But while “ethnic” foods like Vietnamese pho have been rejected elsewhere, USA Today is today a global feast of som tam and shumai and tirokafteri. Constructors have, meanwhile, complained about other major puzzles rejecting people like Olympic gymnast Simone Biles, Grammy-winning musician-and-actor Janelle Monae and SNL star Aidy Bryant as too trivial or unknown.Īmerican crosswords have long been Eurocentric (YSER, anyone?) as well as male-centric. One example: In the last couple years the word WIFE has been clued in major puzzles as “Marge, to Homer” and “Meghan, to Harry” and “Desdemona, to Othello.” In April, a puzzle edited by Agard ran a novel description involving two prominent soccer players: “Ali Krieger, to Ashlyn Harris,” leading one solver to gleefully tweet, “USA Today Crossword making me feel ALIVE!”Īmong the other people who have been brought into the 300 or so puzzles Agard has edited are Muslim comic author Huda Fahmy, Black comedian Nicole Byer, Mexican-American sportscaster Antonietta Collins and astronomer Annie Jump Cannon. That is not what is happening at USA Today.
“You can have a white baseball player from 70 years ago and people say, ‘That’s great,” Cardin says, “and you can have a very famous person of color currently and a lot of people will say, ‘I don’t know that, so we’re not going to include it.’” Constructor Nate Cardin, founder of Queer Qrosswords, gives the example of “Husband’s spouse” being used to clue the answer WIFE or the fact that an answer like MELOTT is used, again and again, while LIZZO isn’t. Some puzzle-makers feel the tastes of gatekeepers are outdated and fear that crosswords won’t find relevance with upcoming generations. There are, perhaps, ten jobs like his in the country-overseeing puzzles that reach huge audiences every day-and many are filled by white men who have been running the show for more than 20 years. He’s one of the nation’s top constructors and solvers, who in 2018 earned acclaim both as a Jeopardy! champion and the winner of the nation’s premiere crossword puzzle tournament.īut Agard also defies the old mold, wielding the Final Say as a young biracial person. Since he was a student of African American Studies at the University of Maryland, he has been a known entity among puzzlers. The fact that Agard got the USA Today job is in some ways unremarkable.
( Note: industry style is to write answers in all caps.) Is it offensive to use the word ESKIMO? Should someone be expected to know the term CISGENDER? Those are calls crossword editors make. The content of a crossword is one answer to the question “What do you need to know in order to be a person of the world?” as Laura Braunstein, who cofounded a women-centric indie crossword called The Inkubator, puts it. They are an American art form that, on the daily, send a signal to millions of people about who and what matter, about where we are as a culture. Patti Varol, a veteran editor and constructor in the close-knit community known as the “crossworld” describes Agard as a “beacon of inclusivity” who is “revolutionizing the way puzzles are edited and vetted and published.” I expect Agard to say something about this, about the way that he has used his position to draw women and people of color and LGBTQ people into the square-and, in the process, turned a once-maligned puzzle into what one prominent blogger called today’s “most interesting, innovative, and provocative daily crossword.”Ĭrosswords are not just some nerdy pastime. There has been resistance.Īgard, a 26-year-old puzzle phenom who has been in the job about eight months, has done unprecedented work on this score. Critics have called out editors of major puzzles for publishing far more puzzles made by men than women, for the “old white guy sensibility” that has long set standards for the industry and for spectacular slips that prove just how real the blind spots are. There has been mounting protest in the world of crosswords, as there has been in entertainment and politics and every other arena where marginalized groups have felt excluded and disenfranchised. Entertaining as that all was, it is not exactly what I’m expecting Agard to say.
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