Suppose you heard from someone (me, for instance) that you might enjoy a book titled Thinking Inside the Box. What would you expect it to be about? Perhaps some sort of pushback against those of us who advocate thinking outside the box?

Unsurprisingly there are many books with that title. (Book titles can’t be copyrighted, or trademarked, or given any sort of protection as intellectual property.) So which such book is this one? As usual, the subtitle provides the explanation: the book I’m recommending is subtitled Adventures with Crosswords and the Puzzling People Who Can’t Live Without Them, by Adrienne Raphel.

There is a lot to like about this book, which maintains a gentle sense of humor throughout. It’s filled with fascinating tidbits about the history of crossword puzzles, along with many detours that are at least vaguely related to the subject at hand, in some cases “vaguely” being the apt word. If you are anything like my student who claims to have OCD (self-diagnosed), this book is not for you. The narrative is not particularly linear.

But if you find the digressions interesting and informative, as I did, you will enjoy the narrative and won’t worry about the frequent lack of focus. You will also be amused by some of the commentary from the early 20th Century, such as the New York Times editorial that referred to crosswords as a “sinful waste in the utterly futile finding of words the letter of which will fit into a prearranged pattern, more or less complex.” Fortunately for us, an article in the Times in 1929 informed its readers that the fad was dead: “the cross-word puzzle, it seems, has gone the way of all fads,“ so we’ve never had to worry about them again.

Raphel knows that it would never hold readers’ interest if she had filled the book with nothing but data and facts about crosswords, so she sprinkles anecdotes through the story. Stories and people, after all, are always what holds the attention of listeners and readers. Unfortunately this author needs an editor (as a kid, I learned from my dad that every writer needs an editor). There are too many typographical errors, factual mistakes, and infelicitous sentences. For example, on page 71, we read that a certain 15-by-15 puzzle contained“four fifteen-word answers.” On page 43, “the grid turned into a graveyard, prophetic pedagogy arising from the squares.” On page 234, the author’s credibility begins to be destroyed by her repeating the all-too-common etymythology that the word “posh” is an acronym for “port out, starboard home”; anyone with a PhD in English (which the author has) should know that non-technical terms are never acronyms! Finally, on page 247, she falls into another all-too-common trap, namely the claim that her ancestors’ names were changed at Ellis Island. They weren’t. Yours weren’t. Mine weren’t.

On the balance, this book is still worth reading. Maybe the next edition will be cleaner.

Categories: Books, Life, Teaching & Learning