Customer Reviews

Zen And The Art Of Crossword Puzzles: A Journey Down And Across

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Nikki Katz's Zen and the Art of Crossword Puzzles is part of a series of Zen-related hobby books published by Adams Media (Zen and the Art of Knitting, etc.). In her contribution to the series Katz provides thumbnail histories of both crossword puzzles (first published in 1913) and Zen philosophy (considerably older), and she frequently points to intersections between the two--how Zen principals can be used to make one's crossword experiences more pleasant, how solving crosswords can be experienced as a kind of "working meditation." But Katz's book is hardly all Zen all the time. She discusses a great number of topics in the book's ten chapters: crossword solving rituals and methodologies, hints for solving puzzles, an explanation of British cryptic crosswords (for which I am especially grateful), the health benefits of puzzle solving, the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, crossword-related poetry and paintings and fiction (specifically, the Nero Blanc series of crossword mysteries). Some of what Katz has to say will be too lightweight for hard-core cruciverbalists, but there should be something new in the book for just about everyone.

Katz conducted a great many interviews while working on the book, which she punctuates with personal anecdotes gleaned from her interview subjects. As it happens, I am among those whom Katz contacted: she writes in chapter eight about my habit of blogging the New York Times Sunday crossword every week at the-deblog.com.

Katz ends each chapter with a tip for improving--or at least for altering--one's crossword experiences: in the last chapter, for example, she suggests that readers try solving a crossword online if they haven't before as a means of broadening their crossword experiences; elsewhere she suggests that readers try creating their own crossword-related poetry. An original puzzle follows each chapter, and Katz lists a number of crossword resources in a handy appendix--online crossword sites and dictionaries, anagramming tools, construction software, etc.

Debra Hamel -- author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in ancient Greece (Yale University Press, 2003)

I found this work so poor that I have consigned it to the recycling bin, rather than taking up space on my bookshelf! It reads as though the author had been given some sort of 'assignment' to connect Zen with Crossword Puzzles, both of which she has knowledge of. Not written with any degree of 'passion'! I'd suggest separate books on each subject would be a better buy: any of Alan Watts's books on Zen or Tao, and "Wordplay" DVD with its companion book. All available from Amazon.

This is a non-book. The wheel is reinvented on every page. There are very few puzzles and those are not even interesting. Pick up a crossword book at your supermarket rather than waste your money on this thing.