Kyle Mahowald

Kyle Mahowald is Assistant Professor of Linguistics at The University of Texas at Austin. He works on what computational language models can tell us about human language processing. He has worked specifically on how computers solve crosswords and word games, such as in Decrypting Cryptic Crosswords: Semantically Complex Wordplay Puzzles as a Target for NLP, published at the major machine learning conference NeurIPS. A former intern to Will Shortz and one-time holder of the record for the youngest Sunday NYT crossword construtor, Mahowald is also himself a cruciverbalist, having published 18 crosswords in the New York Times. Mahowald holds an A.B. in English from Harvard (summa cum laude), an M.Phil in General Linguistics from Oxford, and a Ph.D. in cognitive science from MIT.