This TMU librarian creates crosswords for The New York Times – and one for TMU

During the pandemic, when many people found themselves mastering the art of baking banana bread or binging Friends or Tiger King, Nam Jin Yoon found himself drawn to a different kind of daily ritual: crosswords.

Yoon first picked up the habit while working as a lawyer in Boston, as he needed something to calm his mind before bed. 

“It wasn’t activating it more, it was just sort of using what was there,” he explained.

That habit quietly grew into something bigger. Today, Yoon is head law librarian at TMU Libraries' Law Library – and a published crossword creator for The New York Times.

The leap from solving puzzles to creating them was a natural progression.

“I really liked some of The New York Times crosswords, so I reached out to them (crossword constructors), like, ‘Hey, can you teach me how to do this thing?’”

He didn't expect much. But the community embraced his curiosity and began to show him the ropes. Eventually, he was submitting puzzles of his own to the Times.

Each one takes roughly 20 hours to build.

Yoon begins by building the grid and filling it with interlocking words, then crafts clues designed to make solvers see those words in new and unexpected ways.

Yoon didn’t set out to become a librarian. He went to law school to feed a natural curiosity. But, as his legal career progressed, he realized what he enjoyed most wasn’t necessarily practising law — it was the research.

That realization led him to pursue library school and, eventually, law librarianship. 

In 2025, along with his Canadian partner, he relocated from New York to Toronto — where he also lived as a young child. That's when he joined TMU.

Being a law librarian, he says, came with an unexpected perk: immediate, tangible impact.

“You get thanked all the time,” he said. “You can more immediately help the person across from you, and you have the expertise to help them get what they need,” he said, contrasting the experience to law, where cases can take years to be resolved.

Helping students and faculty navigate an increasingly complex information landscape has become a critical part of his role.

“AI has made it more difficult to know what information is credible and what’s not,” he said. “So, our job is less about helping people find a particular book, but being able to find credible sources and not be lost in the sea of information.”

He also teaches legal research to law students.

“The emotional IQ of the students here is off the charts,” he said, in part crediting the video submission requirement of the admissions process, as opposed to simply test scores.

“You can really see the passion. They’re so eager to learn and to help each other,” he said.

While juggling his TMU roles, Yoon continues to create crosswords for The New York Times — and has also designed one specifically for TMU.

“The TMU one I made was pretty fun,” he said. “There was something satisfying about designing it for TMU students in particular.”

Creating a puzzle for a specific audience adds another layer to the process.

“You’re just trying to think of, ‘Okay, like, how would a TMU student… think about this word or this concept?’” he said, also noting that he also had to check his “Americanisms” in spellings.

Even now, crossword construction remains a personal and meaningful practice — one that mirrors the kind of thinking he values in both research and teaching.

“It’s one of those things where… the more time you sink into it, the better you feel about it,” he said.

And for those ready to take on his latest creation, there’s an added incentive: somewhere within the grid, a few pieces of TMU are waiting to be discovered.