It wasn’t that long ago that the phrase “Spelling Bee” invoked precocious children lined up in the annual Scripps competition tackling words like “eudemonic” and “smaragdite.” Now, more often than not, it refers to the addictive New York Times puzzle that has become something of a national obsession—for word nerds, at least.

The man behind Spelling Bee is 28-year-old Sam Ezersky, who was born and partly raised in Baltimore (Pikesville, to be exact, where his father and stepmother still live). He’s quick to assert his Baltimore bona fides: He went to the Jewish Community Center for preschool and Calvert School for his first years of elementary. He has been known to “polish off about a dozen” crabs in a single sitting. He’s also a huge Orioles and Ravens fan, even proclaiming his loyalty in enemy territory (the Times newsroom).

The first time he did a puzzle, he was about five years old and sitting at a local Hair Cuttery. He found a magazine with a “Fill-It-In”—basically a crossword without clues, just words that you slot into the grid.

“It was genuinely love at first sight,” says Ezersky. From there, he got into real crosswords. His hero, unsurprisingly, became the famed Times crossword creator, Will Shortz.

By high school, Ezersky began sending him puzzles. He got rejected a bunch, but the budding puzzlemaker got on Shortz’s radar. Ezersky’s first published puzzle actually wasn’t in The New York Times, but The Los Angeles Times, which had the benefit of being syndicated in his hometown Sun.

From Pikesville, his proud-as-punch nana—an avid crossworder herself—framed the puzzle, along with his acceptance letter, and a copy of his first check. It’s hanging on the wall in his home office.

“THE MORE GAMES PEOPLE PLAY, THE BETTER.”

In 2017, just out of college, he was hired by the Times to be one of three crossword editors. For a while, that meant reading, evaluating, and editing submitted crosswords (for style, clarity, and fun), which he still does today.

But then, in 2018, he was told about the launch of the Spelling Bee, a deceptively simple word puzzle presented in a honeycomb structure—and Ezersky was going to be its editor.  His first thought was a half-hearted “cool.” He assumed Spelling Bee would be a small task and extra bit of work, but not the defining project of his career.

He distinctly remembers the day in early 2020 when he realized that it had become a big deal—like a really big deal. Just for some background: Ezersky doesn’t actually create the Spelling Bee puzzles from scratch. He chooses enjoyable puzzles from a massive computer database, which he likens to “dumpster diving.” But on that day, he picked a puzzle, thought it was everything it needed to be—tricky, but not too tricky, fun to play, clear. But one thing he hadn’t realized: The puzzle was a bit out of date, so it didn’t include the word “clickbait.”

The next day, his Twitter (now X) mentions were filled with angry people complaining about the omission. Among them: Steve Martin (yes, that Steve Martin), who tweeted at the paper, “You’ve got to get out more.”

He has lots of theories for why the Spelling Bee took off: People were bored and looking for something to do during the pandemic. Also, it was a “diversion from the world around us,” which had become increasingly grim. And lastly, it “brings people together”—friends, family, and strangers alike huddle together to discuss, solve, and, yes, grouse about the puzzle.

So, does he feel competitive with Wordle, another Times game that took off during the pandemic?

“Definitely not!” says Ezersky. “I think the more games people play, the better.”

How did you get involved with spelling bees?
In fourth grade, they announced that there would be a school-wide spelling bee. So I signed up, participated, and then I won and got to advance to county. I thought I could actually be good at it, but that year I lost at the county bee, and that motivated me to come back the next year. Every year I just kept improving upon my failures from the previous years. In the beginning, I just did spelling because I thought I was good at it. I also liked learning more words and learning the definitions of the words and having a better vocabulary.

What about spelling interests you?
I like how every word has its own little story. Words could be from a few different languages, and you can figure out each language’s influence on that word. You can also take apart the words using roots to see where they come from and what they mean.

This year was your fourth time competing at the National Spelling Bee. Take us back to your first year competing at the national level—what was that like?
I was in fifth grade and rather unprepared. I just went in to have fun and didn’t really expect to do well. I never thought I would be there in fifth grade, so it was crazy that I was going to be on the spelling bee stage that I saw on TV. It was a surreal and amazing experience.

How did you feel going into this year’s competition?
I was a bit more nervous. In sixth grade I did really well for how I start- ed, but then in seventh grade I studied really hard and I ended up knowing al- most every word in that year’s bee except for the one that I got. I thought I could do pretty well this year, maybe top three or top five, but I didn’t really want to think about winning, because I didn’t want to get too ahead of myself.

You said that you already knew how to spell your winning word, which was “bougainvillea.” What was going through your head when the announcer said it?
The first thing I thought was all of its different spellings—which one could it possibly be? Then I keep that in my mind and I asked for each of the pieces of information, like the country of origin, to see if there was anything I needed to change about the spelling that I had in my head. I wanted to make sure that it’s the correct spelling be- fore I said anything.

What was it like to share the win with seven other spellers?
It was fun because we were all pretty much friends with each other since we’d all been to the National Bee a couple of times. We were all happy, and it’s been cool because we all get to share the media attention instead of it being focused on one person.

What are you looking forward to next?
High school, I guess.