Chem teacher creates crosswords to inspire students

In May 2021, Nate Cardin stood before the periodic table he keeps in his classroom and hit “record” on his phone. “I’m used to being under the pressure of a lot of eyes on me in front of this board,” he said in the video, pointing to the periodic table. “So having a lot of eyes on me in front of the Wheel of Fortune board would be no problem,” he said, referring to the television game show.

A year later, Cardin achieved a lifelong dream when he competed on—and won—Wheel of Fortune. He won big again in June 2024, this time on the US version of the quiz show The 1% Club.

Cardin, a crossword enthusiast and high school chemistry teacher, applied to the shows after his students began coming to him with fears of failure that stopped them from trying new things. He decided to model bravery for them: “I thought, if I win or lose, I need to show my students I’m willing to put myself out there and maybe encourage them to do the same.”

His journey to solving puzzles under a national spotlight started in a chemistry lab. “I always liked puzzles of all kinds,” Cardin says. In college, he gravitated toward chemistry because it had the types of problems he liked “puzzling over and getting stumped by.” He also enjoyed helping others solve complex chemistry problems.

When Cardin entered graduate school at Stanford University in 2005, he had his sights set on academia because he loved teaching. “I was naive as to what being a professor entailed,” he says. The sacrifices he saw early-career researchers make led him to reconsider. When an old friend suggested that he try high school teaching, he says, “it was kind of a revelation for me.”

Cardin wrapped up his PhD in synthetic organic chemistry and took a job teaching high school chemistry at Harvard-Westlake School, a private school in the Los Angeles area. Years later, sitting next to a colleague before a back-to-school assembly, Cardin rediscovered his childhood love of puzzles. “I was showing him a crossword puzzle I was making,” says Mike Grier, a former math teacher at Harvard-Westlake. “He seemed very interested. He’s got a great mind for puzzles.”

Cardin constructed his first crossword puzzle as a birthday present for Grier. Hidden inside the puzzle was a secret message that when decoded revealed 28 birthday candles, “for my 28th birthday,” Grier says. “He did an incredible job for his first puzzle; it was superclever.” After that, Cardin was hooked.

Cardin’s background as a scientist equipped him well for the world of crosswords. To tackle research problems, he says, “you build up skills and learn to recognize the patterns, then you start to realize what to do next.” This way of thinking helped him with crossword construction. And while the first few puzzles Cardin submitted for publication were turned down, he knew from his time in science that rejection and feedback are part of the process of mastering a craft.

As Cardin got more into designing crosswords, he found himself in a landscape that felt strangely similar to the world of scientific research. Instead of participating in #ChemTwitter and scientific conferences, Cardin engaged with his new network on social media and at crossword tournaments. “There’s a whole community where you can exchange puzzles with each other, solve each other’s puzzles, and give each other feedback in a supportive way,” he says. That kind of peer review makes his own work stronger.

And as is the case in many fields, including science, crossword creators have reckoned with a lack of diversity in recent years. Crossword clues are historically written from one perspective—that of the cisgender, straight, White man—which can make people from other groups feel excluded.

“A huge connection for me between science and crosswords is feeling like whether you belong or not,” Cardin says.

In graduate school, Cardin didn’t see much queer representation in the chemistry lab. “I needed an outlet to be my full and authentic self,” he says, so he helped start an organization called Grad Q—a group that’s still around today—to foster community among LGBTQ+ graduate students at Stanford.

When Cardin got into crosswords, the feeling he had in grad school—of having to erase his identity to be able to participate—returned. “I found that if I wanted to solve crosswords quickly, I had to learn to pretend to be straight,” he says. But his time with Grad Q taught him how to respond. In 2017, Cardin curated a set of crossword puzzle packs called Queer Qrosswords. The two packs of LGBTQ+-themed puzzles feature contributions from 43 LGBTQ+ crossword constructors and have raised over $70,000 for related charities.

Through his work, Cardin seeks to add a modern, queer edge to crosswords. He hopes this will attract a younger and more diverse audience to crosswords. “My goal is to get rid of this idea that people are unintelligent if they can’t solve a puzzle,” he says. “I want to show them that they’re not the problem; it’s the old, dusty crosswords that are the problem.” When crosswords reflect the diversity of its solvers, Cardin says, the world of crosswords becomes more accessible for everyone.

Cardin also seeks to bring in new constructors, as well as new solvers. The wide array of connections he’s made through Queer Qrosswords allows him to connect veteran crossworders with LGBTQ+ people who are new to crossword design and may need extra support and mentorship. And at school, students seek him out to proofread their own crosswords. “I’m full-on Ted Lasso with my excitement and support,” Cardin says. “I want to encourage them.”

As a student at Westlake, Aidan Deshong never had Cardin as a chemistry teacher but asked him for guidance when Deshong began building his own puzzles. The two ended up collaborating on multiple crosswords for the school newspaper and later published a puzzle together in the Los Angeles Times. “That was a big step for me,” says Deshong, now an undergraduate at Harvey Mudd College. “I’m very touched by his kindness.”

Seven years after Cardin’s birthday puzzle for Grier, his crosswords have been published in Apple News, USA Today. and the New York Times. The days of constantly thinking about research problems are long gone; now it’s crosswords—and teaching, of course—that occupy his days.

“I think being a teacher, going through graduate school, being a crossword constructor—all of these different things built my communication skills,” Cardin says. Crosswords keep him learning, he says, which helps him relate to his students and their varied interests. And his time fielding rapid-fire questions from students in the chemistry lab prepared him well for the high-pressure environment of quiz-themed game shows.

While preparing for his next crossword, Cardin knows inspiration can strike at any point. When a student says something interesting, he quickly jots it down on whatever is closest so the concept doesn’t evaporate, “a lot like scientific ideas,” he says. Inspiration sometimes comes during relaxed moments—for instance, while on the couch watching a movie with his husband. If his husband sees Cardin counting on his fingers in an attempt to figure out if a phrase would fit within crossword constraints, “he knows I’ve had a fun little idea.”

Bec Roldan is a multimedia science journalist based in New York City.