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Gen Z Is Loving Crosswords

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on August 1, 2026| 1 Comment »

Photo: Mohamed Marey via Unsplash.

I know a lot of people who work a daily puzzle to maintain cognitive health — puzzles like Wordle, Sudoku, anagrams, and crosswords. These people are mostly over 50, so I find it interesting that younger people are getting into puzzles, too, especially crosswords.

Cameron Pugh writes at the Christian Science Monitor, “People are doing crossword puzzles everywhere these days. On the train. During a break at work. In bed before turning in. Crosswords have leapt from their traditional home in the newspaper and taken over phone and computer screens. 

“And no generation is more thrilled about it than Gen Z. Fifty percent of Gen Zers say they do crosswords regularly, according to a poll by Unscrambled Words, a website that helps users solve anagrams. That’s the highest share of any generation surveyed, outstripping baby boomers at 38%, Gen Xers at 31%, and millennials at 15%.

“ ‘We are living in the golden age of puzzles,’ says Will Shortz, who has edited crosswords for the New York Times since 1993. He holds perhaps the world’s only degree in enigmatology, or the study of puzzles. … ‘They’re not just for old people anymore.’ …

“When Mr. Shortz started at the Times, which printed its first crossword in 1942, the paper had run puzzles created by teenagers six times. Today, Mr. Shortz says he has published puzzles by at least 75 teens. In 2021, Soleil Saint-Cyr, at 17 years of age, became the youngest woman to publish a crossword in the Times. 

“Crosswords have also swept through student newspapers, demonstrating their growing appeal among younger audiences. The Cavalier Daily at the University of Virginia launched a puzzle section in 2024. Student Life, which covers Washington University in St. Louis, began publishing mini crosswords in 2022. …

“Crosswords saw an explosion in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic, says Natan Last, who last year wrote Across the Universe, a book that charts the history of crossword puzzles. That includes Gen Zers such as Luke Schreiber, a rising junior at Princeton University in New Jersey. 

“ ‘It started off as a bit of a pandemic hobby. My dad liked solving crosswords, and so that gave me the idea to try my hand at creating them,’ Mr. Schreiber says.

“Mr. Schreiber is one of two head puzzles editors at the Daily Princetonian, the school’s student newspaper. He has also published puzzles in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and USA Today.

“Some of the crossword’s success with Gen Z traces back to news organizations, which during the pandemic began to see games as a way to grow their audiences. … By 2021, the Times Games section had 1 million subscribers; in 2024, a spokesperson for the Times told AdWeek that more than 10 million people played the paper’s digital games each day. …

“For students, Mr. Schreiber says, the crossword acts as a needed break from homework. 

“ ‘Students are looking for something that isn’t work – you know, isn’t studying or homework or something like that – but also isn’t a video game,’ he says. A crossword is ‘considered a little more intellectual than a video game, but it still is fun and not quite work.’ …

“The now-defunct New York World is credited with publishing the first crossword on Dec. 21, 1913. Created by Arthur Wynne, the ‘Word-Cross’ took the shape of a diamond and lacked the now-familiar black squares. …

“Mr. Shortz sold his first puzzle at 14, springboarding his now-storied career as a cruciverbalist. (That’s the shorthand for a crossword aficionado.) When he started at the Times, he endeavored to draw in a wider audience. ‘I think the crossword should reflect the life, language, and culture of everybody who reads the Times, and that’s everybody from smart teens up to the oldest people,’ he told the New Yorker in 2023. …

“Young creators, Mr. Last says, have driven a cultural renaissance for a pastime that sometimes came off as stuffy and uptight. ‘They treat the puzzle like a mixtape, and they treat language as powerful and arbitrating,’ he says. ‘They are very, very focused on an inclusive puzzle – where inclusive is both political and cultural.’ ”

More at the Monitor, here.

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Diversifying the Crossword

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on April 8, 2022| 4 Comments »

Photo: Wikipedia.

The problem with crossword puzzles is like the problem with academic entrance exams: they assume a cultural knowledge common to the creators’ identity groups. An older woman who doesn’t read Harry Potter books is not going to know what a young crossword creator is hinting about owls. Recent Latin American immigrants may never have heard of John Paul, George, and Ringo. And it may depend on your family life if you know anything about Marian Anderson, W. E. B. Du Bois, or Bayard Rustin.

Read what African American crossword puzzle creator Portia Lundie has to say about that at the Washington Post.

“I’m a Black woman who creates crossword puzzles. That’s rare, but it shouldn’t be. … Margaret Farrar, who became the founding puzzle editor of the New York Times in 1942, is credited with popularizing daily crosswords. But despite the impressive distinction, she only published the work of a handful of women.

“That’s perhaps unsurprising in a world dominated by White men; when I published my debut 15-by-15 crossword in the New York Times during Black History Month last year, I didn’t know of any crosswords constructed by Black women in America’s crossword gold standard.

“Before last year, I’d made dozens of 9-by-9 grids, or ‘midis,’ for the New York Times crossword app. I knew that my pop culture-themed puzzles were among the most popular on that platform, but I didn’t know what publishing my first crossword on a major newspaper site would be like — that it would open me up to a wave of subculture criticism.

“When it was announced that the Times would feature a week of Black constructors for Black History Month, there were myriad opinions on popular crossword blogs: ‘I prefer puzzles to be fun, not dry activist treatises that promote political ideology,’ wrote one commenter in response to the word ‘REPARATIONS’ in a puzzle by Erik Agard. …

“Yet, finally, I found some relief. ‘Must admit to knowing very little about Marcus Garvey. … Thanks to crosswords … for leading me there,’ one enthusiast said. When it came to learning the name of a horse racing champion or their jockey, I was more like this last commenter — excited that a puzzle introduced me to something new. This attitude, while seemingly compatible with a love for testing your trivial knowledge, is actually rare in the world of crossword critics.

“The experience came with other revelations. My dad worked for his uncle’s newspaper in Guyana when he was a teen, reading submissions and judging the crossword competition. But he didn’t tell me about his experience with crosswords until after mine was published in the Times. He revealed he was ’embarrassed’ that he wasn’t as good at crosswords when he immigrated to America. Turns out, I was robbed of a chance to learn about crosswords at a young age in part because crossword culture does not encourage learning — rather, it rewards already knowing.

“I ended up being introduced to crosswords in my early 20s while dating a constructor. Of course, I had attempted them before, but no one ever walked me through the rules. [For example] studying words that are used much more in crosswords than real life — words like ‘ESTOP’ and ‘STE’ and ‘ERE,’ which are usually used for their vowel placements. …

“I ultimately used practice, dictionary obsession and occasional cheating to get better. Constructing and cluing my own crosswords made me even better at recognizing the patterns — not to mention, it allowed me to assert my particular voice and trivial knowledge of 1990s cartoon characters.

“But most crosswords, I’ve found, still reflect the majority of creators. Like so many other hallmarks of culture, crosswords as we know them were standardized by a profound woman, yet the authority on language still seems to be in the hands of a few White men. In my opinion, there’s no such thing as a view from nowhere, and I’m glad to play a small role in giving crossword enthusiasts a view from someone who isn’t White, and isn’t a man.”

More at the Post, here.

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