Rena Cohen is a sophomore at Washington University in St. Louis studying psychology, Spanish, and applied linguistics. She co-founded a crossword club through the school newspaper, and she now enjoys introducing other students to crossword construction and editing a daily mini crossword at games.studlife.com. Beyond crosswords, she enjoys taking walks, spending time with friends and family, and volunteering with ESL students.

Sam Ezersky has been creating crosswords professionally since he was 16, and still can't believe The Times hired him full-time nearly nine years ago. His daily phone game routine goes as follows: Wordle, Worldle, Globle, Connections, Quintumble, and the fantasy football challenge Ultimate Roster. Lately, he's also addicted to the logic game Clues by Sam (no relation!).

Christina is a puzzle editor at the New York Times, and this is the fourth puzzle she has made for ACPT. She lives in Ames with her husband and two kids, with whom she plays many games, reads many books, and solves many jigsaw puzzles. She once solved a wooden Liberty jigsaw puzzle at an Airbnb, and is no longer capable of enjoying boring old cardboard puzzles.

Lynn Lempel is the 2026 recipient of the Merl Reagle MEmoRiaL Award for lifetime achievement in crossword construction.

Brendan has been writing puzzles for every major puzzle market (and too many minor markets to count) in the US and the UK since 1996. That means he's officially really old. Last year, the Boston Globe started running Brendan's daily word game Align. If anyone is interested in joining his desert stoner metal band, talk to him at the bar sometime this weekend.

Ross Trudeau is the Puzzles Editor for Apple News, for which he writes crosswords, Quartiles, and Emoji Game puzzles. His puzzles regularly include sub rosa references to his very bad cat Ruby, who cannot read and doesn't even know what a puzzle is.