Brave New Crossworld
An imposing timer counts down the minutes as messages of frustration and encouragement flood the Twitch chat room. The mood is unexpectedly intense for a light-hearted crossword extravaganza called the “Winter Wondersolve.” The three-hour-long virtual tournament is hosted by Boswords, a Boston-based crossword organization.
Boswords held its first tournament in the summer of 2017 in the gymnasium of Roxbury Latin High School. That first year drew 150 participants. This year, there are over a thousand, ranging from beginners to skilled experts.
Originally, Boswords only held one tournament a year. But since the pandemic, it has expanded to hold quarterly tournaments and live biweekly challenges, as well as online events with crossword constructors. Boswords’ popularity grew with the wave of wordplay mania that possessed those driven stir-crazy by quarantine.
Mobile devices have transformed the wordplay industry — a phenomenon best illustrated by Wordle, the ubiquitous crossword-derivative word game that sold for over a million dollars to the New York Times last Monday.
John M. Lieb, a co-founder of Boswords, says Wordle’s accessibility as a free, entry-level, online game has made it a global sensation. Lieb himself became interested in crossword puzzles through the internet — when he stumbled upon legendary crossword constructor Rex Parker’s blog, which releases daily puzzles for free.
However, navigating new technology may pose a challenge to solvers who are used to pen and paper. Joon Pahk ’00, a former preceptor of physics at Harvard, is a Boswords crossword solver and professional constructor —as well as a seven-time Jeopardy champion and finalist in the prestigious American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. “There is a whole wave of mostly younger solvers who are better at solving on a browser window or an app,” Pahk says, noting that his performance in crossword tournaments has suffered in the transition to paperless puzzles.
Though personally challenged by the changing landscape, Pahk acknowledges that the accessibility of technology has contributed to “democratizing the puzzle.” Crosswords used to be “targeted toward a boomer audience,” Pahk says, but the field is starting to diversify due to the “modernization of the kinds of clues and answers that you might see.” Now, it’s more common to see hints referring to Dua Lipa and BTS than it is to see hints about baseball players from the fifties.
Soleil C. Saint-Cyr ’25 — one of the youngest female crossword creators ever published in the New York Times — shares that the solvers and constructors on Twitter are “just very, very supportive.” The diversity of the “crossworld,” says Saint-Cyr, is not limited to identity. There is also an incredible diversity of interests among constructors: “they do everything from creative writing, to bioinformatics, to bioethics,” she says.
Though I did not make it past the first puzzle in the “Winter Wondersolve,” I could still appreciate the elegance and novelty of the game. My problem sets, readings, and classes could wait until I figured out another way to say “it’s a new world out there” (puzzle 1, 43 across).
The answer? “TIMESHAVECHANGED.”
— Magazine writer Amber H. Levis can be reached at amber.levis@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @amberlevis.