Kim Alswager Makes New York Times Debut With 40-Year Video Game-Themed Crossword

Q: How did a choir director's flight hobby evolve into a visually groundbreaking Super Mario New York Times Sunday crossword?

It grew very quickly from a casual experiment into an ambitious, collaborative debut. Kim Alswager, a choir director at St. Croix Preparatory Academy in Stillwater, began building crossword grids on a flight in 2024. According to the New York Times preview, she soon poured much of her spare time into construction, developing enough skill to produce a Sunday puzzle for the paper. What made that debut stand out was not just speed, but design. Alswager’s July 26 New York Times Sunday crossword, co-constructed with Will Eisenberg and edited by Amanda Rafkin, turned the grid itself into a Super Mario scene. Most black squares became brick walls, three gold question-mark boxes were built into the layout, and two large green pipes entered from the top and bottom of the puzzle. The puzzle’s architecture worked with the clues. Theme answers ran both Across and Down, two Down clues used the pipe gimmick, and 41-Down functioned as a revealer, with its final letters circling Mario’s name. A key early answer, YOSHI, helped steer solvers toward the Nintendo setting. At the same time, the puzzle was more than fan service. Its core theme, “IT’S A SMALL WORLD,” linked entries such as DWARF PLANET, GUT MICROBIOME and POCKET UNIVERSE, allowing even non-gamers to solve it through wordplay and structure. That combination of rapid craft development, mentorship, and bold visual execution is what turned a flight hobby into a groundbreaking Times Sunday debut.

Q: What unexpected clue connects a gut microbiome to the Super Mario universe in this visually stunning crossword puzzle?

The unexpected connection is the clue-answer pair **“Bacterial ecosystem that plays a role in affecting mood” = GUT MICROBIOME**. In Alswager’s Super Mario-themed Sunday crossword, that science-flavored entry appears alongside **DWARF PLANET** and **POCKET UNIVERSE** under the broader theme **“IT’S A SMALL WORLD.”** That is what links a gut microbiome to the Mario universe: not a direct game reference, but the puzzle’s larger idea of tiny, self-contained worlds presented through Mario-style visuals such as brick blocks, question-mark squares, and green pipes. So the surprise is that amid all the Nintendo imagery, one of the key themed answers is **GUT MICROBIOME**—a microbiology term used to support the “small world” concept.

1 articles · Updated · The New York Times · Jul 25

Kim Alswager’s first New York Times crossword runs as the July 26 Sunday puzzle, “Down the Tubes,” with a grid built around brick walls, gold question-mark squares and two green pipes.
12 themed entries and two paired Down clues explain the artwork, while 41-Down serves as the revealer and its final five circled letters spell the puzzle’s hero.
YOSHI at 38-Across helps identify the 40-year-old video game franchise behind the design, which the review says remains solvable even for non-gamers because the clues are highly specific.
Alswager, a St. Paul choir director, said she began constructing crosswords on a 2024 flight and now spends almost all of her free time on it.

Sources

Left100%

The New York Times4h ago

Kim Alswager Debuts Crossword Puzzle in New York Times

How did a choir director's flight hobby evolve into a visually groundbreaking Super Mario New York Times Sunday crossword?

What unexpected clue connects a gut microbiome to the Super Mario universe in this visually stunning crossword puzzle?

Can heavy visual themes like green pipes and brick blocks successfully bridge the gap between classic crossword solvers and modern gamers?

Sources

1 total

Left100%

The New York Times4h ago

Kim Alswager Debuts Crossword Puzzle in New York Times

Kim Alswager Makes New York Times Debut With 40-Year Video Game-Themed Crossword

Summary

Sources

Insights

Related Stories

Sources

Related Stories