The player

Why Thomas Küng (54) is successful with his puzzle agency and puzzle book publisher is not really a mystery. For one thing, he does his job with passion, which is always a good prerequisite. On the other hand, brainteasers are back in fashion: in the 1980s and 1990s, crossword puzzles were the domain of grandma and grandpa, but today you see bank employees and schoolgirls, salespeople and craftsmen, mothers and students in the streetcar, in the playground, in the lecture hall or during their lunch break. "I've also observed punks solving a Sudoku or crossword puzzle to pass the time," Küng says. "It amazes me, but I'm very happy about it. The image of puzzling has changed completely in the last 30 years." Commuter newspapers, where crossword puzzles and Kakuro, Sudoku and Bimaru are part of the short menu that people like to eat every day, have contributed in no small way to the new passion for puzzles.

Küng has a good nose for the wishes of his "solvers," as he has proven on several occasions: With the creation of Switzerland-specific puzzles for the Swiss market, with the offer of the number game Sudoku, which was invented by the Basel mathematician Leonhard Euler, and with Bimaru, as Küng has christened his ship-sinking for one. Küng produces and markets his puzzles with great success not only in Switzerland, but also in Austria and Germany. And if something doesn't go as Küng had imagined, he consoles himself with the thought: "It was worth a try." So far, this attitude has also saved Küng from the widespread Monday morning frustration. "What I do, I do very happily," he says. "I haven't felt like I'm working for a long time.

The puzzle agency has set the tone in the Swiss puzzle business for 14 years. Küng's most important competitor on the Swiss market is one of his former business partners: René Lehner. Since the separation of the partners in December 2007, Lehner has been running the Zurich-based puzzle factory. Like Küng, he sells puzzles to newspapers and magazines and produces his own puzzle magazines.

Career with puzzles

Küng was born in Zurich in 1956. In his wildest dreams, he wanted to become an ice hockey goalie, because he considered goalies to be game deciders and heroes. But Küng doesn't even play ice hockey. So after graduating from high school, he completes a teacher training course, simply because it's the fastest way. Küng works in this profession for three years. In 1980, an opportunity arises for the young teacher to work as a rock music journalist. He swaps blackboard and chalk for pad and pen and tours from concert to concert. Küng's interviews, concert reports and CD reviews appear, for example, in the NZZ, SonntagsBlick and Annabelle. "This period was defined by pure enthusiasm," Küng recalls. "I experienced many brilliant concerts, Joe Jackson, Paul Simon, Tina Turner, interviewed Mick Jagger and wrote a book about Polo Hofer. For the book baptism, the Rumpelstilz even reunited after a long quarrel.

From 1995, Küng also writes radio plays. They are produced with actors such as Mathias Gnädinger, Ueli Jäggi or Sabina Schneebeli and run on Swiss Radio DRS or are available in bookstores. At the same time, Küng founded Cartoon Pool in Zurich, a company that sells the work of cartoonists to magazines, newspapers and advertising agencies - a kind of artists' agency that Küng still runs today. Küng got the idea of running a cartoon agency from his friend, cartoonist Peter Gut. "Peter drew comic strips that were great, but were only printed in one newspaper, Küng says. "I thought that was a shame and put them in more newspapers. Word got around to other cartoonists, and so the Cartoon Pool developed very well.

The person who is responsible for the comics in the newspaper and magazine editorial offices often also takes care of the puzzles. "I sold a comic to Blick and was asked if I also had crossword puzzles," Küng says. "That's when I said, 'Not yet - but you'll have them in two weeks.'

Küng imported the puzzles he wanted from Germany, because at that time no one in Switzerland was producing puzzles on the scale he wanted. However, Küng is not satisfied with the quality of the puzzles: "They hardly contained any Swiss terms and the questions were often not clever enough for me,"- he says. "Nevertheless, I had to take responsibility for the delivered goods, of course. That was the reason why, after some time, I decided to make my own puzzles that meet the claim 'Swiss puzzles'.For large publishers, this segment is too small and thus uninteresting. But an agency with existing contacts to the media has a chance to succeed in the puzzle business. Küng has plenty of contacts through his work as a journalist and cartoon agent. And he fills the gap in the market.

Of course, Küng doesn't think up all the questions and answers he processes in his puzzles himself. He buys software that already contains a contingent of questions and terms. But what sounds simple is actually a lot of work: "I had to revise the entire vocabulary contained in the software, thousands of terms and paraphrases, myself. is like writing an encyclopedia. It's not just a matter of replacing typically German terms with typically Swiss ones, but also of eliminating errors and typos in the content. The bigger the medium to which Küng sells his puzzles, the trickier the mistakes: "You wouldn't believe what happens when a mistake appears in a crossword puzzle in the Migros magazine - especially if there's something to be won. Then the phones run hot there in the editorial office." Küng can't afford that. He works on the software for a year and a half until it meets his requirements.

Oblique and flexible

Küng has a compelling argument for selling his puzzles: A Swiss medium that can replace German with Swiss puzzles without having to pay more is quickly on board. Küng has now been producing Swiss puzzles for most of the major Swiss print media for 14 years. The demands of these publications are quite different. One medium wants a very complicated puzzle, another one that can be solved in a few minutes, commuter newspapers for example. "But make no mistake," says Küng. "Simple puzzles are often more difficult to create than complicated ones because we can only use a small vocabulary. But thanks to our well-positioned editorial team, we can even accommodate special requests. For SonntagsBlick, for example, the puzzle agency created a puzzle on the prince's wedding at short notice to satisfy the reader's short-term desire for royal details. "Media can only earn money with competitions if many solvers take part, says Küng. "And of course they only do so if the topics interest them and the questions are clearly solvable.

In 2001, after six years as a puzzle maker for Swiss media, Küng fills another gap in the market. He founded Küng-Verlag, which sells his puzzles in booklet and book form. "I thought that if Swiss newspapers now had Swiss puzzles in them and that was doing well, then a Swiss puzzle magazine should also be successful," says Küng. "I looked at the newsstand and could only find German puzzle magazines. Of course, I didn't know whether there were no Swiss magazines because no one had tried it yet or because competitors had long since lost out with it.Küng's market research at the kiosk is enough: His first product, the "Schweizer Rätsel-Heft," sells well. In the following years, the publisher conceives another 29 Kniffel booklets and books, not only for Switzerland, but also for Austria and Germany. The publications contain Sudoku, various types of picture puzzles such as nonograms, logic problems, Hashi, Bimaru, Kakuro as well as crossword puzzles, which for Austria are again equipped with country-specific language features. For this, Küng employs a small team of freelancers in Austria, who edit the vocabulary accordingly. Only Sudokus, nonograms and other visual puzzles are not produced by Küng himself, but he buys them from experts. This is because there are considerable differences in the quality of the popular number puzzles, and nono¬grams are purely handmade. So knitting them yourself is not advisable or would be far too time-consuming. "-We also supply the German market with our Sudokus and nonograms and have to assert ourselves there against a lot of competition, says Küng. "Now we have positioned ourselves as a supplier of the best Sudokus and nonograms. Of course, that has its price at the kiosk and in bookstores, but business is good.

Quality as the best recipe

Küng employs three full-time staff in the puzzle agency and six in the Küng publishing house. For special puzzles, he also draws on a pool of freelance puzzle authors. With this staff, he can also ensure the quality of the puzzles: Each puzzle is solved again by hand for checking before it goes out to the customer or is printed in one of the magazines. "Looking for puzzle authors is almost impossible, Küng emphasizes. "Crossword puzzle making is too fancy an activity for that. You can't encourage anyone to take up puzzles after all. That's why I have to wait until people get in touch with me who have puzzles in their blood, who have a passion for the job, like Küng himself, who has loved puzzles since he was a child and loves board games - even though he's a bad loser.

Küng's target audience is "everyone": "most people are interested in" puzzles, he says. "However, they puzzle for different reasons. As a result, we have a very mixed target group. For older people, puzzling is often a kind of memory training; children puzzle out of curiosity. Some are looking for an intellectual challenge, want to win something or simply pass their time. Others solve puzzles to switch off after work. Sudoku, for example, is perfect for that. Küng notices how a puzzle is received by people, especially when it's missing: When the Tages-Anzeiger once replaced the Bimaru with a second Sudoku, more than 200 ship-sinking fans complained to the editorial team. This response also surprised the puzzle producer.

Küng's latest coup is online and iPad versions of the most popular puzzles. "You can now get Bimaru on the iPad," he says. "And the iPad version of crosswords and Sudoku can also be integrated into other apps. We're working with various print media to develop iPad versions for crossword puzzles, Sudoku and Bimaru, which are interactive solutions that are integrated into their iPad layouts. So you can not only look at the puzzle, but also solve it directly on the screen. "D- By digitizing his puzzles, Küng is responding to the current app boom and the rapid rejuvenation of his target group. An application for the iPhone will only be available for Bimaru in June, but Küng will soon have to follow suit with the other puzzles. The puzzle community is waiting.
Anne-Friederike Heinrich

In a nutshell
Thomas Küng
*14.10.1956 in Zurich
1972-1977 Teacher training, Canton of Zurich
1980-1992 Free Rock
music journalist, Zurich
1992-1995 Author of radio plays and technical books, Zurich
since 1995 Managing Director Cartoon Pool, Zurich
since 1997 Managing Director Rätsel Agentur AG, Zurich
since 2001 Managing Director Küng Verlags AG, Zurich

www.raetsel.ch
www.cartoon.ch
www.kuengverlag.ch