Teen puzzle creator Riya Joshi goes from family game night to working with the world’s top word game author. She hopes her puzzle book helps those feeling isolated these days.
Riya Joshi loves words.
She also loves solving puzzles and playing games with her family — games like Boggle and Scrabble. And she wants to share her love of both with Chicagoans facing more time indoors amid a recent uptick in coronavirus numbers.
So, the Walter Payton College Preparatory High School sophomore created her own puzzle booklet, “Detective Wordy: Chicago Edition,” featuring 50 crossword puzzles, word searches and word scrambles. Once her parents and twin sister played Riya’s games during a routine Sunday game night, she took her work, self-published it with personal funds, and is giving away free copies to children’s hospitals, support homes, and seniors in assisted and independent living facilities.
“I’ve grown up with the love of words and puzzles and games, and it’s really great to be able to share that love with other children and seniors, especially when they’re isolated,” said the 15-year-old Streeterville resident. “In the assisted or independent living facilities with seniors, a lot of them have been confined to their room for the past three or four months.”
For every 72-page paperback she sells through her website, she’s able to donate three books, she said. She has donated over 500 booklets since it was published in June. According to Riya, she has distributed puzzles to the Harold Washington Library, local children’s hospitals and the Neighbor to Neighbor Literacy Project, a citywide network of Little Free Library book boxes, among other service organizations. Riya started a GoFundMe account to raise more money to keep her act of giving going.
“I had more fun making the puzzles than solving them,” Riya said. “The puzzles in my book range from something fun like potato chip flavors or ‘Frozen’ characters to more educational things. It’s fun to make each of them because they’re all different in their own way.”
At least one-fifth of the puzzles have a Chicago theme, featuring famous local activists, landmarks and Chicago sports teams. Along the way, Riya incorporated some fun facts about Chicago. She said she hopes to do more puzzle editions for other U.S. cities so she can donate puzzles to children’s hospitals and senior homes in those areas.
“My family and I have been playing games like this since before I could remember,” she said. “Our family is super competitive with games. When I was younger, my sister and I would be focused on trying to beat our parents, so I was trying to learn more vocabulary (that’s how I got interested in spelling bees). I also started taking Latin in school — because of that, that’s who I am. My parents haven’t won a game of Boggle or Scrabble in the last four years.”
Riya credits her supportive family with helping her on her puzzle-making journey, which she hopes to continue after the COVID-19 crisis. Her twin sister, Maya Joshi, has been keeping senior citizens entertained during the pandemic with mini-concerts, trivia games, bingo and art activities via Zoom or FaceTime.
Riya’s next step in her puzzle path is collaborating with David Hoyt. He’s the current author of Jumble, the most syndicated daily word game in the world, which is seen in more than 600 newspapers each day (including the Chicago Tribune).
Hoyt said Riya will be showing her puzzle skills on Hoyt’s Word Search World Traveler app this fall. When she sought his advice on her puzzle booklet, Hoyt was so impressed with her mix of puzzles that he offered her the opportunity to co-author educational puzzles with him for a junior section of the app (for kids aged 8 to 14).
“When she reached out to me a couple of months ago and said, ‘Here is my puzzle book’ ... When I looked at those puzzles, my mouth hit the floor,” Hoyt said. “That was the best production of those types of puzzles that I’ve ever seen. And the fact that it was coming from a 15-year-old? I just could not believe it.
“It’s such a good thing to be able to give people during this time,” he said. “I’m the world’s most syndicated daily word game author, and I’m the one who feels honored to be working with her.”
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