Across the Universe: The Past, Present, and Future of the Crossword Puzzle

An entertaining and eye-opening look at the history of crossword puzzles, who constructs them, and why crosswords matter as both a reflection of and influence on our culture

＂Warning: This book is highly contagious.＂ -Mary Norris, author of Between You & Me

＂A gridful of insight and pleasure.＂--Stefan Fatsis, bestselling author of Word Freak and Unabridged

From Wordle to Spelling Bee, we live in a time of word game mania. Crosswords in particular gained renewed popularity during the COVID-19 lockdown, when games became another kind of refuge. Today, 36 million Americans solve crosswords once a week or more, and nearly 23 million solve them daily. Yet, as longtime New Yorker crossword contributor Natan Last will tell you, the seemingly apolitical puzzle has never been more controversial--or more interesting.

A surprisingly ubiquitous influence in the worlds of art, literature, and technology, as Last demonstrates, the puzzle and its most popular purveyors--including publications such as The New York Times, still the gold standard for word games--have in recent years been challenged for the way they prioritize certain cultures and perspectives as the norm, demoting others to obscurity. At the same time, the crossword has never been more democratic. A larger, younger, more tech-savvy, and solidaristic group of people have fallen in love with puzzle solving, ushering in a more inclusive community of constructors and challenging the very idea of what is ＂normal.＂

With a critical eye toward the puzzle’s history, Natan Last explores the debates about the future of the crossword and investigates those who are determining its next phase, ultimately asking if the crossword can help us reshape the world. Across the Universe interrogates all the ways words--and the games we make using those words--change our culture, while bringing us into the world of those pushing for the crossword’s much-needed evolution.

NATAN LAST began publishing crosswords as a high school student, and in 2008 became the youngest ever constructor of a New York Times Sunday crossword. He constructs regular puzzles for The New Yorker and The New York Times, among other venues. Last has also published prose in The Atlantic, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and The New Yorker, and poetry in Narrative, The Cincinnati Review, and The Rupture. He lives in his native Brooklyn and works in refugee advocacy and policy.