Pikesville Student Jackson Matz’s Crossword Puzzle Published in N.Y. Times

As any crossword maven will tell you, Friday’s New York Times puzzle is one of the most challenging.

Regardless, you’ll want to take a stab at today’s puzzle since it was created by Pikesville High School junior Jackson Matz. Jackson is one of only 68 puzzle creators under the age of 18 in the history of the New York Times crossword puzzle section. Of those 60, he is the 21st youngest.

Jackson, 16, comes from a family of crossword puzzle aficionados. His parents, Pikesville residents Whitney and Eddie Matz, have been doing crosswords together since they met in 1998.

“When Whitney was living in Santa Monica [California], there was a Baja Fresh [Mexican Grill] right around the corner from her place,” recalls Eddie. “One of our favorite things to do was to go have lunch at Baja Fresh and do the crossword puzzle.”

Jackson developed a love of puzzles during the pandemic when his family passed the time doing crosswords together.

“It became a family tradition,” says Jackson, who also plays baseball, basketball and soccer, as well as guitar and piano.

In time, Jackson’s older brother Ben — a Duke University student and the crossword editor and a main contributor to the Duke Chronicle — moved from doing puzzles to creating them. Jackson served as a tester for Ben’s puzzles, but soon he wanted to make them, too.

“Ben helped me [learn how to create crosswords], and it was super cool to do it together,” says Jackson.

The brothers collaborated on many puzzles and started submitting them to the Times. At first, there were only rejections.

But the persistence of the Brothers Matz paid off. About six months ago, one of their puzzles was accepted by the Times. That one has not yet been published.

After the acceptance, Jackson was encouraged and began making and submitting his own puzzles. Many of them have been published in the Duke Chronicle. (Jackson’s younger brother Jonah designed the logo for the Chronicle’s crossword puzzle section.)

But Jackson’s eye was still on the prize. Despite many rejections, he kept submitting his puzzles to the Times.

“I thought, ‘Why give up? There’s always a chance,’” he said. “Also, you keep getting better because they give feedback. Besides, it’s a hobby for me, so I enjoy it.”

Eventually, two of Jackson’s puzzles were accepted by the Times. One of them is the puzzle that appears in the March 8 issue.

Jackson describes seeing his crossword puzzle in the Times as “surreal. I can’t believe this is actually happening! I’ve known for a while that this would be the day it would be published, but seeing it formatted in the paper and reading the comments … I’m super-excited.”

Naturally, Jackson’s parents are exceedingly proud.

“It’s amazing,” kvells Eddie. “We’ve always suspected that our kids are way smarter than we are. [Now] I think it’s official. As parents, you screw your kids up in lots of ways. You hope that you give them some cool stuff. You expose them to things, but you definitely do some damage in the process. So every now and then, you have these moments where [you see] we’re not totally screwing up. This is one of those moments. There’s a lot of nachas involved.”

Whitney thoroughly agrees. “I love that it’s something that our kids do together,” she says. “It’s extra special that their first acceptance was a collaboration. That makes me so happy. I was also super-proud that they stuck with it. I would have thought at some point they just would have given up. I’m really proud that they didn’t give up.”

To view Jackson’s puzzle and today’s gameplay column, visit nytimes.com/crosswords/game/daily/2024/03/08 and nytimes.com/2024/03/07/crosswords/daily-puzzle-2024-03-08.html.