A few years ago, Shortz included the word “beaner” in a puzzle. Shortz brought pop culture into crosswords, Tausig said. When Shortz became editor of The Times crossword in 1993, things began to change. “You’re making an assertion about what counts as ‘common knowledge.’”įor decades the people making decisions about what should be in a puzzle have been straight white men according to Tausig, who said crosswords were a “very much elite, hyper educated, white, New York City thing, where if you didn’t know chess and your classics you were screwed.” “Whether you want it or not, there’s a kind of inherent politics ,” said Michael Sharp, a SUNY-Binghamton English professor who, under the pseudonym Rex Parker, pens a blog critiquing The Times crossword and has constructed puzzles for them. On March 21, 1943, the New York Times crossword clue was “author of a bestseller.” The answer: six letters long “HITLER.” Hitler still appears in the Times crosswords, but his last name hasn’t been an answer since 1984 (clued as “history’s blackest.”) The types of clues and answers in crosswords have shifted dramatically. So you also have this responsibility to at least be aware of what it is that you’re feeding those people.” “Hundreds of thousands of people are consuming this thing on a daily basis and paying for it. “During the pandemic, the same type of reckoning that we’ve had in the rest of American society…where we’re looking at representation, we’re looking at inclusion,” said Rebecca Neipris co-host of the Crossnerds podcast. At a time when debates about language anchor political discourse and incorrect pronouns spark vicious attacks, the fact that culture wars are being played out in crossword puzzles makes sense. Sex is just one of the many contentious issues surrounding crossword puzzles. The AV Club crossword, however, has published “pegging.” While an article on pegging might run in the actual newspaper, Tausig said, in the crossword, things are kept more PG. References to “pegging,” will never show up in The Times, according to Benjamin Tausig editor of the indie American Values Club crossword (which formerly ran in The Onion), and author of The Curious History of the Crossword.
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