Customer Reviews

Crossworld: One Man's Journey into America's Crossword Obsession

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

It seems that the wonderfully touching and insightful National Spelling Bee documentary SPELLBOUND has opened the floodgates for literary variants: COUNTDOWN (about young math whizzes), WORD FREAKS (about Scrabble), and Marc Romano's CROSSWORLD (about crossword puzzling). Exploring these peculiar talents and (occasionally) obsessions, and the personalities of those who partake of them, is a meritorious notion, prospectively opening windows into small but almost savant-like niches of human behavior. One might pick up any of these books expecting to be introduced to some of the people who exhibit these extraordinary talents. In the case of CROSSWORLD, however, Romano tells us far more about himself than we care to know and far less than we want to know about the world's best cruciverbalists, or crossword puzzle solvers.

CROSSWORLD centers on author Romano's first-time participation in March, 2004 in the annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, held every year in Stamford, CT. Along with the requisite history lesson in crosswording and discussion about the differences between American style crosswords and British style cryptics, the author describes how he prepared himself as a contestant. Romano is fairly successful at the event itself, but he focuses far more on the people who construct and edit puzzles (Eugene Maleska, Will Shortz, Brendan Quigley, Michael Shteyman) than on the collection of people who bothered traveling to Stamford and giving up an entire weekend to solve crosswords against the clock and each other. We learn something about Shortz and Quigley, but that's about as far as Romano takes us. As for the 500-odd participants in the contest, the author blithely assures us that they are mostly introverts, mostly white, scrupulously honest, unhealthily consumed by puzzling, and just all-around nice people. As human insights go, these are remarkably trite. Romano apparently decided he was far more interesting than anyone else at the contest. We learn about his dating habits, his drinking habits, his use of Ativan to calm himself into a semi-hallucinatory state, and an off-base story about how his puzzling skills helped him acquire "a new bedmate." What should have been a fascinating account of crosswording aficionados ends up being mostly the author's stargazing at New York Times puzzle editor Will Shortz and navel-gazing over his own skills.

One other aspect of CROSSWORLD bears comment: Romano writes like someone with ADD. Every page is filled with three or four parenthetical asides, some of them full paragraph length, that are both distracting and annoying. Any writer who needs twin parentheses that often either lacks focus or is simply forcing too much extraneous information into the text. Additionally, the author seems so unsure of his own effectiveness as a writer, he constantly places explicit reminders of things he said earlier in his story. He also presents a weakly speculative, pop evolutionary psychology analysis of puzzling and problem solving that involves cavemen, tigers, and being able to spot a tiger lurking at "the sun-dappled forest edge."

Curiously, for a subject matter as precise and nit-picking as crosswords, Romano seems a bit loose with his facts. He attributes the notion of England and America being two nations divided by a common language to Winston Churchill rather than either Oscar Wilde or George Bernard Shaw (both of whom predated Churchill on this notion, Wilde by 50 years). He also mentions taking the #5 line in New York to Canal Street (New Yorkers know that only the #6 IRT line stops at Chinatown) and comments that Susan Lucci failed "something like a dozen times" to win a daytime Emmy (the actual number was eighteen before she finally won in 1999).

By the end of CROSSWORLD, Romano has clearly gotten carried away with his subject matter, trying to inflate it into much more than it is. If only we taught crosswording to university students, he argues, the world would have no more wars. "The more your mind is filled with real facts about the real world,...the less room there will be in your heart for hatred." He obviously ignored Brendan Quigley's admonition earlier in the book: "...you're talking about crossword puzzles. It's really not that complicated. They're just games." About the kindest thing one can say about CROSSWORLD is that it manages to be modestly interesting despite its author's persistent intrusions into his own material.

As an avid crossworld solver, I was glad to read this book. It's not perfect -- Romano spends far too much time on himself, and particularly on his libido; I could have done without the "bedmate" story and all the ogling. It makes me wonder who his target audience is. But Romano's a clever writer, and it was nice to get some insight into New York Times crossword editor Will Shortz and superstar constructor Brendan Emmett Quigley.

I have a stupid nitpick. On pages 69-70, Romano writes: "Like Judge Black's definition of pornography, you'll know these when you see them." There are three mistakes there. One, the famous quote was by Stewart, not Black. Two, it's "Justice," not "Judge." Three, the quote was about obscenity, not pornography (there's a difference). As another reviewer points out, it seems strange to see such errors in a book about people who supposedly pay such close attention to detail.

I am crazy for crossword puzzles, so I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw this book in the bookstore. I was expecting something similar to Fatsis' WORD FREAK, but in the end I was pretty disappointed and wasn't able to finish the book.

Overall, it lacked the kind of suspense and humor I was hoping for. It seemed to take place in the author's head (rather than putting the focus on the competitors), and there were many odd digressions that detracted from the storytelling. I also found the author made a lot of peculiar word choices and he frequently structured sentences in a way that made them hard to follow.

That said, it was very interesting to learn about the history of crossworld puzzles, and to read about the life of Will Shortz. Incidentally, I thought long and hard about whether or not to post this review, because I am also an author (two moderately successful novels to my name, with another on the way), and it really stinks to read criticism on your own Amazon.com page. But in the end I decided to post, because this book was so vastly different from what I'd expected, and that's unusual for me.

Like many of the other reviewers, I was also really disappointed with Romano's book. Too narrowly focused on only the NYTimes crossword puzzle and too broadly concerned with Marc Romano's ego. I don't know where his editor was, the information is so repetative and disorganized, at the same time you never really get a feel for the persons who love crosswords to the point of obsession. I also wish he had given some examples of some of the often wonderful puns and cleverness that grace the Sunday puzzle. Many a time when I (finally) saw the answer I would laugh out loud. I am really in awe of anyone who can construct a puzzle and wished Romano would have given us a lot more info on those people. Finally, as a horticulturist I couldn't help notice his definition of kapok, which is no more a "palm-based filler" than a tomato is a kind of meat. Kapok is the silky down of the seedpod of the tropical decidious tree Ceiba pentranda or Kapok tree. Definitely not a palm. For Romano's sake let's hope "palm-based filler" will not be a clue in next year's American Crossword Puzzle Tournament.

Too much of this book strikes me as "I'm a Yale man and look at how fast I can solve the NY Times Sunday puzzle!" The author, too intelligent, apparently, to even waste his valuable time with the Monday or Tuesday NYT puzzles, reminds readers again and again of his own puzzle-solving times. On one hand, he demeans his efforts in contrast with top competitors, but on the other, we're always kept aware that his times are better than the vast majority of puzzle solvers. That said, I did enjoy the information about Will Shortz, whose puzzles I like trying on NPR and in puzzle books. Less Marc, more Will!

I picked this book up at the library for three reasons: (1) I had read and enjoyed Stephen Fastis's book about Scrabble (Word Freak); (2) I am a casual crossword solver, going through occasional jags but never venturing near anything as daunting as the NYT puzzle; and (3) my late grandmother was an inveterate crossword solver who could rip through the NYT puzzle. By the end I was more or less glad I had read the book, but not exactly eager for more. Romano's breezy overview of the crossword world is built around two trips to crosswording's big annual event, the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. The first time he goes as a reporter, the second as a contestant/reporter bent on doing respectably well.

The book that was born of this often has the feel of a decent essay puffed out and diluted to book length. We get the requisite potted history of crosswords, very rough speculation as to crossword puzzling demographics, profiles of a few crosswording luminaries, lots of discussion about how to solve puzzles faster, and some very hokey speculation about what kind of people crossworders are. There are a lot of stylistic tics to Romano's writing, and readers with an aversion to any of the following should consider themselves warned: tangential asides, jokey asides, show-offy vocabulary, borderline pretension, repetition, and disorganized presentation. Another irksome part is that since the book revolves around the author's own obsession with puzzling, and his performance at the tournament, the reader is constantly being told how fast he can do certain kinds of puzzles. So, unless you're one of the few hundred people in the country who are faster than him (eg. can you do the Sunday NYT puzzle in under 30 minutes?), it starts to feel an awful lot like boasting -- even thought it clearly isn't meant to be.

The book is somewhat limited in that while he does talk briefly to a fair number of constructors (those who make puzzles), he only really spends a great deal of time with the guru of puzzling, New York Times editor Will Shortz, and one of the younger, hipper people on the crosswording scene, constructor Brendan Emmett Quigley. And make no mistake, the focus is entirely on the New York Times puzzle, which again, is kind of limiting. It would have been interesting for him to contrast the world of "high" puzzling the NYT represents with the world of "low" puzzling, say the TV Guide puzzle, or those little books you can get for 99 cents at the supermarket checkout. It would have been interesting to see the contrast between the kinds of people who do the different kinds of puzzles. Instead, the focus is on "Rainman"-like savants who solve puzzles faster than the normal population could fill them in with random letters. But the worst parts of the book are those sections where Romano tries to speculate that the desire to create and solve puzzles is driven from our unconscious need to "create order by proxy" and "put back together the pieces of our broken world." This is terrible undergraduate psychology stuff, only outdone by his notion that being a crossworder can make you "a better, more informed, fairer, and more tolerant person."

So, if you can ignore a lot of hokum, there is a reasonably entertaining book about crossword puzzles buried in here. I personally quite liked all the asides, tangents, and humor in Romano's writing, but other aspects of it were profoundly irritating. Ultimately, I think one needs to be a little more than a casual crossworder to really enjoy the book.

I have competed at the ACPT at Stamford every year since 1992, and enjoyed reminiscing over the descriptions of the tournament itself. The book captures the mood of the competition very well, and gives a nice history of the crossword that I've heard from Will Shortz many times before. The time and good will of the constructors the author interviewed is very apparent. It's too bad the author couldn't have done better with that information, rather than cheapening it with all the unnecessary parentheticals and bad similes.

Also, he should have attended twice before writing, rather than once, so he could have spent more time with more kinds of people at the tournament. Then he could write about the puzzlers rather than waste space on every page with his silly metaphors and personal information. One chapter about his own life, with some character development so I'd care about him and his views more, would have sufficed.

I am a longtime member of the National Puzzlers' League, as are nearly all the people interviewed for the book, but the NPL is mentioned only in passing. The NY Times Cru is discussed at length, probably because the author posts there.

I was particularly irritated by his p. 122 description of his assumed lack of a sex life among constructors who "are on the far side of fifty, and all would place high on any nerdishness index." There are a wide range of beautiful, sexy, vibrant people in attendance as constructors, judges, competitors, and other participants. One of them, for example, is constructor Eric Albert, who is at ACPT every year, isn't that far from 50, and is an accomplished writer of erotica. (You can find his latest wonderful story here on Amazon in _Three Kinds of Asking For It_.)

I was one of the people hanging out at the same bar as Marc -- in fact, I didn't even bother with the Margaret Farrar tribute (p134) from which he escaped to the bar -- but don't remember him approaching my laughing, boisterous, mixed-gender, mixed-age group at all. He should have done less drinking and more interviewing.

So, while he seems to be a really good interviewer, getting quality information from people, he's not so good at deciding on whom to interview, nor at maintaining focus on the topic at hand in his writing.

Just add my name to the list of dissatisfied readers; for all the reasons cited in previous reviews. Of the numerous reasons to avoid this book, the most blatant is the author's odd presentation. He diverges into parenthetical, hyphenated asides that render most paragraphs nearly unintelligible. Simply put, he is verbose and unfocused. The book brims with anecdotal and philosophical musings that are unsupported, idiosyncratic and (most egregiously) unamusing. If you are looking for the equivalent of an unedited blog about Marc Romano, then this is the book for you. If you are looking for a witty, insightful or entertaining treatment of puzzles and the personalities surrounding them, look elsewhere.

I really want to rate this 2.5 stars.

Do you have a friend who says things like, "Yes, I may have gotten 800 on the math SAT but I only got an embarrassing 690 verbal?" If so, then you might be able to tolerate Romano's prose. If not, be forewarned: unless you can complete the Saturday New York Times puzzle in 10 minutes, you will be put in your place over and over by his false modesty. He says things along the lines of "It once took me a humiliating 20 minutes to do a Saturday NYT puzzle." If it's humiliating for him, what's that mean to the rest of us? He goes further to make-fun of and out-right condemn anyone who doesn't follow is own code of crossword conduct. If you look a word up, you're cheating and he can't imagine why you would do that. (Perhaps so you can learn words you don't know? Maybe to fill in a tough spot in the puzzle so you can continue to finish the rest of it and still have fun?) He implies that this is akin to just copying the answers from the next day's paper.

There are also "facts" that I really have to question. He says he can finish a Monday puzzle in something like 60 seconds. It would take longer than that just to write the answers down if someone were reading the clues to you. Add in the time to flick your eyes from the clues to the grid and it becomes absurd. I can speed read but your comprehension deceases when you do. In a crossword puzzle, there's no context to help you when you misread a word. One letter difference changes the meaning entirely. In addition, even the easiest puzzles have clues that have more than one answer that is commonly used (genetic material can be RNA or DNA; mid-east leader can be EMIR or AMIR or any of a number of different spellings; there are several five letter "GREEK LETTER"s.) It takes time to go back. Even doing a "World's Easiest Crossword"-level puzzle that uses a 6th grade vocabulary and no words over 5 letters and reading only the across clues (not needing to read the down clues) would take me more than 60 seconds to fill out if my writing were to actually be remotely legible and in the correct little boxes. (But then, I'm a moron-- I'm only a Wednesday/Thursday-level solver.) I guess Romano is some freaky genius who not only can read and write in tiny boxes elsewhere on the page at the same time but he has ESP and always knows exactly what the puzzle author was thinking when composing the crossword.

Given that, there is a lot of interesting information about the history of the New York Times Crossword puzzle in general and Will Shortz, its current editor, in particular. I came to respect, admire and actually like Shortz, who comes off as a nice, reasonable, easy-going fellow. There's information about who creates these teasers, the difference in puzzles across the Atlantic, and the anatomy of a puzzle. I also found the description of what a crossword puzzle tournament is like and the quirky people who attend to be entertaining.

I found myself over and over wishing this had been written by someone else who couldn't possibly compete in the tournament (or would come in last) or that Romano had left his own role out of it and was more objective. While personal anecdotes and opinions can add to a story, make it more human, his arrogance and randiness (he is constantly on the prowl) are not just distracting, they're offensive. Instead of being appropriately impressed by and interested in all the contestants who compete (I think even the person who comes in last place is probably pretty darn good) I could only focus on him. By the time I finished the book I almost gave up solving puzzles because I felt like any reasonable person would realize I am too stupid and ignorant for real crossword puzzles and would be better off sticking to E-Z word searches and connect-the-dots.

There's no doubt Romano is extremely intelligent-- he is this expert solver and he implies English isn't even his native language. But does he have to rub it in every other sentence?

Last thoughts: the book was a little longer than it needed to be but it does include almost all of the puzzles from the competition, which was fabulous. I would have liked to see a few more puzzles, perhaps a sample from the New York Times for each day of the week and puzzles from some of the other publications (very briefly) mentioned like the Washington Post. While I certainly didn't buy the book for the puzzles, it would be very interesting to compare methodologies. I would have liked Romano to spend a little more time discussing puzzles in other papers. Also, acknowledging that people have to start somewhere and encouraging people to improve their skills with recommendations on how to do so would have been much more appropriate than his constant bragging. Then he might help people discover just how fun it is to do this pastime, recruiting people to the game rather than making people feel like outsiders who shouldn't even try.

One more thing: He denigrates Sudoku as being just a "math puzzle" (what's wrong with math puzzles?) but Sudoku has absolutely nothing to do with math. There is no math involved at all. Any 9 characters or shapes would do. I've seen some using letters. Numbers are just easiest for us to recognize and pattern quickly, not to mention that it crosses language barriers by using Anglo-Saxon numerals which are more commonly used than the English alphabet. Sudoku is first and foremost a logic puzzle and could appeal to even a word smith who hasn't completed 3rd grade math.

So, to sum up, I don't recommend this book. Watch the movie "Wordplay" Wordplayabout the tournament. Or better yet, Will Sholtz wrote a companion book to the movie Wordplay: The Official Companion Bookwhich I haven't read but might be a better insight in to the tourney. I can't believe it could be worse.

I found "Crossworld" to be an interesting look at the history, peculiarities and nuances of crossword puzzling and puzzlers. Centering around the annual competition in Connecticut, he brings in the right amount of Will Shortz, fellow puzzlers and constructors to provide an overview of the whole cross-world.
As other reviewers note, author Marc Romano does interject himself into the book a lot - but I never thought he got in the way of telling the story he wanted to tell.
One thing I notice about reviewers complaining Romano was a show-off with the words he used and his self-promotion is that they also like to display their vocabularies and knowledge in explaining how they dislike that in Romano.