The Year In Crosswords, 2018
The year saw the NYT crossword reach a new milestone of readership, with an accompanying increase in pay for contributors, and other well-known publications like The New Yorker and South Africa’s Sunday Times and BusinessDay looked to follow suit with new crossword features of their own. New Yorker contributors give an interview here. One of these new features, Motherboard’s “Solve the Internet,” was short-lived, but constructor-editor Caleb Madison landed on his feet with the Atlantic Daily Crossword.
There is still plenty of gender inequality baked into the word-games world, as seen in this widely discussed WSJ piece and this response to it. As Emily Ludolph reports, clues and answers can be reflective of societal norms and somewhat conservative, especially in newspapers.
But modernization and diversification, especially gender diversity, scored a few wins this year. The female percentage of NYT crossword contributors debuting, though still a lot less than 50%, is on the way up: 28% this year over a 25-year average of 20%. A new Facebook group dedicated to diversifying the talent pool got its start. And indie puzzle packs The Inkubator, a successful Kickstarter project, as well as Women of Letters and Queer Qrosswords have gotten more crosswords by female and LGBTQ creators into the market. The latter two collections have also raised tens of thousands of dollars for worthy charities.
The American Crossword Puzzle Tournament has a new winner, Erik Agard, who also got a regular gig at the Arizona Daily Star and released an app of crossword-solving advice before completing his annus mirabilis with a four-day streak on Jeopardy. As seen on HBO, Agard seems ready to take crossword language into a less lily-white future.
Elsewhere in the ACPT: Matt Ginsberg contemplated retiring Dr. Fill when — and if — it succeeded in defeating all the ACPT’s human competitors. However, after years of continuous improvement, the crossword-solving program suffered a setback, dropping from 11th place in 2017 to 78th in 2018. One way or another, Ginsberg has broadened his resume with the publication of the SF novel Factor Man, based on work not unlike that which went into the “Doctor.”
Of the tournament’s several writeups, the liveliest is Deadspin’s.
Other Tourneys: The Upstate Crossword Championship started up in Colonie, New York; Will Shortz lent his presence to the Akron Crossword Puzzle Tournament; Washington, DC’s Indie500 and New York City’s Lollapuzzoola and Bryant Park Coffee and Crosswords Tournament continue. Boswords, now in its second year, attracted a married couple to participate.
The Westchester and Westport tourneys had the same winner, Jeffrey L. Schwartz.
The Times competition in the UK finally saw an end to Mark Goodliffe’s incredible 11-year streak, with victory instead going to Roger Crabtree, a former pensions clerk. Another tidbit from that same article: the UK Times is now publishing a “quintagram,” five cryptic clues with no grid for the morning commute.
Times Talk: The New York Times publishes more articles of interest about crosswords than anyone else: sometimes it seems like it publishes more of them than everyone else put together. Among its highlights are a report on how technology has changed the puzzle, this year’s how-to-make-a-crossword guide and “Solver Stories” like this tale of a mother’s changing relationship with her son as he reaches adulthood. (Perhaps following suit, The Globe and Mail had a similar “solving story” from a man about his grandfather, while The Telegraph is mulling on its own changes and launching a puzzle newsletter.)
Celebrity co-constructors this year (not just celebrities within the crossword field — only Will Shortz straddles that line) included John Lithgow, Rachel Maddow and Weird Al Yankovic.
The NYT also published a set of California puzzles and possibly the first-ever audio crossword.
NYT Styles editor Choire Sicha has even talked a bit about making the crossword into a TV show. If so, that wouldn’t be the first recent foray into television for Shortz, who got name-dropped and briefly guest-starred in an episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine this year and is working on a mystery movie for Hallmark. He even got a hotel meeting room named for him this year.
Four-Headline Day: Shortz and Agard may have been more prominent overall, but arguably nobody had a better single day than Patrick Merrell, who spent August 9 with his byline on The New York Times, People, the Crossword app by Devarai, and a snarky cartoon on NYT’s Wordplay (aimed at the in-crowd of crossword commentators).
Controversial Answer of the Year: LENE, which used an incorrect clue on top of a pretty obscure meaning, and that’s coming from a guy who almost minored in linguistics. If the NYT had to publish a grid with this string of letters, it seems like Shortz and co. could’ve just invoked the singer Lene Lovich, as they’ve done before, or Lene Nystrøm Rasted of “Barbie Girl.” Instead, when LENE appeared again in the NYT later that year, it used “ ___ Hau, pioneering physicist from Denmark.” But at least they’re not relying on Urban Dictionary.
Dishonorable mentions: SURGEON and DILDO from this Campaign for Real Ale crossword, which managed not one but two wildly offensive clues. ROSS when paired with the clue “Op-ed writer Douthat,” from the NYT.
Honorable Un-mention: 123 (“Easy as ___”) got some flak from Gizmodo, but that just seems like sour grapes to me: it’s a great out-of-the-box misdirect.
Dumbest Headline: The Daily Mirror is convinced that crossword constructors, at least British ones, are doomed to fall before the robots. A couple of caveats here: the article seems to be based entirely on the beliefs of Marc Breman, who was promoting The Foggiest Notion, a book the Mirror erroneously reported as a 2018 work. Also… it’s The Daily Mirror. Breman himself later qualified his statement a bit.
Boldest Claim: Breman also designed a crossword he claimed to be the world’s hardest, estimating — somewhat cheekily — that it would take two years to complete. Solvers flocked to the challenge. Emeritus solvers and YouTubers Simon Anthony and Mark Goodliffe both solved it in under an hour.
Biggest Good News-Bad News Joke: Timothy Parker, the infamous plagiarist of the crossword-editing world, is finally — finally! — leaving Universal Uclick entirely, two years after USA Today kicked him to the curb and more than one full year after he alienated some remaining readers with an in-grid rape joke.
However, he is leaving to form his own game syndicate, offering multiple daily crosswords, Sudoku, and other puzzles, “all for free and with profit-sharing available,” which seems a bit contradictory. Still, Parker really wants you to know people are buying in: “ His new syndicate is open for business and got its first multi-million-user client within 20 minutes of launching.”
I’m sure you’ll join me in wishing this business venture all the success it deserves.
Crossword Proposals: Edward Fraser, with help from his father, composed a crossword for the Eastern Daily Press with facts about his now-fiancee Rachael Herman and the final across clue “It’s a question of love” (4,3,5,2). Matt Landever did much the same for Anna Porter in collaboration with Roseburg, Oregon’s News-Review, with his final clues “Will you please ___?” and a yes/no clue with a three-letter answer.
There’ve been other such proposal crosswords, and just so you know, their success rate has been 100% so far.
Crosswords and Neuroscience: Two authors of the study “Ultra‐high‐field fMRI insights on insight: Neural correlates of the Aha!‐moment” claim that crosswords’ dopamine release may be more potent than that of sex. (Maybe not second-by-second, but crosswords often last longer.) Meanwhile, some new evidence is in favor of word puzzles aiding the maintenance of attention, reasoning, and memory into old age… and some is against. Anecdotally, 107-year-old Jo Sunderland believes in their efficacy, while Kathy Hedberg worries about what her crossword-illiteracy says about her retirement.
Constructor David Astle had his brain scanned while solving clues as a dry run that may be expanded into another neurological study. It may raise eyebrows that Astle would be coaxed into an MRI tube by one of his readers, but he has a special relationship with his fan base, the DA Trippers.
Constructor Profiles
Logan Sperling is the new crossword-maker-in-residence for Kenosha, Wisconsin. Kathy Hui is the new crossword-maker-in-residence for Markham, Ontario, Canada.
David Steinberg, who’s racked up many achievements in his so-far short career, did a special local puzzle for Spokane and now runs a blog for his new Andrews-McMeel’s Puzzle Society Crossword.
Sam Ezersky, one of Will Shortz’s assistants, did a UVA-themed puzzle for his alma mater’s bicentennial. You can find more NYT contributor profiles in the Puzzle Making section.
Business Insider catches up with Trip Payne, co-editor for Zynga’s Crosswords With Friends.
Finally, his work isn’t NYT quality, but Myles Mellor has carved out a niche as one of the most prolific crossword-makers alive today, and when his puzzle isn’t there, people notice.
Obituaries
Nuala Considine was perhaps the world’s most productive and longest-working crossword-maker, supplying puzzles to various European, Australian, and American outlets from age 18 and for over 70 years until her death. Although she eschewed obscure references, Considine had a roving intelligence and learned new terms for specialty markets like New Scientist and Amateur Gardening.
Mel Rosen was the co-writer of The Compleat Cruciverbalist, one of the first and most valuable books on constructing, and a mainstay in the American crossword scene for ages. Will Shortz and David Steinberg have eulogies.
Audrey Young, aka Audreus and Mutt, had made crosswords for The Guardian and The Financial Times, the former since the 1960s, until around 2013. She was 96. Here are some of her best clues. Her loss prompted the Guardian editor to meditate on changing times.
David Crossland, AKA Dac, was a former teacher who worked for The Independent from 2002 to 2018, though he’d done some crossword construction as far back as 1976. He was 70.
Best Crossword Book of the Year: Arvin Ahmadi, Down and Across. NPR report on it here, Mashable piece here. Honorable mention: The Moment Before Drowning.
Odds and Ends
Molly Pennington, PhD, has a roundup of especially tricky crossword clues for Reader’s Digest.
Vat19 has a crossword jigsaw available.
Ars Technica writer Nate Anderson gets a fleeting feeling of weighty signifcance.
Malii Watts Carolyn creates a protest puzzle with seven words the Trump administration has done its best to censor.
Finally, the soothing and repetitive genre known as autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) videos is the fastest-growing genre on YouTube, so perhaps it’s not a surprise that this is the most popular crossword-related video of the year: