Recently, there has been an effort in the crossword community to get more diverse constructors into the mix. It's a many-headed hydra of an effort, born of the sense that crosswords have a lot of catching up to do — with reality, I mean. Some of us are invested in getting more women into the themeless game (to say nothing of getting more women constructors into the mix overall — and getting more women's names, interests, and tastes into the grid.) Some of us are also focused on getting more non-white constructors published (and, again, on getting more non-white culture into the grid). Broadly speaking, there's been a real push to cast a wider net.
Jeff Chen, who runs this site, has expressed support for that movement. As he remarked on Monday: "I hope we get to the point one day where the records lists will be filled with people of all different backgrounds." Jeff has regularly mentored constructors, underrepresented and not, for some time now. He has graciously provided a high-quality word list on this website (for a price) that reduces a significant — truly significant — barrier to entry for many people. And on top of all of this, which is already a lot, he provides commentary, right here on XWord Info, assessing every daily and Sunday puzzle run by the Times. His column reads — in sum, and in the broader context of XWord Info — like a running tutorial on how to make publishable crosswords. This is an effort in line with all of the above.
Rather: It's an effort that should be in line with all of the above. But here is where we run into problems. To echo the note of my friend and fellow-traveler Erik Agard on yesterday's puzzle, this is stuff I've said to Jeff in private before, some years and many puzzles ago, regarding some iffy remarks made about names I'd included in a puzzle — names of Black people that Jeff hadn't heard of. Jeff was gracious enough to append an additional note to his comments, conceding: "I personally find it tough to appreciate proper names I don't know, and I tend not to look them up afterward."
That's legitimate — for the typical solver. But XWord Info is a resource. It is, I quote, "the essential resource for crossword constructors and enthusiasts." It is the most prominent and comprehensive toolkit available to constructors, both veteran and new, whether they're interested in submitting to the Times or not. This means that, whether intended to play this role or not, Jeff's remarks here — his (literal) tallying of "good" or "bad" entries; his jokey skepticism toward names (especially ethnic names) and other entries which, with a little Googling, could easily be proven to be known quantities; his implicit weighing of some puzzles against others, with puzzles that dare to include his usual bugbears (broadly: things he does not know; things he worries "solvers" do not know; things he worries will "alienate" solvers) getting slighted in favor of the familiar… All of this, every bit of it, is a part of XWord Info's toolkit.
That's because the commentary here isn't merely written with the tone of "Just one guy's opinion" — though that's ultimately all it is, in its current form — but rather with an eye toward instruction. The premise of Jeff's commentary is, so far as I can gather, twofold:
- To give constructors a sense of what makes a crossword viable for publication.
- To give constructors a sense of what "solvers" — meaning Jeff, extrapolated to stand in for a general public — might like, or dislike, or find alienating.
And it's within this matrix of concerns, this mission, that a Robyn Weintraub puzzle can be disqualified for Puzzle of the Week status for including the entry CHAKA — as in Khan, the Grammy-winning, multi-time gold and platinum album-selling, nominated-for-the-Rock-and-Roll-Hall-of-Fame-multiple-times funk legend. This entry is a demerit. Jeff's reasoning: CHAKA "can only be clued in one way" — meaning it can only be clued to refer to one person, a person who happens to have written and performed the song "I'm Every Woman." Yes, that "I'm Every Woman" — one of the most recognizable songs in American pop/R&B. This is a demerit? This is what we want beginning constructors to think is bad construction?
That's one example. Obviously, my feelings on this matter are not about any one example, but rather a trend — a trend that needs to change if we're going to keep calling this place a resource. If I had to sum up the double standard of Jeff's commentary here in one binary, it'd be this: Caitlin Reid (rightly!!!!!) being praised for her constructing "voice" while Ricky Cruz, another wonderful recent addition to the NYT slate, is chastised for his: "I'm curious how many solvers are going to balk at KUBO. Based on his previous puzzles, I get a sense that KUBO [of the Oscar-nominated film KUBO and the Two Strings"] is an expression of Ricky's personal interests. I don't know how many solvers will be equally interested and might have a tough time with the name, so I'd leave those types of flourishes out."
Here's what's weird: In Caitlin's post, Jeff describes voice as what excites him (" "[V]oice" relates to how someone's work makes you feel. Does it make you happy? Confused in a great, tense way, wanting to read more?"). But the more accurate definition is what he takes Ricky's puzzle to task for: personal interests, individual style, the things you put in a puzzle that, in addition to being valid, speak to a particular wheelhouse. Not for nothing, but KUBO is only a 4-letter entry, and the crossings — KARMA / UHAUL / BOTTLENECK / OYSTER — are more than a little fair. So why the lecture? And much more urgently: Why are some voices more valid, more worthy of praise, than others? Why are we actively encouraging a style more in line with Jeff's own but actively discouraging ("I'd leave those types of flourishes out") others? Why are some wheelhouses (those which overlap with Jeff's, perhaps) examples of better construction than others?
Because: again: This isn't about Jeff's personal taste, which is what it is, just as mine is what it is. It's about how matters of taste can get confused here, on this website that is a resource for constructors, as practical advice about good construction. It's the way that Jeff wields his taste against constructors whose style bucks — even just barely bucks; let's not pretend that the NYT gets that wild — the cloistered limits of Jeff's own preferences.
I am tired of how some entries and constructors are accused of "alienating solvers." It's a claim that Jeff makes too often and applies unevenly, in glaring ways. If Byron Walden's HEPPLEWHITES — a great entry! referring to the antique furniture style — isn't earning him any lecturing on solvers being "alienated," then Pete Wentz publishing the far more contemporary TANEHISI COATES (public intellectual; multi-time bestselling author; Macarthur fellow; TV talking head) shouldn't either. Nor should Nam Jin Yoon publishing COATES, just the last name, become an occasion for Jeff to once again argue for cultural gradualism: "This is by far the best way to work in names like COATES, gently introducing solvers to more recent influential persons. Other puzzles have risked tainting solvers' first associations with someone new to them."
Call me crazy (you'll get no argument from me), but what if publishing TaNehisi's name in full was the point? What if, for that constructor, it's a way of saying: This is known, this is legitimate, this is different, you're not a bad person for not knowing it, but now that we're here, here's your chance? And what if, in evaluating these entries, Jeff asked, not "Who's going to feel alienated by this?" but, rather, "Who'll be excited to see this (whether I, Jeff Chen, am excited or not)?" What if, instead of making a crude FITB game out of Erik Agard's entry HAUDENOSAUNEE — an entry that I didn't know either! — we take a second to, firstly, note the meaning of that term (Jeff does not) and secondly recognize that, being that it's clearly the marquee entry, maybe Erik put it there for a reason. And maybe that reason is just as valid as Jeff's reasons for wanting to avoid that entry — which, it should be noted, is what Jeff spends a lot more time talking about in his response to Erik's grid than the entry in itself.
Maybe part of what makes for a good puzzle are choices like these: choices which, whether Jeff cares for them are not, do have solvers in mind — just not the solvers Jeff seems to think of when he uses that word. But why should the people who feel threatened by these inclusions, who'd "balk" at a 4-letter Japanese name, who'd feel "alienated" by Black culture, have such a stranglehold over Jeff's sense of what makes for a good puzzle? Why cater to a solver who'd sincerely finish a puzzle with a bad taste in their mouths because — despite apparently knowing all about HEPPLEWHITES — they've never heard a CHAKA Khan song? Surely we cannot think such a person is the "average solver." And if they aren't, why are we always talking about them — and why do I get the sense that Jeff's idea of the average solver could never be someone who looked like me, or even Jeff himself?
To reiterate Jeff's own words: "I hope we get to the point one day where the records lists will be filled with people of all different backgrounds." A good way of getting there, at least as far as XWord Info is concerned, is by starting to think seriously about questions like these.
