The Year In Crosswords, 2020

Another great year!

…FOR CROSSWORD PUZZLES ONLY AND SPECIFICALLY.

Given that the vast majority of the potential solving public spent most of the year stuck indoors for reasons, we spent a whole lotta time filling in grids. A few new features debuted, the tournament scene shifted online, charity projects proliferated, Crossword Twitter got snarkier. It was also a year certain long-simmering controversies came to a head, and a year that some once-scorned brands achieved new prominence.

Standard caveat: I’m one guy and there’s a lot to cover (seemingly more than ever), so if I missed some fact (or an aspect of a bigger story), let me know. I’ll put it in. Now then, let’s get down to it!

Controversies

Since I started studying the field in the early 2010s, and for as long as most people on Earth have been alive, The New York Times has been at the center of crossword culture. That statement continued to be true this year (and the smart money remains on it not changing next year), but the NYT has been unusually on the defensive lately. Other publications have grabbed a bigger share of positive buzz, and its own puzzle’s politics grew harder to ignore.

In March, The Atlantic ran a Natan Last piece with two titles: “The Fight to Make Crosswords More Inclusive” was the page title and URL, but the actual headline was the somewhat sterner “The Hidden Bigotry of Crosswords.” This was not the first or the second time a notable publication had taken the NYT to task for being, shall we say, out of touch with an increasingly diverse audience. This time, though, the story didn’t end with the NYT simply apologizing for a particularly clueless clue and moving on.

A petition arrived soon after with hundreds of signatures, building on Last’s article and the testimony of Claire Muscat, a former NYT test-solver who’d found her experience matched Last’s observations. “Our intention is not just to register concern or to chastise an institution that we love, which has thrived under the visionary leadership of Will Shortz. Instead, we are asking for three concrete measures…