, it's casting around. So I always keep a notebook with me. So, like, I find that just, like, walking around or in the morning, early in the morning, some pops in your head, you can write it down. Sometimes you don't even develop it then, but then you just come back later, and you're like, okay, so there's something them with that idea. These two crossing and they've referenced each other. How can I make a puzzle out of that?

It's funny you mentioned trivia. There's actually a bunch of trivia in the book. And another thing I didn't mention this in the book because it's kind of for me. But a lot of the trivia in the book is trivia I made for my brothers for like road trips we do. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, I have a brother in L.A. and we go out and visit him. And I don't know. When you're making a puzzle, it is just really important to be like, okay, who's solving it? What's the sort of topics they're going to like? What's the sort of stuff they're going to react to? Sometimes that's your starting point.

It's just like, okay, my little brother's really into skateboarding. Is there like an interesting skateboarding? Like, how do I make it appealing to my older brother, too, who's not as into it? But maybe there's a way I can find a way to like make it more general. And then you just start making constraints, constraints help. And then you go from there. Yeah.

Sounds like you're always saying the matrix. It sounds like your brain is constantly at work like seeing things, making puzzles out of them. My wife's always saying, you don't remember. remember like in the Queen's Gambit when she like looks up at the ceiling and she's seen all the pieces move. Oh yeah. Yeah, that's like what me, but with letters just like floating around. I am always like, you're meeting conversation at dinner and she's like, are you thinking of something? A quiz is for kind of like swirling.

But it's just like, yeah, if you're walking around on the street, like you see a street sign. Like I'm always just, I'll just anagram it a little bit or I'll just see like, oh, if you remove the first letter, like what does that spell? You just never know. Sometimes stuff comes out of that. But that's probably where my brain works differently than other people. Do you still play puzzle games? Like do you ever check out, I know Blueprints is one of the popular like puzzle games that came out this year for video games. Are you checking those things out? Or now are you solely focused on making the puzzles? Yeah. I used to be much more into playing word games. But then it since it became my job, like when it was, it's, it is like all I do all day, basically. It's not really something I do as much to unwind anymore. I feel sort of like sad admitting that, but it's true.

I just like have other things. We all understand that. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I really don't play as much. But then when I go check out like, oh, like, you know, the suite of games that LinkedIn now has like a suite of games. I'll go play their game. Yeah, they're actually pretty good. And you can go and play other people's games and see, like, kind of what's happening in the puzzle game space. I find that helpful.

Yeah. For doing the mini for so long, 4,000 plus, do you have like a database spreadsheet? Like, do you ever, like, wait, have I done that before? Do you worry about that? it again? Totally worry about redoing myself. Yeah. So we have an internal database that I can search every word and see how it's been clued in the past. Okay. And also click to that puzzle and go see. Oh, that's awesome. And I have redone ideas and then caught them and be like, oh, okay, I did that in 2018. Can't do it again type of thing. Yeah. Probably I'm the only person who cares and remembers.

It still feels like just right. Well, you say that. I have to imagine like it's different for sure, but I remember working at a newspaper and I remember coming in the morning and opening my voicemail and picking it up and the hate mail I got of people being so mad about something I did in an article or said in an article or whatever do you guys have that where you're feeling people

who are just like blessing constantly pissed on my connections? Oh yeah. I mean it's part of the relationship people have to our games. It's I wouldn't call it love hate. It's mostly love. Most people I would say the average person

so now that I'm doing this book tour for Puzzlemania like all the events available now in the first year. All the events are so are like positive and people are just coming up hey it's a big part of my day. I really like it. Go online though.

go online. We know online hate very much. And I mean, first of all, a lot of people who do are games are careful, smart people. So if there's an error, like thousands of people are catching that. Like, the smallest factual thing.

So that's why the games are so heavily at it before they go out. But also, people just like, you know, stumping someone in a puzzle if you do it in a satisfying way is great. If you do it in a frustrating way in a way that they don't feel paid off, then they feel like you wasted their time.

sort of. Like, oh, that didn't pay off for me what you were trying to do there to stump me. And so then, yeah, you get a little bit of anger that way. But we have a big, I mean, we have a big platform. It's a part of what comes with it. Yeah, of course, yeah. What kind of research do you do to, like, come up with these clues? Like, are you a big reader? Are you just, like, in taking a lot of news and pop culture? Like, it seems like you kind of cover so many different topics and clues that you just have to, like, acquire so much knowledge in general. How does that process look? Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't call myself a huge reader. I try to read widely, and I try to keep at least just a finger on the pulse of what's going on in the world,

just to see if it can inform the puzzles. But I will say a big part of the puzzle creation process, like for the cluing for the crossword, is just research then. So, like, you put something in the puzzle and now just go read about it. And so that's just reading, you know, like dictionaries, but also just reading, can I find the fun fact about, like, the emu or whatever? there are certain Wikipedia pages that I think I alone in the world have visited more than anyone else, you know, like the Oreo Wikipedia page to try to find anything new.

Oh, you might actually have a contender. I have an Oreo show, sir, all right. My next question would be, I think, I don't know, I might be thinking too much and I might be applying too much of modern society to it. But in the olden days, you're talking about bylines on puzzles and how this was and yadda, but I feel like before the advent of social media and the connections and blah blah blah

people making the puzzles must have had a very like you're off over there and it's quiet and I don't feel like the spotlight was shined on them now obviously you're on a podcast I've seen other NYT games editors interviewed and on things like that but even in the book one of the things I really love are the like editor

profile pages where you go and there's this a Q&A with them and then your favorite puzzles and stuff like that in your time there or at least since even being an intern and seeing it grow. Has there, was there ever a point where New York Times didn't want to lean into personalities? They wanted you to kind of be like, you're the Supreme Court, you're over there doing your thing, you're quiet, the puzzles speak for themselves?

And has there then been a change to bring that to the forefront personality? Yeah, that's an interesting question. I mean, in the old days, or at least in the kind of like the 90s and early aughts, it was like Will Shorts and then everybody else. Like people would make puzzles, but even the byline in the paper set edited by Will Shorts in really big font and then puzzle by such and such and small. fun. It was like there was this like the big figurehead and then kind of everybody else. Yeah. I always felt like the puzzles were, you know, they were an equal partnership between the puzzle creator and the editor.

And so I really always felt like when I wasn't more in charge, I wanted to highlight like who's making these puzzles. Like people should know who the people making the puzzle they solve that day. And then as like with these kind of more personalized games, like take the spelling bee. Do you guys play the spelling bee? I have. It's not one that I play every day. I get hosed enough where I was like, no, I'm good. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so with the spelling be, it's like this grid of letters and you're making stuff out of it.

But there's an editor who sort of determines what words are on the list. And if it was a faceless dictionary, I think people would just kind of get annoyed like, okay. But when there's a person there and there's a person, I guess, like the downside, they can tweet at that person. You know, then they feel like they're in interaction with someone. So I do feel like having forward-facing editors has helped us in some ways. I'm not on social media personally, so that's my way of dealing with it. You're like, I just avoid it.

I just pretend like it's not happening, but my friends will, like, search my name and then, like, send me screenshots of what people are saying, and that's horrifying in its own way. So, like, I think all of us are, in some ways, like, a little uncomfortable with how much we are kind of the dartboards

for all the stuff. Yeah. But in other ways, it helps promote the games to just know that there's, like, a person. Yeah. Yeah, 100%. It sounds like it's covered in the book, but do you have any favorite puzzles

that either you've done for the mini crossword or that other editors have worked on? Yeah, I mean, so I should say about the book. So the book is... Talk about the book tour right now. What other cities are you going to? Where can the people find you? Well, yeah, two books are today in the SF area.

But, so the book is basically a mixture. So there's puzzles based around wordle connections, spelling B, all strands, all the games you know from New York Times games. And then a ton of visual puzzles, a ton of... Yeah, so that's like... This is your section. That's my section. there's a collection of my favorite minis I've ever made and also my favorite mini clues.

What I wanted the book to feel like was just basically everything New York Times games is now. So, you know, it's got these distillations of the games you know. But also a lot of things maybe you've never seen before. There's kind of crazy variants. Like there's a crossword that's called a vowel-less crossword. There's no vowels in it. Oh, that's cool. Yeah.

It's just the consonants. That's nuts. Yeah. That's kind of towards the back where I stuck. some of the hardest stuff. Yeah. I have another favorite puzzle. It ramps up as you go.

It gets crazy. Yeah, I have another favorite puzzle in there. It's in the front. You can show it off if you want to. Yeah, sure. It's called emojiography. So it's something, again, that started. I made it for my brothers, but how it looks.

Geography. David's showing up. So the clue to every single one of these is a series of emojis that clue a place name in the world. You might have a picture of Santa. and then this boat, that would be Santa Cruz. Oh, he's going sickle mode. And so there's a bunch of those. I don't know.

They all make me laugh. They're pretty stupid, but they're the sort of thing that I enjoy. And so there's like original types of puzzles in here, too, stuff you've never seen. I want to basically you flip the page. Yeah, I want you to basically, you flip the page and you don't know what's coming. There's not really sections to the book. It's just each page is like, oh, right, after this, there's like a. series of like mind sweepers and you can play like mine sweeper in print stuff like that so it's just a

mixture can you talk about the process of developing new games that you're adding to the suite not necessarily things you have coming up but like i remember when strands got added yeah or at least maybe got more limelight have you have you haven't tried is that the dominoes one it's like a logic domino one yeah how is that how do you how do you guys do that yeah we've got it like uh within the new york times games team we've got a separate team called like the new game squad which is is a really fun. It rotates. Anybody can be on it. I was going to say, is it like Jets and Sharks? We're like the new class is here. It's over for you, Minnie. It's like, if you're an iOS developer, but you're on the New York Times

Games team, it gives you a chance to be like, I work for the New York Times Games team. I'll pitch some games. The same thing of like marketing people, anybody can join it, and it rotates. Now, once you pitch a game, there's like 19 steps above that, you know? It has to, uh, we then prototype it. Then we're doing a bunch of like user, user testing. The main thing we're usually trying to test for is just, like, like do people come back? Like is it a game that's sticky that people be like, yes, I will come back and play that the next day.

And I will say that like wordle and connections set pretty crazy high bars for that. They're just these incredibly popular and sticky games. So, you know, I've been at the times now for more than 10 years. In the beginning, definitely in the many days, it was like the Wild West when we were launching that. We didn't know what we're doing. But then even a couple of years after that, we were just throwing games. games up throwing stuff at the wall see what happens quick prototype throw it up there do people

like it and now it's like there's many many many more bars before we launch a game yeah very cool I want to hear more about your guys's internal uh games competition like who who excels at what like what lucy and joey and joey for sure i feel like because i my thing for the mini is if i don't do it in under a minute then like it's kind of a wash of a day and i feel like it's usually lucy and i competing for that. Barrett, I feel like, is always a big contender. Yeah. Yeah. Um, whether it be for the mini or for wordal. I feel like Barrett's usually the quickest to. I afraid who's the connect who who who's competing in connections. Because I feel like like I was heavy into connections. Yeah. I've been on sabbatical for a while. Roger also is like very

into connections. I feel like too. Yeah. I also play that's the one. Connections I my thing was because I was never again like I wasn't I wasn't doing the purple. thing of like, all right, I got to go for purple. But when you get purple first on the record occasion, it feels so good. And like, I think I'm rusty, admittedly, which is why I came in today and was probably struggling with his connections. But when I'm locked in on connections, usually I can, I can do it flawlessly. Yeah, it is so interesting how all these puzzles are muscle memory of like the more you do

them, you like understand. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so with Wordle, are you like, I do the same guess every single. I am. I am. You guys, all three of you are? Yeah.

Oh, man. Let me tell you. What are your starting words? I think I moved on to sugar at one point. Lines arise. Arise. Which was, I think, recently. Did you, Ile? Did you get it in one that day?

Of course I saw it play out on TikTok before I had played it and I was like, that was my thing where there, not the hike is whirls humongous still. But like when it was like slowly infecting and it was still indie and it was everybody posting, I remember the day where I put it in sugar and it was in one. And it was that thing where then I went and posted it and everybody. my like ads had already been like oh Greg's gonna love today's work like yeah yeah yeah I haven't strands I've like dabbled in and I feel like that's the next one that like is probably gonna really I feel like I always play it based on the times is away or the mini is always my first one I think

you like strands strands is on the easier side because we yeah with connections and we had been sort of indexing towards them like some harder games strands is I think easier um but yeah it's interesting with word like I just look around the room and see something and I'm like stove that's my guest for today I just like you never know maybe today's going to be the day that you just hit it it's rainy out rainy like I don't know it's not a good strategy for getting it more quickly but to me it's like keeps the game more interesting I feel like it would get stale otherwise but it sounds like I mean maybe not I don't know it's so interesting too because I feel like I have a friend that tried to pick their word which I can't remember what it is anymore

but based off of like wheel of fortune like what letters are used the most like combining all of these different puzzle games of what are the most common letters to figuring out to like get that. Well there's that wordel bot thing now. Have you ever interacted with wordel bot? Okay. Okay. Look up wordel bot after this. Okay. The Times has a thing that was developed kind of by like the another desk, but basically it analyzes how you played wordle and breaks it down.

And it can be humbling because it'll be like you chose like the 77th best guess for like given the. So it's for the sickos. Yeah. I think that's us. So of course is your book. Puzzlemania available right now. And of course, obviously you can go play these games in the New York Times,

games app or the New York Times and everywhere else. Joel, thank you for making the time on this book tour to swing on through. Yeah, it's been great being here. It's been great. Everybody should pick up the book, especially me and Bless since Joey's taking this copy. Lame. Everybody, of course, there's more games cast,

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But before we go any further, we're going to see if Blessing Can Sol Worldel today. He's on his third shot here. That's crazy that that's not the word. Spoilers for Wordle art. He went aisle. He got the eye in the wrong position. the E in the right position.

Then he went bride, got the I and the E in the right position. Then he went spite, has the P, the I, and the E. And chat, don't. Shout it out. And the right position. He has three guesses left to figure this out. What would the- Nick, do you ever whirdle?

I whirdled earlier on. Yeah, yeah. And then I got sweeping the nation. Yeah. And then I got stuck in the New York Times mini cross-foot puzzle. Which you understand Joel created. I did not know that. Joel is the creator.

He makes every mini. He's done more than 4,000. Go say, go say that. That's crazy. Go tell him. before he leaves. I don't do a great job sometimes of introducing people. You know, they walk into the room.

Nick knew that he worked for the New York Times and he had a long conversation with him, but it never came up that he made the mini, which you got to do it. Hey, Barrett, how are you? Doing well, how are you? Did you hear all the praise you got? No, I did not. Everybody likes how you're a good performer in the New York Times games. Oh, thank you.

Thank you. I have not played in a very long time. Yeah, I know. I need to get back on the horse. I fell out of the two. Too many other video games. Yes, exactly. Got back to Luminous arise.

Here's my thing of why I like it and why I need. need to get back. Tell me about it while I give Nick back his seat. Yeah, of course. I need to get more of the garbage off my phone where it's like, I'll go to TikTok and watch these this as a sound, I should be, I should be doing word, I should be doing connection. No shot, that's a word. Look at this. O'Pine?

O'Pine? Yeah, what does that mean? It's like an opossum. Yeah, exactly. Isn't it to like complain? I don't use it. I'm done. This happens all the time, and it's not, it's a bummed offick with Joel, now that we're best friend. Hold and state is one's opinion. It's occasionally, occasionally I'll come across that and across. the middy crossword puzzle i'm like i've never heard that word before and i swear to god it's not a real

word and i'll google it and it's this obscure fucking thing and i'm like the clue before that was the word was dance you know what i mean like that's the easiest thing you possibly could get i'm sick of all these coastal elites making us middle of the country people so you're telling me that old pine i you opine every day on the kind of the games cast but like it's blown my mind because that must be the same root word as opinion right so like yeah wow yeah so opinion is the noun, opine is the verb. I guess so, yeah. That's nuts.

That's language, everybody. Wow. But guess what, everybody? We're done learning about words. Instead, we're going to use them to talk to Aaron Paul. Blessing and Nick. And hey, Nick, welcome to the show, by the way. Hi, Greg. What the hell happened here? You interviewed Aaron Paul, Nick? We, yeah, we were called in for dispatch.

We said we have a couple celebrities for you. Give us your best interview. Yeah. And so we gave them blessing. And then they said, now give us your worst interviewer too. Just to balance it out. Just to balance out the scale. So Blessing and I got up and we interviewed. It was supposed to be, I think, Aaron, Paul, and Jeffrey couldn't make it, unfortunately.

So we spent a solid 15 minutes, I would say, with Aaron Paul. Just having fun. Just hanging out. He's a delightful guy talking to him about a game that I had zero context for, which was super fun. And Blessing you love dispatch. I love this. Now. You probably had a lot of great questions for Aaron Paul.

Oh, absolutely not because I did not play dispatch. as of the time of this interview. This is how old this interview is, everybody. We interviewed Aaron Paul, and it was embargoed. It was embargoed. And then it was like, then we got going. And then there was a conversation in one meeting about where to insert it. And then I think we all promptly forgot about it because there's 19,000 things going on here every day.

We moved past. It was during the spoiler cast where I think Barrett was like, didn't we have an interview too? I was like, oh, right, we could have put that in here. We need to find somewhere else. And I figured, hey, we're already doing an interview with Joel from the New York Times. Why not bring this in here as well? That's a great thing. Yeah.

Yeah, I do, I do, I don't regret the interview. The interview you're about to see? I don't regret it. I do wish we could talk to him though after we all play the game now. I so wish I could talk to him now. Because now you know his performance. And this is the thing. And now I know the name of the characters.

I think I'm scheduled to play. Now I know the name of the character. I want to say Andy put me on it at some point this week or next time I might be playing dispatch my first time. I'm very excited about it. But the one thing that everyone talks about is they're like, dude, it's less about the gameplay and more about just the cut scenes and the actual story that's being told. And they're like, like Andy was like, dude, you would love this

because it's like, it's like an invincible, the boys, all the stuff. And I'm like, oh, man, that would have given us so many more questions to ask Aaron Paul. But instead, honestly, he's a really nice guy called in from Europe, just living his best life out there. We had a great time talking. Here's what's going to happen. I'm going to follow, I'm following Aaron Paul, all right? I've already tagged him in the story about this interview. When he inevitably sees, oh, Greg's got 100,000 Instagram followers.

Thank you, everybody. He'll follow me back. Congratulations. Yeah, then I say something against Trump and I go down. That's okay. I post the comedy clip and I go. I lose 30 every single time I do this. When Aaron inevitably follows me back, we'll make sure we get another shot at it.

So you can come in here and talk about it. But Nick, you really should play dispatch. I'm excited to. I'm excited to. You know what? It could be a fun stream, too. I'm kind of into the art, the art creators world right now. But I dispatch is probably the next game.

I'd love to see you play dispatch and opine about it. You know, I might opine. Yeah. I might opine right now. Give me your opine. Give me your opine. Somebody in the chat is already gone. I think he's like, I've never heard anyone use opine in a sense.

like me and bless are going to run this into the fucking ground. Oh yeah. And you saw it start right here. You saw it start right here. I'm going to pine about that. Yeah. Yeah. I'm opining right now. Before we get a pint about all the games we're talking about, let's watch this interview. I remember everybody that this has been the kind of funny games cast. This will finish our episode of the kind of funny games cast. Up next, of course, if you're watching live on Twitch or YouTube, will be the kind of funny podcast. And you don't want to miss this one. Then, of course, after that is going to be a stream of them beating that their night

rain from Eldon Ring. It's going to be a lot of good content. And if you're listening or watching later, of course, check those out on podcast services on YouTube.com.com slash kind of funny games. Most importantly, get your kind of funny membership. YouTube.com slash kind of funny games. Patreon.com slash kind of funny. Apple, Spotify, get all of our shows ad free. Keep this 11 person small business dream alive. And of course, get your daily dose of me, Greg Miller in a series we call Greg Way. But to end our show right now, it's blessing. It's Nick. And it's Aaron Paul. Aaron, thank you so much for joining us here. We're really excited to talk about dispatch. My first question for you, Aaron, is obviously people,

know you from plenty of TV shows, plenty of movies. What is it about getting into a video game that has been different from those experiences performing in those? Oh, man. Well, I, first of all, I love just the gaming universe. You know, I used to really play, I think, probably far too many games. No such thing. Is that, no? Well, I mean, once I got married and sort of having kiddos, I just needed to kind of laser focus elsewhere, but I just really appreciate just the gaming world as a whole. You know, like my brother's a massive gamer, right? And that's where his real community is.

Just other gamers, people that he's never met in real life, but he is so close with, you know, on the headset, right? And I just think that's so beautiful about gaming. And so I've been really, spoiled in the animation space, you know, with BoJack. I did that for many years, and so I swore, okay, I'm not going to do another animated thing unless it's really great. I then did a little bit on Invincible.

Which is awesome, by the way. Oh, thank you, man. Thank you. And then I've really, honestly, I've been looking for a game, but I just, you know, some stuff that has come my way in the past, but it was just never really, didn't really hit the mark, but when this came my way, dispatch came my way, at the core of it, it's a, you know, it is a superhero sort of workplace comedy set in modern day Los Angeles, but also very heavy, dramatic, kind of heartfelt moments scattered throughout. And so it really kind of plays with

your emotion. It's not just slapstick funny at all, but it really does. takes you on a journey and this game in particular it's a sort of choose your own adventure game and so it took us a long time to record it took us two years to record this thing and so the process of recording is very similar to you know other animation that I've been involved with but it's just the the pure time was much much different but I think people are going to really resonate with the story that we're telling I always think I always think when you're recording these things, and I know, you know, you've seen behind the scenes and it's you in a VO booth. You don't ever get to really interact with everyone else.

Did you guys actually get to do scenes together, like you and Jeff? I wish, I wish that was the case, but no, because it just took so long to do it. And so a lot of the time I had in my headphones the other audio that had been previous reported from other cast members. I mean, that wasn't always the case. That's pretty standard. That's pretty standard. Pretty standard. But I mean, I just worked on it for so long.

And so what's the time commitment look like for that versus like your stint on Invincible? I mean, Invincible, I went into the sound booth to think three different times. And that's it. You know, I did a couple. I did a couple episodes. And then they asked me to come back for the next season. But I got to tell you that that show I'm such a fan of I watch every episode. I love it.

But it was just way too grueling on my my psyche. You know, it was like a- Well, your character is specific. It was a little intense. So much. I have such respect. Yeah, such respect for what they're doing. But Powerplex, man, it really, because he's not just messing around.

I mean, he's going through like turmoil, you know. And I just. how I approach everything I do. I'd really put myself in that skin. And it was a skin I didn't feel comfortable in. Really? Yeah, I did not. I didn't want to do it anymore.

I love you guys. I really do. And the thing is everyone involved in that camp is amazing. You know, but what it did to me, I didn't like. And so I couldn't continue. Yeah.

That is, that's bold and awesome. That's really cool. crazy. I mean, that show, yes, that show is very, very intense. I imagine that dispatches is a little bit more lighter vibe. It's definitely lighter vibe, but just because there's, there's just such, uh, such funny elements to this show or to this, uh, to this game. Um, but also, like I said before, there's going to be moments that really surprise, uh, the gamer, you know, um, kind of, kind of, kind of shocked them a little bit. And this is seasonal, right? There were really,

sort of like episodically or am I wrong oh they're releasing like I believe yeah a few episodes or maybe like a part of it yeah I think you're going to be able to play the first chunk for a little bit and then you know go on yeah a question I have for you is you know we're talking about your history and animation going from bojack horseman going into invincible and now you know dispatch it's a video game but also it leans very heavily on the this is a cinematic animated sort of property right you look at it and you look at it and you think this is something that you could watch on Amazon Prime. You know what I mean? Is there, do you have like a specific kind of taste when it comes to the type of projects that you like to be in?

Because I think that that then diagram between a Bojack and Invincible and, you know, dispatch feels like it fits kind of in that like nice little middle. Yeah, yeah. You're absolutely right. But I do have, it's just about this story, you know. I mean, you know, when you're watching a movie, TV, playing a game, the story's got to be there. If it's not like an interesting narrative, you know, like let's say it within a game, if you're playing a game and you're not interested in these characters and the journey

they're on, you're going to turn it off, right? And what's so unique about this is you can play it one way, you can finish it. and if you want to play it again and just choose just the polar opposite of what your gut wants you to choose, you can go down a completely different journey, a completely different path. And it's just got to be, you know, the writing's got to be good.

And then, you know, hopefully you like the people behind it. And then you kind of march forward. Have you gotten a chance to play it yet? I got to play like a little test, you know, demo of it. I got to do that when I when I was recording sort of like the final two months of the record I got to mess around with it a little bit

but yeah it's fun. Nice. Do you think this is going to be the gateway drug for you now for for more video games? Maybe we'll see man I mean honestly doing it just doing it it really made me want to pull out my Nintendo Wii you know what I mean? Oh yeah. Yeah, I used to I got a Nintendo Wii

Nintendo Wii with like with the kiddos. I thought that might be like the first kind of fun thing for them to play with. I still haven't really unboxed it. But yeah, I mean the amount of hours I would play just Mario Kart, you know, you remember Nintendo Wii with like the steering wheel? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, man. We spent many of our as adult human males playing.

Oh, yeah. Still in the studio. Best. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Fun question for you. So, you know, Dispatch has this crew of people called the Phoenix program, right? They're sort of the Z team and they're being dispatched to, you know, go take care of crimes.

If you could choose any of the superpowers of any of the members of the Phoenix program, which superpower would you choose and why? I mean, there's Invisigal who, you know, just kind of turns invisible and that's always fun. It's pretty sick. I always thought that would, you know, kind of disappear and reappear. Yeah, there's so many. I just love this group of misfits because it's really just a group of villains that are now sort of being reintroduced into society trying to try to be good, you know. And I have the job to, you know, I play a guy who's a superhero.

but his suits been damaged in battle and so he's sort of forced to work at this superhero dispatch office and try to keep them in line. So he's very frustrated. I'm just trying to think of other powers, but they're all fun, you know. What about you guys? There was that like a vampire bat dude.

I forget his name, but he's like kind of like a human vampire. pirate bad looking dude. I feel like that'd be fun to do for a day. For a day. I think you're missing, though. I think you have to have the power of forever. I mean, the main character, you know, it's not the deal of us. This is not the deal. We talked about it. I will say the, well, I guess this isn't part of the Phoenix program. I'm reaching outside the bounds of the question now. But there's a character Chase who has super speed. And I've always been a fan of super speed. Yeah, super speed would be nice. It does come with the caveat, though, of his character. The more he uses his power, the faster he ages. Yeah. And so like, that's

tough, but you know, as your elder here and kind of funny, don't, don't take that power. No. Getting old sucks. Yeah, it's not fun. It's not fun. There's also a lot of Pierce's character who a lot of Pierce plays almost like a kind of like a big demon lady. Okay. He's really cool.

Okay. I forget what the powers are that comes with that, but even just the idea of walking around being like this intimidation. Who doesn't want to be a big demon lady? Exactly. Exactly. I just like to be above six feet. Just for the height. I'll take it alone.

Just for the height. Aaron, this has been amazing. Thank you so much for your time. Oh, thanks for the blessing to Jim. I can't believe how fast that was. That covers it for me. That covers it for me as well. Before we let you go, I do have to ask you one last question.

We have a co-worker Andy who loves you, specifically loves your work and breaking bad. And he does a really bad impression of you. Oh. So if you wouldn't mind, could you please say, hey, Andy, you suck. Please stop doing this impression of me. Oh, of course. Hey, Andy. You suck.

Okay. Thank you for attempting. But it's just, it's embarrassing. saying you're embarrassing yourself. But good luck to you. Lots of love. And that's all I got. Thank you so much, Aaron. Perfect. That was perfect. Thank you. That made my mind. Thank you so much for your time. We appreciate you. All right. Lots of love, boys. Awesome. Thank you. All right. See you.