A personal review of Natan Last's 2025 book 'Across the Universe: The Past, Present, and Future of the Crossword Puzzle,' finding it stylistically exhausting due to half-told anecdotes and overwrought similes. The post uses this as a springboard for a miscellany of crossword-related curiosities: Nabokov's butterfly-shaped Russian crossword from 1926, Georges Perec's French crosswords, Stephen Sondheim's cryptic crosswords for New York magazine (credited with introducing cryptics to American audiences), and a recommendation for Coral Amende's 'The Crossword Obsession' as a superior alternative. Various entertaining anecdotes about crossword constructors and solvers are shared along the way.
52 Impressions