The crossword is 'not just a puzzle'

Natan Last's book details how a popular pastime reflects culture and changes.

- MARK ATHITAKIS

In August, New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani hosted a citywide scavenger hunt, inviting voters to scour the boroughs in search of historic political sites.

(Grand prize: a bag of chips.) Clues for it were written by veteran puzzle maker Natan Last, who has long endorsed the idea that puzzles at their best blend politics, community and a nerdy good time.

If you missed the hunt, Last's book, “Across the Universe,” delivers similar pleasures. Though its subtitle — “The Past, Present, and Future of the Crossword Puzzle” — suggests a history tome, Last approaches the subject essayistically. Crosswords, for him, are arguments on behalf of things: of what qualifies as “common knowledge,” of what role puzzles should play in informing a citizenry, of how wordplay and slang snake into the mainstream. “The crossword is a uniquely capacious artifact ready to absorb and recast any group’s predilections and passions into puzzle form,” he writes.