Across the Universe

Across the Universe–The Past, Present, and Future of the Crossword Puzzle, by Natan Last, was one tough book to read! It felt like I was reading a dictionary sometimes! It was dense, the language was highly sophisticated, and the information was packed tightly! But it was also extremely interesting and sometimes even funny 🙂

I am not a fan of crossword puzzles, but I do word games like the New York Times’ Wordle, Connections, and « The Mini » every morning. I am definitely a fan of words and language in general, so I did enjoy this book, especially the parts that talked about the evolution of the type of language used in crosswords over the years. For example, some people were very famous at a certain time in history but were completely forgotten after a while, so they never showed up again in puzzles. Some concepts evolved and history changed, so the same famous African « terrorist group » name that was used in puzzles in early 20th century was then described as a « militant group » by mid-century, and then a few decades later, the same group was called a « resistance fighter group » and finally, they became « members of a liberation movement » in the clues.

What I also enjoyed a lot was the discussion about the purpose of these crossword puzzles. Some people saw them as a waste of time or even dangerous games that might destroy your brain, some people said they were meant to teach something (new words, new definitions, new names) to the player, others thought they should be apolitical while others thought they should represent current events, and others yet thought they should remind players of how smart they are and not make them feel incompetent or uneducated. Different historical times (during a war, after a war, during COVID, etc.) also saw crossword puzzles become less or more popular, with fewer or more people creating them and enjoying solving them.

The book also talks about another fascinating aspect of language: culture, and how certain definitions and words are neutral or had certain connotations that were « bad » or « unpopular » at a certain time in history. All types of discrimination can be found in the words and the clues of crossword puzzles across history (and countries and places, too). For example, some crossword puzzle editors were very liberal, others were strongly politically engaged in certain movements (like the recognition of LGBTQ+), some only accepted crossword puzzles written by men, while others encouraged a very diverse crowd of puzzle creators to submit their puzzles, etc.

One thing I had not realized at all was how different crossword puzzles could be in different countries. Every country has their own rules for grids, words that can be used or not, clues and definitions, design, themes, etc. For example, the grids of American crossword puzzles have always been symmetrical, while French puzzles are not (the black squares can be anywhere); all the letters in American puzzles are used twice (by a down word and an across word) but that’s not the case with British puzzles. Etc.

Super interesting.