Nate Gallant: Is there any more heartening (albeit journalistically low stakes) of an underdog story in the depressing current media industry than the meteoric rise of the crossword puzzle? It has gone from a habit I was ridiculed for as an undergraduate to a nearly ubiquitous app for the New York Times-subscribed commuter. NYT’s puzzle is fun, and relatively accessible. It is also undoubtedly the introduction for many, including myself, to the joy of puzzling. But it is also, in their increasing tilt towards the bland dreams of universal consumption, aggressively lacking in style and personality.
But what might a personality mean for such a thing as a crossword puzzle, which still retains its reputation as a semi-boring, stuck-on-a-train, cranky grandpa sort of activity? One way to find an answer is to look further afield for the different kinds of crossword puzzles to be found out in the wild.
The Times, in their own parlance, opts for an "evergreen" approach. They attempt to simultaneously document culture while remaining somewhat outside anything that might timestamp the puzzle. Ideally, this relies on durable wordplay. Still, the clues and answers feature some topical references, which are generally drawn from a vague-yet-definable, oft-repeating set of bougie white cultural references; 19th-century opera and literature; NPR host names; casual French and Japanese vocabulary; and what I think of as upmarket dad-puns. Nas will make an appearance every once in a while, but you're more likely to see Ari Shapiro or Tina Fey.
The clues are still, texturally, very much reaching towards some Anglo-centric norm of spelling, syntax, and erudition. There are few if no diacritics, for instance, and so Spanish speakers will find themselves filling in the word for anus (ano) instead of year (año) for a clue such as "A year in the Yucatan,” something I imagine to be an elaborate and long-running joke among puzzle-makers.
The Times' clues are sparing, withholding even. They become increasingly inscrutable and contracted as the week goes on and the level of difficulty increases. The largest of the week's puzzles, the one in the Sunday magazine, is ostensibly the most difficult — though I would argue the Saturday is often much harder to parse for the uninitiated given the sheer number of single word clues and general obscurity of reference. Skill at the puzzle usually comes from learning the stock words and associations that they assume to be universal to their readership, and relatively frozen in time (hence, "evergreen").
Both themeless and themed puzzles will almost never have a direct cultural reference among their longest answers, but rather draw from elaborate wordplay or long idioms. This tactic might help to monetize their back catalog, from a long-running series of crossword books to the now freestanding Times puzzling app, which houses much more than the crossword, but also has about 25 years of archival puzzles. In this sense, evergreen is inherently a lie: nothing that has an issued and revised dictionary could be so eternal. This appellation, drawn from the stock phrases of contemporary media-speak, is at best an editorial orientation aimed at accessibility and at worst, a kind of subterranean ideology about monoculture.
There is also a more topical kind of puzzle, somewhat better represented by, say, the relatively recent addition of the New Yorker puzzle, or the Chronicle of Higher Education (now discontinued). A good way to spot one of these is by the longest clues, which tend towards an answer drawn from pop-culture, literature, or the current newscycle. That's to say, the biggest "test" of these puzzles, the 20-letter clue smack in the middle of the square, is a demonstration of how much you've read or paid attention to the news that week, rather than how much you've done the puzzle and come to understand its metaphorical syntax.
Beyond these mainstream puzzles, my favorites are really to be found in the much stranger and harder to categorize indie puzzle community. There is no inherent connection between a crossword puzzle and the newspaper, other than that it was the largest publishing platform when the puzzle was first put out for public consumption at the turn of the 19th century. For those looking to dip their toe into non-legacy media edited puzzles, I recommend, personally, the American Values Crossword Club (AVCX).
In contrast to the Times, AVCX has a great deal of personality, and in not being afraid to mark their puzzles with the apparent taint of the moment, they achieve a much more dynamic and engaging variety of trivia and wordplay. They are also very funny. This might be expected, given the AVCX puzzle was, at some point in its history, an outgrowth of the puzzle section that accompanied the print version of The Onion, way back in the day. AVCX now functions through a subscription model, and produces the most varied, inventive, and formally exciting collection of puzzles that I have encountered, having puzzled since freshman year of high-school.
The site is quite playful with both the norms of evergreen and topical puzzles, but its creators do not take their endeavor too seriously. They do not bottleneck access, either — you can use an app that allows you to download puzzles made by others directly on your phone, or you can just print the PDF (or do it on a tablet with a stylus, if you're so inclined). They offer a "classic" themed puzzle, which is something closer to the evergreen of the NYT, a sort of signature, punchy "AVCX+", some minis, a Cryptic of the British variety, and some trivia every week. But the puzzles are more heterogeneous, harder to pin down. For those interested, I recommend checking out their sample puzzles, in particular, this one by prolific constructor Rafael Musa.
Another piece of their model that I appreciate is the community of puzzle-makers that have been clearly and intentionally developed among its founders. Their editing, done by an experienced collective of indie and professional constructors, does not bear the mark of an institutionally mandated (Shortz) voice. AVCX highlights unique individual puzzle-makers, who often have their own blogs of crossword puzzles you can download for free or support with an individual donation. This is how I learned about Leonard Williams, whose anarchist crossword collection Black Blocks, White Squares is a favorite of mine; Erik Agard, one of my favorite puzzle makers out there today, whose elegant, playful, and often formally funny puzzles now often appear in the Times and New Yorker; and the immense and incredible trove from "These Puzzles Fund Abortions," edited by Brooke Husic, a collection of great, somewhat more topical puzzles of varying levels of difficult to which you can access with proof of a direct donation to a nonprofit offering abortion access.
This collective approach to crosswords, both individual- and community-oriented, resists the homogeneity of larger institutions. AVCX fits within digital media’s larger turn toward smaller, subscription-based spaces — a niche, sustainable service. When I do one of their puzzles, I get that old feeling that I’ve stumbled on a small corner of the internet full of incredible joy, earnestness, and creativity.
Puzzmo makes an excellent daily midi-sized crossword
Amen to that! -indie constructor