Thinking Inside the Box by Adrienne Raphel review adventures with crosswords – The Guardian

It is one of lifes great injustices that America claims to be the birthplace of crosswords. Yes, the first Word-Cross puzzle ran in 1913 in the New York Worlds Fun supplement, instructing readers to fill in the small squares with words which agree with the following definitions, but the man responsible, Arthur Wynn, was born in Liverpool. Whats more, his idea wasnt original but based on similar word puzzles hed enjoyed in childrens newspapers before emigrating.

More grievous is that Americans dont even do proper crosswords, making do with the type this newspaper deems Quick. By proper I mean cryptic, the kind that separates true cruciverbalists from mere dabblers, invented in the UK in 1925. To me, the true crossword is the cryptic, its concise cousin an aberration. I have my own family to thank for my stringent criteria: my great-grandfather, Prebendary AF Ritchie, set them weekly for the Listener magazine. I still remember his own puzzle collection, published under the pseudonym Afrit, being brandished by my grandpa, who seemed to think I would be a natural successor to Afrits talents. Alas no.

But then I read Thinking Inside the Box and realised the richness of the American relationship to crosswords. Adrienne Raphel, an aficionado, mixes history with reportage from the crossword frontlines. She journeys to Stamford, Connecticut, for the annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, and takes a crossword-themed cruise to mark 75 years of New York Timess puzzles. Her writing is packed with the sort of beautifully observed details youd expect from a New Yorker contributor. At the ACPT, the reigning aesthetic was orthotics meets checkerboard. A snippet about competitive puzzlers preferring a lower case e because its quicker to scrawl than an E conveys the competitors dedication.

She has a stab at submitting her own puzzle to the NYTs crossword editor, Will Shortz. The chapter on her own compilation doubles as a useful social history. In the middle of the 20th century, the New York Times crossword became Americas version of BBC English. Being able to complete the crossword signalled that youd arrived in a certain echelon of education, and no matter your background, you could manoeuvre in a specific aspirational cultural milieu.

Raphel describes how the composer Stephen Sondheim tried and failed to convince Americans to up their crossword game. There are crossword puzzles and crossword puzzles, she quotes him saying in a 1968 New York magazine article. To call the composer of [an American] crossword an author may seem to be dignifying a gnat, he quipped, but cryptics were different, Raphel writes. Sondheim wrote several cryptics but the genre remained niche.

Although the book comes billed as equally suitable for crossword virgins as superfans, Raphel waits until chapter nine to confess she is average at best. Im a hunt-and-peck solver I admire cryptic crosswords from afar, like bonsai. She broadens her focus from American puzzle fans, dipping into the crosswords literary roots. Vladimir Nabokov thought in crosswords, publishing the first Russian puzzle in 1924 from Berlin while in France, Georges Perec created complex mots croiss. In Kirchstetten, Austria, WH Auden filled in conversational lulls by filling in puzzles. Back in the UK, Arthur Conan Doyle, Dorothy Sayers and PG Wodehouse all liberally deployed crosswords as plot devices.

Raphels preoccupation with the American form and US crossword personalities means that she misses the opportunity to delve deeper into how Edward Powys Mathers invented the worlds toughest puzzle challenge for the Saturday Westminster Gazette. (He also established the tradition that cryptic setters use a pseudonym: his was Torquemada, the first Spanish grand inquisitor.) And she omits Afrit, my great-grandfather, and his golden rule of cryptic clueing - I need not mean what I say, but I must say what I mean from his 1949 book, Armchair Crosswords. (This newspapers own crossword editor, Hugh Stephenson, has said Afrit was one of the forces centrally involved in codifying the rules of the modern cryptic clue.) Raphel mentions only Ximenes Derrick Somerset Macnutt Torquemadas successor at the Observer. Yet Ximenes himself said he learned more from Afrit than Torquemada. But perhaps the ultimate rule is that summed up by Raphel: The resilient little puzzle can be whatever you need it to be. Combatant, interlocutor, punching bag, security blanket: the crossword is there for you.

Thinking Inside the Box is published by Robinson (RRP 18.99). To buy a copy go to guardianbookshop.com. Free UK p&p over 15.

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Thinking Inside the Box by Adrienne Raphel review adventures with crosswords - The Guardian