Book reviews

adrienne raphel

Thinking Inside the Box

PENGUIN PRESS

Ilove to tell people that I want to learn everything. When I was asked to read a book about the history of crossword puzzles I thought, “well, that’s not a topic I would have picked,” and agreed.

When the first page told me that the crossword puzzle was invented in 1913 I could not imagine how this book could possibly be over 300 pages. I ended so consumed by Thinking Inside The Box that I was disappointed when I realized I only had three pages left.

Thinking Inside the Box, by Writers’ Workshop alum Adrienne Raphel (out March 17), is a lot of things, but it is not at all inaccessible or esoteric. I don’t do crosswords; I had to look up a lot of words. (Did you know people who like crossword puzzles are called “cruciverbalists”?) But there was something immediately welcoming both in Raphel’s voice and in her content. This felt less like a history lesson and more like being invited into a friendly subculture where everyone brings snacks.

In the third chapter Raphel drops the confines of third-person narration and introduces herself to the audience like she’s been waiting to let us in on a secret. We meet Raphel at a writing residency in the Berkshires where she is slaving over construction of her own first crossword. This is the first time Raphel states that she is not a crossword person, but comes from a family of puzzle and game lovers. It’s almost meta-level narrative when she describes creating her own crossword puzzle or going on a crossword cruise as Raphel insists that she is not on their level; meanwhile, she has lovingly crafted a treatise to honor the puzzle and those who love them.

The beauty of this book is how accessible Raphel made crosswords to someone so outside of the world. She discusses their role in World War II; crossword puzzles in popular media; the work being done to address gender, race and class inequality in the puzzle world; crossword puzzle vacations and tournaments; and how crosswords are used in medicine. Raphel interviews big names in puzzles like Will Shortz and attends the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament (where she amusingly finds herself tailed by her parents).

While I really loved this book, there were moments where Raphel missed her own blindspots. In addressing how crossword puzzles are often used to signal intelligence, yet have historically been more accessible to middle- and upper-class people, she doesn’t spend much time discussing the consequences of this gatekeeping. When describing a rift between the old guard and new (during the Oreo Wars!), she uses the term “the Young Turks” for the new guard (a term that even the journalism group of this name has apologized for using and changed their name to initials).

Still, she goes to great lengths to show moments in which the crossword has brought people together, helped memory patients and caused military security issues. Thinking Inside the Box is an educational romp; it inspired me to try the first crossword puzzle of my adult life and, more than anything, it is a love letter written by a poet to the 100 years of cruciverbalists who shaped her world. —Sarah Elgatian fulfillment. Each tale is a different author’s take on a mythology, origin story or satisfying demise for the offending beast. It runs the gamut in terms of quality, as well, with a few slow starts in an overall enjoyable experience. The collection doesn’t credit an editor, and that lack is felt in some stories more than others, as though the individual writers were Various authors each tasked with having their own Death of the Demon Machine pieces edited and some just— SELF-PUBLISHED didn’t. However, the arc of the anthology works out beautifully,

The backstory begins like this: with the funniest stories (includImagine Other Worlds with ing Craig Hart’s “Demise of the Authors (I.O.W.A.), a yearly multi- Liquid Refreshment Dispensement genre book signing event that Device”) landing right at the crest began in the mid-2010s to uplift of the wave and the longest, most and highlight regional writers, was intricate tale (“Senior Year Soda,” once plagued by the presence of a by Stephen L. Brayton) offering a soda machine stuck in a musical satisfying denouement. loop. Throughout their entire event, A few stories in the collection the thing repeated and repeated really stood out. Hart’s piece, and repeated. So, like all creative while sometimes (intentionally) walking that thin line separating funny from corny, was at several ThErE WaS SOMEThING points laugh-out-loud hilarious, IMMEDIaTELY WELcOMING BOTh easing a reader into a sense of IN raPhEL’S VOIcE aND IN hEr comfort. Reading Beth Hudson’s cONTENT. ThIS FELT LESS LIKE “Daimonas Ex Machina” was like a hISTOrY LESSON aND MOrE chatting with an old friend. It’s an incredibly tight story—the shortest LIKE BEING INVITED INTO a in the collection—but manages the FrIENDLY SUBcULTUrE WhErE most honest character and scene EVErYONE BrINGS SNacKS. work, and it finds time to drop gems of phrases like “caught in the fascination of the impossible.” professionals faced with an attack And “Ticking,” by David Taylor II, to their sanity, they decided to turn was a surprise treat, a delightfully madness into creative energy. They disturbing scifi romp. wrote about it. You can feel the joy and camaThe result is this anthology, pub- raderie baked into Death of the lished in paperback at the tail end Demon Machine. Coming out in of 2020 and out this past Jan. 1 on the wake of I.O.W.A. having to go Kindle. I was sucked in, as anyone virtual due to COVID-19 last year, would be, when frequent Little there’s something of an ache to the Village collaborator Blair Gauntt nostalgia of authors gathered in a recently shared the indelible cover room, facing off against a common design he created for it on social enemy. And there’s something media. His style is well-suited to very engaging and quintessentially this kind of tongue-in-cheek humor. Iowan about the joy that the writers His whimsy deepens the delight of take in one another, in the stories the reading experience. more literally set at the event itself. Death of the Demon Machine: A It’s amazing what demons we can Pop Anthology is a genre-spanning, slay when we come together. short and clever exercise in wish —Genevieve Trainor