Imogen West-Knights is a Brit who grew up doing "cryptics," not crossword puzzles, but today finds herself "improbably" hooked on the latter. As she explains in Slate, she is far from alone. Crosswords have never been hotter, and her deep dive into the subject seeks to find out why. She traces how a pastime born in 1913, supercharged by Pearl Harbor and rediscovered during COVID, has become a crucial traffic magnet—and revenue stream—for modern media, from the New York Times to Apple News. At the center of this boom is the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, a once-niche gathering now so packed it's being forced to leave its longtime home at a hotel in Stamford, Connecticut, for a larger venue in Philadelphia next year.
West-Knights embeds at the tournament to find out why people are still hooked long after lockdowns ended. She meets star solvers who shave seconds by practicing with their non-dominant hand, a 100-year-old contestant, Gen Z constructors eager to drag crossword culture into the Charli XCX era, and fans who say they've "sucked the joy out of it" chasing speed. What keeps most coming back, she concludes, isn't just wordplay or escape from the news cycle, but the feeling of control—and community—in a world that rarely offers either.
- "When you're solving a crossword, the crossword is all there is," she writes. "A four-walled world of squares and clues with one objective and one correct solution. There is a problem, and the problem is solvable. What I am really high on, when I am living in that little world, is control. Bringing order to this small, contained thing is a welcome relief from all of the bigger, more important things that seem uncontrollable." Read the full story, which includes comments from puzzle legend Will Shortz.
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