Thinking Inside the Box

FUN, and Wynne, in desperation, turned his writer's block into a grid, a diamond-shaped interlocking set of squares flanked by clues that ran differently across and down. "FUN's Word-Cross Puzzle" instructed readers, "Fill in the small squares with words which agree with the following definitions." The crossword conceit-here are clues, here is a grid, go forth and fill the grid with the answers to these clues-was born.

 

Wynne's Word-Cross looks like a modern crossword, with obvious differences. It's a diamond, not a square, and rather than black spaces throughout, there's one concentrated blank in the middle, like a doughnut hole. Rather than separating the clues into Across and Down, Wynne listed clues by giving their beginning and ending squares.

 

Wynne's puzzle doesn't deploy pyrotechnic layers of wordplay. The clues proceed as fairly straightforward definitions; none of them ask the reader to solve a riddle, or decode an acrostic, or undo a pun to arrive at the solution. Ambiguity is on the level of information rather than imagination: "A bird" (DOVE), for example, could have any number of solutions, but this puzzle is looking only for flying animals, not, say, jailbirds or stool pigeons. Most clues are fairly generic. Many of the clues establish a bond between the clue writer and the solver, a wink from Wynne to us: "What we should all be," for example (MORAL), or, "What this puzzle is" (HARD). The puzzle also repeats itself: "A pigeon," like "A bird," is also DOVE. Some require extremely esoteric knowledge-"The fibre of the gomuti palm" (DOH) would likely be impossible for most nonbotanists, particularly since the gomuti is far more common in Indonesia than Manhattan-so filling in the puzzle relies not only on the reader's capacity to get the clues via the definitions alone but on the simultaneous ability to deduce the answer from corresponding letters in the grid.

 

FUN and the origin myth of Wynne's invention notwithstanding, par

pantheon of cruciverbalist scholars, Adrienne Raphel has established herself squarely within it. Mary Norris, bestselling author of Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen and Greek to Me: Adventures of the Comma Queen

Thinking Inside the Box is a witty, wise, and wonderfully weird journey that will change the way you think. Raphel is an insatiably curious and infectiously passionate guide who plunges headfirst into the rich world of puzzles and the people who love them to reveal the fascinating acrobatics of language and the inner life of words. This book is a delight. Bianca Bosker, bestselling author of Cork Dork: A Wine-Fueled Adventure Among the Obsessive Sommeliers, Big Bottle Hunters, and Rogue Scientists Who Taught Me to Live for Taste
 
If you remember precisely where you were when you first encountered the words ETUI and ONER, I suspect you ll be enchanted by Adrienne Raphel s Thinking Inside the Box. This delightfully engrossing, charmingly and enthusiastically well-written history of the crossword puzzle tells you everything you need to know, and any number of things you couldn t have imagined, about the invention and eventual world domination of the thing that daily scratches a particular human itch: the yearning to solve a riddle, the desire to fill in a blank space, the obsession with perfection. Benjamin Dreyer, bestselling author of Dreyer's English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style
 
Thinking Inside the Box, like the puzzles it elegantly features, is full of treasures, surprises and fun. Adrienne takes readers from Will Shortz's empire hub in Pleasantville, NY, to the pages of Vladimir Nabokov's crossword butterfly puzzle doodles, to the blistering hotel ballrooms of crossword competitions, richly bringing to life the quirky, obsessive, fascinating characters in the crossword world. You'll never think about filling in the squares the same way again.   Mary Pilon, bestselling author of The Monopolists: Obsession, Fury, and the Scandal Behind the World's Favorite Board Game and The Kevin Show: An Olympic Athlete s Battle with Mental Illness
 
Who would ever have thought the innocent crossword would hide such an intriguing story! After reading Adrienne Raphel's beautifully researched account, full of humor and personal insight, I've come to see these puzzles in a new light, and I certainly now treat their creators with fresh respect. Professor David Crystal, author of The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language