Crossworld: One Man's Journey Into America's Crossword Obsession

By Marc Romano

Book Overview

Sixty-four million people do it at least once a week. Nabokov wrote about it. Bill Clinton even did it in the White House. The crossword puzzle has arguably been our national obsession since its birth almost a century ago. Now, in Crossworld, writer, translator, and lifelong puzzler Marc Romano goes where no Number 2 pencil has gone before, as he delves into the minds of the world's cleverest crossword creators and puzzlers, and sets out on his own quest to join their ranks.

While covering the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament for the Boston Globe, Romano was amazed by the skill of the competitors and astonished by the cast of characters he came across--like Will Shortz, beloved editor of the New York Times puzzle and the only academically accredited "enigmatologist" (puzzle scholar); Stanley Newman, Newsday's puzzle editor and the fastest solver in the world; and Brendan Emmett Quigley, the wickedly gifted puzzle constructer and the Virgil to Marc's Dante in his travels through the crossword inferno.

Chronicling his own journey into the world of puzzling--even providing tips on how to improve crosswording skills--Romano tells the story of crosswords and word puzzles themselves, and of the colorful people who make them, solve them, and occasionally become consumed by them.

But saying this is a book about puzzles is to tell only half the story. It is also an explanation into what crosswords tell us about ourselves--about the world we live in, the cultures that nurture us, and the different ways we think and learn. If you're a puzzler, Crossworld will enthrall you. If you have no idea why your spouse send so much time filling letters into little white squares, Crossworld will tell you - and with luck, save your marriage.

CROSSWORLD by Marc Romano

ACROSS
1. I am hopelessly addicted to the New York Times crossword puzzle.
2. Like many addicts, I was reluctant to admit I have a problem.
3. The hints I was heading for trouble came, at first, only occasionally.
4. The moments of panic when I realized that I might not get my fix on a given day.
5. The toll on relationships.
6. The strained friendships.
7. The lost hours I could have used to do something more productive.
8. It gets worse, too.

DOWN
1. You're not just playing a game.
2. You're constantly broadening your intellectual horizons.
3. You spend a lot of time looking at and learning about the world around you.
4. You have to if you want to develop the accumulated store of factual information you'll need to get through a crossword puzzle.
5. Puzzle people are nice because they have to be.
6. The more you know about the world, the more you tend to give all things in it the benefit of the doubt before deciding if you like them or not.
7. I'm not saying that all crossword lovers are honest folk dripping with goodness.
8. I would say, though, that if I had to toss my keys and wallet to someone before jumping off a pier to save a drowning girl, I'd look for the fellow in the crowd with the daily crossword in his hand.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0767917588
• ISBN13: 9780767917582
• Release Date: June 2006
• Publisher: Harmony
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.2" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

Decent Little Book About a Hobby (or Obsession)

I found "Crossworld" to be an interesting look at the history, peculiarities and nuances of crossword puzzling and puzzlers. Centering around the annual competition in Connecticut, he brings in the right amount of Will Shortz, fellow puzzlers and constructors to provide an overview of the whole cross-world. As other reviewers note, author Marc Romano does interject himself into the book a lot - but I never thought he got in the way of telling the story he wanted to tell. One thing I notice about reviewers complaining Romano was a show-off with the words he used and his self-promotion is that they also like to display their vocabularies and knowledge in explaining how they dislike that in Romano.

If you know what an ESNE is?

This is a light and amusing little book on the serious subject of crossword puzzles. I say serious, because anything done on a regular basis by 64 million people in the United States alone has to be considered pretty serious. And you'd better read it with a dictionary close by. Crossword people know lots of words, some of them pretty strange, and when they write their own book, they get to use them. While most of us have a hard time putting words like adit (an almost horizontal entrance to a mine), oryx (African antelope genus), ani (members of an American bird genus), esne (my dictionary didn't even have this one) into our working vocabulary. And of course these people at this level only have one crossword in mind, the one in the New York Times (four to ten minutes to finish, 16 on Sunday). I liked the story where someone asked him if he could have his paper when he was through with it. 'Yes,' he replied, 'but the puzzle is already done.' 'I know, I want to show people that the puzzle is done.' (In ink of course.) Are you looking for a gift for a puzzler?

An account of an enthusiast's adventures at the American Crossword Puzzle tournament

To your list of important American inventions --- baseball, the electric light, polio vaccine, the electoral college --- please add the crossword puzzle. Since its invention by a New York City newspaperman in 1913, it has, with equal ease, entertained us and driven us utterly crazy. Marc Romano, a former Wall Street worker bee and newspaper reporter, himself got stung rather late in life by the crossword bug --- but being a resourceful fellow he has turned that fact to his advantage in this entertaining if lightweight book. CROSSWORLD chronicles his adventures among the Babe Ruths of puzzledom --- the contestants in the annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament held each year in Stamford, CT. (Full disclosure: I share Romano's obsession. I have reached the finals in three of those tournaments and cherish one fourth-place trophy as a memento.) Romano attended one Stamford tournament as a reporter, then came back a second year as a contestant. A gregarious fellow, he kept eyes and ears open, got to know some of the right people, did some research, and has turned the whole experience into an enjoyable book. His writing has some of the breeziness of the experienced newspaper feature writer, though it can occasionally turn a tad smart-alecky. The tournament-day atmosphere of manic tense concentration relieved by bouts of shoptalk and hotel bar patronage is nicely captured. The main thing that differentiates these tournaments from your casual daily tussle with the crossword in your morning paper is, of course, the ticking clock. Most recreational solvers don't worry about how many minutes and seconds it takes them to fill in that grid, but at Stamford that is a major factor. Romano's advice, learned the hard way: worry first about accuracy, only then about the clock. The quirky personalities who turn up at these offbeat events are laid out in colorful detail. The reader gets an intimate look at Will Shortz, tournament director and the only man in the world, so far as anyone knows, who holds a college degree in "enigmatology" (his day job is editing the New York Times crosswords). Some of the more interesting characters among high-speed solvers make cameo appearances, but Romano's real interest appears to be in the people who create crosswords. This seems an odd move from the marketing standpoint, considering the millions of us who do the puzzles versus the couple of hundred who create them. Superior solvers, Romano finds, tend to be introverts, "introspective, solitary creatures" whose minds soak up and retain all sorts of trivia. Yet when they get together at the hotel bar in Stamford they somehow become a jolly crowd of fun-loving friends. He never quite explains how or why this transformation happens. My own experience at three of these events is that there are also a lot of very big egos on display and a good deal of one-upmanship in the shoptalk. These days, alas, even the humble crossword puzzle must take its turn on the analyst's couch

Enjoyable but too solipsistic

As an avid crossworld solver, I was glad to read this book. It's not perfect -- Romano spends far too much time on himself, and particularly on his libido; I could have done without the "bedmate" story and all the ogling. It makes me wonder who his target audience is. But Romano's a clever writer, and it was nice to get some insight into New York Times crossword editor Will Shortz and superstar constructor Brendan Emmett Quigley. I have a stupid nitpick. On pages 69-70, Romano writes: "Like Judge Black's definition of pornography, you'll know these when you see them." There are three mistakes there. One, the famous quote was by Stewart, not Black. Two, it's "Justice," not "Judge." Three, the quote was about obscenity, not pornography (there's a difference). As another reviewer points out, it seems strange to see such errors in a book about people who supposedly pay such close attention to detail.

Ambassador's Masterpiece

In America, unlike Britain, crosswords are usually viewed as a non-intellectual pastime. It is very rare to see someone from the world of high intellectual culture voice a favorable, let alone a knowledgeable, opinion on the subject. Marc Romano is such a person. A Yale graduate and (even more impressive) a former New York Review of Books staffer, he serves as an ambassador between the two worlds. As such, he entered the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament (the word puzzler's equivalent of the Super Bowl) and covered the event from every angle. Rare among puzzle aficionados, he is an admirer of Nabokov and Solzhenitsyn, Conrad and Gravity's Rainbow, and brings them to bear on the world of symmetrical word grids. Few aspects of puzzledom escape his attention, from ancient Cretan word-square artifacts, to the question of whether the tournament is imbued with sexual energy (an idea I have never seen in print before), to the contents of Will Shortz' house. And he is funny! I laughed out loud at least 10 times before finishing the book on the day I bought it. My only criticisms are: 1. He should have spent more time on the National Puzzlers' League and its journal, the Enigma (a fascinating world in its own right). 2. He should have talked about the difference between regular and variety cryptic puzzles, the American and British variants of both, and the British levels of difficulty beyond the Daily Telegraph (e.g., the Listener puzzle). However, in sum, the best book I have seen on word puzzling. Highly recommended.