Puzzling It Out: Crosswords at the Library
At the Ewing Branch Library, like all of our locations, just about anything you take home will have to be returned. But one of our most popular items is something you can keep -- you can even deface it! -- it’s a copy of the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle. Every week our staff provides copies of the puzzle from the New York Times Magazine, and we often run out by mid-week.
I’ve been doing puzzles for most of my life. It’s a daily routine that started in earnest when my uncle gave me a subscription to the magazine Games for my birthday when I was in middle school. I enjoyed it so much, he renewed the subscription for many years. Games was published ten times a year, and when it arrived, all schoolwork was set aside until I had worked my way through as many of the puzzles as I could tackle! The magazine published many types of puzzles, all graded in difficulty from one to three stars -- spiral word puzzles, cryptograms, “What is it?” photo quizzes -- but the centerpiece of every issue was a huge crossword puzzle titled “The Ornery Crossword.” Its orneriness lay chiefly in the fact that it contained two complete sets of clues to the same set of answers -- one set easy (one star), the other set difficult (three stars). You could fold the page in such a way that you would only see one set of clues at a time. By the time I was in high school, I was using the difficult clues and finishing the puzzle. The editor of Games for all those years was Will Shortz.
So, when Will Shortz took over the editorship of the New York Times crossword puzzle in 1993, I sort of felt like I had already discovered him and the new, modern qualities he brought to this flagship institution. Where his predecessor, Eugene Maleska, had prized obscure classical references and arcane local knowledge, Shortz favored a Midwestern egalitarianism and a priority of wordplay and humor over elitism. He solidified the convention -- now also used by other major puzzles -- of having the week’s puzzles increase in difficulty, with Monday being the easiest and Saturday being the most challenging. (Sunday’s puzzle is the largest, but set at a Wednesday or Thursday level of difficulty.) This graded difficulty is, I believe, a major factor in the increasing popularity of the Times puzzle: it provides accessibility to novice solvers and gives them the tools to practice and raise their skill level. Another factor is the convenience of online solving by app or website, available by subscription.
New York Times puzzles are constructed by freelance contributors, all credited in the byline, and edited by Shortz. It is Shortz who determines and manipulates the difficulty level of each puzzle by rewriting many of the clues -- clearly a carryover from his days at Games. Shortz also created and runs the annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, held each March in Stamford, Connecticut, in addition to serving as “Puzzlemaster” each weekend on National Public Radio.
Crossword puzzle solving has been a popular American pastime for over one hundred years, with the first puzzle having been published by the New York World in 1913. Working a puzzle for a few minutes or an hour is a mental break from our busy lives and our worries. Puzzle solving is believed to have many benefits, from helping to keep aging minds sharp to keeping hearts healthy by reducing stress and blood pressure. Puzzles, says Shortz in the documentary Wordplay, satisfy a universal human need to “figure things out.” And it can be argued that people who work in libraries -- perhaps also, people who regularly use libraries -- are uniquely drawn to puzzle solving. As Marc Romano writes in Crossworld, “The real topic of any book about crosswords is all the information in the world.” Information, finding things, human needs - sounds like the reference desk to me!
At the library we have a number of books and videos about crosswords, with a surprising variety of genres and perspectives. Here are just a few:
Crossworld by Marc Romano
A first-person account of Romano’s foray into the world of crossword puzzles, interspersed with related background and history. Romano participates in the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament and provides unique insight into how the contest is run and what it takes to win. Romano interviewed Will Shortz quite a bit, and one consistent theory expressed by Shortz (and echoed by Romano) is the idea that solving puzzles carries an aspect of morality -- that serious solvers are good people. If there’s any truth to this, it may be connected to the key “flexibility of mind” that is required to solve well. If you spend a lot of time thinking of different ways to see things, it may have added benefits!
Cruciverbalism by Stanley Newman
Newman, the puzzle editor for Newsday, describes what it takes to construct an American crossword puzzle. American puzzles, in comparison to British ones, are more reliant on information-based clues and less on wordplay or so-called “cryptic” clues. They are somewhat easier to solve, but much more difficult to construct -- not because of the clues, but because of the conventions established in the 1940s that are still followed today. A Times-level crossword puzzle must have no words with fewer than three letters; every letter must be a part of two intersecting answers (“fill”); the puzzle should have no more than one-sixth black squares out of the total squares in the grid; and the puzzle has 180-degree rotational symmetry (the grid pattern is the same when rotated top to bottom). Knowing these rules makes it possible to solve a diagramless crossword -- one in which the across and down clues are given as usual, but the grid is empty and the solver must figure out where each answer begins and ends. Given the hint of the location of 1-Across, it’s not (quite) as hard as it sounds.
Four-letter Words: And Other Secrets of a Crossword Insider by Michelle Arnot
Arnot frames her discussion of the crossword puzzle’s history, and major characteristics, by noting that four-letter words are the bread and butter of crosswords, the ever-necessary fill that enables longer answers to be strung together crosswise. Cleverly, she uses many of these words (in bold and all caps) throughout the text and includes a comprehensive list of the most commonly used such answers in major puzzles.
Wordplay (DVD) Directed by Patrick Creadon
This 2006 documentary film focuses on the New York Times crossword and the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, with profiles of puzzle constructors and some solvers who happen to also be famous actors, musicians and politicians. President Bill Clinton and Senator Bob Dole relate the story of the legendary 1996 puzzle appearing on the eve of the presidential election, in which both “CLINTON ELECTED” and “BOB DOLE ELECTED” were viable answers to the clue “Lead story in tomorrow’s newspaper (!)”
Amy Ray and Emily Saliers, of the indie-folk duo Indigo Girls, appear in the film and make reference to one aspect of puzzle solving that I’ve always found to be fascinating and mysterious -- you can be stuck on a section of a puzzle, totally blocked and sure that you will never be able to decode the answers and complete the grid. Then, after a few hours or days, you can return to the puzzle and it’s like the gears in your mind have shifted -- a new way of thinking allows the answers to become clear. Ray even says that crossword solving affected her approach to songwriting; it gave her “a sense of faith that writer’s block is not really real, and that if you sit there and work on it long enough, just like when you’re doing a crossword, something’s going to come out.”
The Crossword Mysteries: A Puzzle to Die For (DVD) Directed by Don McCutcheon
A fun made-for-television movie planned as the first installment of a new “Crossword Mysteries” series produced by The Hallmark Channel. Lacey Chabert plays a New York newspaper crossword editor very clearly based on Will Shortz (he’s an executive producer) -- she even plays table tennis just as Shortz does. (In fact, Shortz owns the Westchester Table Tennis Center in suburban New York, and was recently profiled in local news media for achieving a world record of 2,500 consecutive days playing table tennis.) An anonymous puzzle contributor is found to be placing art-heist instructions in published puzzles, and when she discovers this, the editor at first has a hard time convincing the police to take her seriously. This may seem far-fetched; however, in January of 1998, Shortz did publish a puzzle that amounted to a personalized wedding proposal requested by an avid solver -- which was successful!
There are also fiction titles featuring crosswords -- notably, Parnell Hall’s Puzzle Lady Mystery series of novels featuring custom crosswords authored by Will Shortz that move the story forward. If by now you’re wondering if there’s any part of the crossword puzzle world not inhabited by Will Shortz -- the world’s only holder of a college degree in enigmatology -- the answer is no! Next time you’re in your local branch, pick up a puzzle and join the fun.
I’ve been doing puzzles for most of my life. It’s a daily routine that started in earnest when my uncle gave me a subscription to the magazine Games for my birthday when I was in middle school. I enjoyed it so much, he renewed the subscription for many years. Games was published ten times a year, and when it arrived, all schoolwork was set aside until I had worked my way through as many of the puzzles as I could tackle! The magazine published many types of puzzles, all graded in difficulty from one to three stars -- spiral word puzzles, cryptograms, “What is it?” photo quizzes -- but the centerpiece of every issue was a huge crossword puzzle titled “The Ornery Crossword.” Its orneriness lay chiefly in the fact that it contained two complete sets of clues to the same set of answers -- one set easy (one star), the other set difficult (three stars). You could fold the page in such a way that you would only see one set of clues at a time. By the time I was in high school, I was using the difficult clues and finishing the puzzle. The editor of Games for all those years was Will Shortz.
So, when Will Shortz took over the editorship of the New York Times crossword puzzle in 1993, I sort of felt like I had already discovered him and the new, modern qualities he brought to this flagship institution. Where his predecessor, Eugene Maleska, had prized obscure classical references and arcane local knowledge, Shortz favored a Midwestern egalitarianism and a priority of wordplay and humor over elitism. He solidified the convention -- now also used by other major puzzles -- of having the week’s puzzles increase in difficulty, with Monday being the easiest and Saturday being the most challenging. (Sunday’s puzzle is the largest, but set at a Wednesday or Thursday level of difficulty.) This graded difficulty is, I believe, a major factor in the increasing popularity of the Times puzzle: it provides accessibility to novice solvers and gives them the tools to practice and raise their skill level. Another factor is the convenience of online solving by app or website, available by subscription.
New York Times puzzles are constructed by freelance contributors, all credited in the byline, and edited by Shortz. It is Shortz who determines and manipulates the difficulty level of each puzzle by rewriting many of the clues -- clearly a carryover from his days at Games. Shortz also created and runs the annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, held each March in Stamford, Connecticut, in addition to serving as “Puzzlemaster” each weekend on National Public Radio.
Crossword puzzle solving has been a popular American pastime for over one hundred years, with the first puzzle having been published by the New York World in 1913. Working a puzzle for a few minutes or an hour is a mental break from our busy lives and our worries. Puzzle solving is believed to have many benefits, from helping to keep aging minds sharp to keeping hearts healthy by reducing stress and blood pressure. Puzzles, says Shortz in the documentary Wordplay, satisfy a universal human need to “figure things out.” And it can be argued that people who work in libraries -- perhaps also, people who regularly use libraries -- are uniquely drawn to puzzle solving. As Marc Romano writes in Crossworld, “The real topic of any book about crosswords is all the information in the world.” Information, finding things, human needs - sounds like the reference desk to me!
At the library we have a number of books and videos about crosswords, with a surprising variety of genres and perspectives. Here are just a few:
A first-person account of Romano’s foray into the world of crossword puzzles, interspersed with related background and history. Romano participates in the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament and provides unique insight into how the contest is run and what it takes to win. Romano interviewed Will Shortz quite a bit, and one consistent theory expressed by Shortz (and echoed by Romano) is the idea that solving puzzles carries an aspect of morality -- that serious solvers are good people. If there’s any truth to this, it may be connected to the key “flexibility of mind” that is required to solve well. If you spend a lot of time thinking of different ways to see things, it may have added benefits!
Newman, the puzzle editor for Newsday, describes what it takes to construct an American crossword puzzle. American puzzles, in comparison to British ones, are more reliant on information-based clues and less on wordplay or so-called “cryptic” clues. They are somewhat easier to solve, but much more difficult to construct -- not because of the clues, but because of the conventions established in the 1940s that are still followed today. A Times-level crossword puzzle must have no words with fewer than three letters; every letter must be a part of two intersecting answers (“fill”); the puzzle should have no more than one-sixth black squares out of the total squares in the grid; and the puzzle has 180-degree rotational symmetry (the grid pattern is the same when rotated top to bottom). Knowing these rules makes it possible to solve a diagramless crossword -- one in which the across and down clues are given as usual, but the grid is empty and the solver must figure out where each answer begins and ends. Given the hint of the location of 1-Across, it’s not (quite) as hard as it sounds.
Arnot frames her discussion of the crossword puzzle’s history, and major characteristics, by noting that four-letter words are the bread and butter of crosswords, the ever-necessary fill that enables longer answers to be strung together crosswise. Cleverly, she uses many of these words (in bold and all caps) throughout the text and includes a comprehensive list of the most commonly used such answers in major puzzles.
This 2006 documentary film focuses on the New York Times crossword and the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, with profiles of puzzle constructors and some solvers who happen to also be famous actors, musicians and politicians. President Bill Clinton and Senator Bob Dole relate the story of the legendary 1996 puzzle appearing on the eve of the presidential election, in which both “CLINTON ELECTED” and “BOB DOLE ELECTED” were viable answers to the clue “Lead story in tomorrow’s newspaper (!)”
Amy Ray and Emily Saliers, of the indie-folk duo Indigo Girls, appear in the film and make reference to one aspect of puzzle solving that I’ve always found to be fascinating and mysterious -- you can be stuck on a section of a puzzle, totally blocked and sure that you will never be able to decode the answers and complete the grid. Then, after a few hours or days, you can return to the puzzle and it’s like the gears in your mind have shifted -- a new way of thinking allows the answers to become clear. Ray even says that crossword solving affected her approach to songwriting; it gave her “a sense of faith that writer’s block is not really real, and that if you sit there and work on it long enough, just like when you’re doing a crossword, something’s going to come out.”
A fun made-for-television movie planned as the first installment of a new “Crossword Mysteries” series produced by The Hallmark Channel. Lacey Chabert plays a New York newspaper crossword editor very clearly based on Will Shortz (he’s an executive producer) -- she even plays table tennis just as Shortz does. (In fact, Shortz owns the Westchester Table Tennis Center in suburban New York, and was recently profiled in local news media for achieving a world record of 2,500 consecutive days playing table tennis.) An anonymous puzzle contributor is found to be placing art-heist instructions in published puzzles, and when she discovers this, the editor at first has a hard time convincing the police to take her seriously. This may seem far-fetched; however, in January of 1998, Shortz did publish a puzzle that amounted to a personalized wedding proposal requested by an avid solver -- which was successful!
There are also fiction titles featuring crosswords -- notably, Parnell Hall’s Puzzle Lady Mystery series of novels featuring custom crosswords authored by Will Shortz that move the story forward. If by now you’re wondering if there’s any part of the crossword puzzle world not inhabited by Will Shortz -- the world’s only holder of a college degree in enigmatology -- the answer is no! Next time you’re in your local branch, pick up a puzzle and join the fun.
-- Sarah Legins, Ewing Branch
Comments
Post a Comment