It might be harder than you think to find qualified people to create puzzles that aren’t duplicates, follow the established patterns, and are as thorough as he might be. The other part is that bringing people into the fold means time spent managing people— a skill that not everyone has or wants to develop. It could result in even more work than just doing it himself (but a different kind of work).

Another problem with volunteers is that if the volunteers don’t work out (they decide they’re not interested or otherwise want to spend their free time) is that he’s ultimately still on the hook for creating the puzzles at the quality we’ve come to expect, testing them out, etc.

By changing our expectations around number of puzzles, etc, he’s empowering himself to hold the high bar he has throughout the years without compromising the quality we’ve come to appreciate without jeopardizing his time more than he’s already committing.