What Connections Editor Wyna Liu Can’t Live Without

I have a dog, Polo, and he’s the best boy in the world, but he’s also kind of naughty. He likes to street snack. I’m in Chinatown, so there’s a lot of food on the street he likes to eat. He has become quite indiscriminate with whether or not something is food, in that he’ll find out by putting it in his mouth first, so I started walking him with a treat pouch. It’s good for me to be able to have something to distract him with so that he looks at me instead of trying to go for a piece of wadded-up gum on the sidewalk. So I walk him with this around my waist every day, and it’s really helpful for keeping his attention. It has these hinges, so you can open it and it’ll stay open. I’ll throw my phone in there too. It’s handy that you can just reach in and grab some treats. The only thing is, you have to be careful to not lean over too far while the pouch is open because then all the treats will fall out on the sidewalk. But Polo loves when it’s a jackpot for him, so maybe it’s not a bug, it’s a feature.

This is meant for you to put in a diffuser, but I don’t have one of those. I just smelled the sample in the store and I was like, I love the way this smells. I keep the bottle by my desk and when I’m feeling stressed, I open it and I smell it. It looks weird, so I try to do it off-camera. I find it extremely calming but also invigorating, like a pick-me-up.

I’m sort of late to the scents game. My mom put the fear of a house-fire in my heart when I was a kid, so we never had candles or incense or anything. It took me a really long time to be like, I can burn a candle, and it’ll smell good. I started using this oil before I discovered that I could also light a candle.

I do hot yoga, but I also just sweat a ton. I’m always sliding around on my mat. I’ve tried a bunch of grippy mats, and this is the only mat that has really been slip-proof for me. It’s quite heavy and cushy, so it’s good if you have a space to leave it somewhere. Lululemon does make a thinner mat that’s easier to carry if you’re traveling to and from a studio. But I love this mat. I’ve been using it for many years, and it works really well.

It looks like one of those old iPods without a screen, and it has one button on it and a little disc. If you get a bugbite, you put the tip of the disc on it and push the button, and it heats up. It gets really hot and it stings for a couple seconds, but then it stops itching. I have no idea how it works, but I love it. If I’m in the park or at a barbecue or something outdoors, and people are getting bitten, I’m like, You’ve got to try this thing. Sometimes people are too scared, which I understand. You have to be brave.

I get bitten a lot. There’s always one person that gets all the bugbites, and that’s me. I don’t know if it’s your blood type, your body temperature, or what. I can be outside for five minutes and I’m already welting up. So this thing has really been amazing for me. I’m less scared of bugbites now.

I’m a Pleats Please evangelist. I feel like these clothes changed my life. They’re so beautiful and easy to care for because they’re machine washable and impossible to wrinkle. The cardigan is something I carry with me every day. It’s practical and beautiful. I can crumple it up, roll it up, and throw it in my bag. Usually it’s my tote bag, but sometimes it’s a smaller purse and it still fits in there. If I’m wearing something casual and I put it on top, it instantly makes me look and feel nicer. It’s one of my favorite pieces, and I wear it every day.

I’m so moved by the thoughtfulness and spirit of innovation that Issey Miyake has had over the years. Like the weaving technologies aren’t just aesthetic, even though they’re so geometric and sculptural. But it also reduces waste, because you can cut the material without it fraying. The pleats particularly landed with me because the sizing is just length. My mom and I are totally different sizes, so we can’t normally share clothes, but Pleats Please is the first time we’re able to. That brings so much joy to me.

I basically only watch horror movies, which is a little weird. It started years ago when I was working with this material, these white plastic pellets. When you heat them up they turn clear, and then you can mold them into whatever shape you want. I was working on making a deer head, and I was using a heat gun to soften it. A heat gun is essentially a more concentrated hair dryer, so it’s pretty loud. I couldn’t listen to music or watch a movie, because I couldn’t really hear anything. So I started putting horror movies on in the background because you can kind of follow it and enjoy it without needing to know exactly what’s going on. But then I started watching them in earnest.

I love horror as a genre. When you watch a serious drama, you feel all this sadness and suffering, and it feels so emotionally hard. Whereas with a horror movie, it’s gratuitous, but there’s a weird catharsis and comfort and safety where you’re just here for the fun and you know it’s not real. I find that really delightful. I have other subscriptions, but I love Shudder because it’s all horror. They have some really cool movies that I wouldn’t have found otherwise.

I love my lathe. In fact, I have a mug that says “I love my lathe” on it. I first used one when I was in my grad program, which was like a creative technology program at NYU. I discovered that I wasn’t much of a technologist, but I spent all my time in the fabrication shop. I got myself this Sherline lathe after graduating. It was my gift to myself. That was in 2014, so it’s been over 10 years, and it’s held up great. It’s really sturdy and powerful.

You put a piece of metal in the chuck, and a motor will spin it around. Then you can use a cutting tool to make these concentric shapes. There’s something really beautiful and mesmerizing about cutting material on a lathe. It requires focus, but it’s also very beautiful and meditative to see that material spin and change. It’s also very puzzle-y to figure out how to set things up and execute processes in the right order. And in addition to making stuff, you can also make your own tools that you can then use to make more stuff. I find that process so empowering and cool.

I started working at the Times in 2020 as a crossword editor, which is a role that I still have. In 2021, the Times acquired Wordle, and there was a pivot toward developing new games in-house. They started hosting “game jam” events where members of the Games team could come and pitch new ideas and features. Connections was pitched and developed by some of my colleagues, and when they wanted to release it as a 60-day public beta, they needed an editor to write the boards for that test. I was the only editor who didn’t have a game at the time, so they asked if I wanted to try writing them. That’s how I got involved with Connections.

For the book, it was interesting to think about how the experience of solving on paper would be different from solving digitally. It’s really fun to write in a book and doodle and mark up the categories with little glyphs and symbols. The book is a combination of my favorite boards from the archives, and a bunch of new boards in a print-only format. There’s a couple foldouts. There’s some tips and tricks and a little bit of background on how the game is made. There’s a jumbo Connections that’s eight categories, and there’s a meta puzzle where if you solve the eight categories, the first letter of the first word in each category spells something. There are some annotations in the back about certain boards I liked over the years. There’s a “make your own Connections” page at the end that you can tear out and give to someone to solve. It was fun to have a bigger canvas and to think about puzzles specifically for print. And the designers and everyone who worked on it created a really beautiful object. I’m really proud of it.