The Riddles of the Sphinx: Inheriting the Feminist History of the Crossword Puzzle

"A surprising and ambitious investigation of language and the varied ways women resist the paradoxes of patriarchy both on and off the page."—New York Times

Combining the soul-baring confessional of Brain on Fire and the addictive storytelling of The Queen’s Gambit, a renowned puzzle creator’s compulsively readable memoir about anorexia and language, and history of the crossword puzzle as an unexpected site of women’s work and feminist protest.

The indisputable “queen of crosswords,” Anna Shechtman published her first New York Times puzzle at age nineteen, and later, helped to spearhead the The New Yorker’s popular crossword section. Working with a medium often criticized as exclusionary, elitist, and out-of-touch, Anna is one of very few women in the field of puzzle making, where she strives to make the everyday diversion more diverse.

In this fascinating work of literary nonfiction—part memoir, part cultural analysis—she excavates the hidden history of the crossword and the overlooked women who have been central to its creation and evolution, from the “Crossword Craze” of the 1920s to the role of digital technology today. As she tells the story of her own experience in the CrossWorld, she analyzes the roles assigned to women in American culture, the boxes they’ve been allowed to fill, and the ways that they’ve used puzzles to negotiate the constraints and play of desire under patriarchy.

The result is an unforgettable and engrossing work of art, a loving and revealing homage to one of our most treasured, entertaining, and ultimately political pastimes.

The Riddles of the Sphinx untangles the knot of language, power, and identity to reveal:

• Crossword Puzzle History: The overlooked women who shaped the American crossword, from the 1920s ‘Crossword Craze’ to the digital age, and have been central to its creation and evolution.
• Psychoanalysis and Language: A sharp exploration of the surprising connections between anorexia, Freudian analysis, and the relentless act of tearing language apart and piecing it back together.
• Feminist Protest: How women have used word games and puzzles as an unexpected site of resistance against the constraints and paradoxes of patriarchy.
• Memoir and Cultural History: A deeply personal journey into the CrossWorld, where the author’s own story becomes a lens to analyze the roles assigned to women in American culture.

Anna Shechtman is a Klarman Fellow at Cornell University and an assistant professor in the Department of Literatures in English. In addition to her bimonthly crosswords for The New Yorker, she has written for a number of outlets, including Artforum, the New Inquiry, The New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, Slate, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, where she is an editor-at-large. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.