Behind the Scenes of the Crossword Puzzle's Past, Present, and Future with Natan Last

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Bookshop West Portal's readers are crossword puzzle fiends! Get a peek behind the scenes of your favorite word puzzles. Please join us for a stimulating evening with New Yorker crossword contributor and immigration policy advocate Natan Last for his fascinating deep dive Across the Universe: The Past, Present, and Future of the Crossword Puzzle.

If you are ever a little nosey and glance at the phone screen of the person sitting next to you on the train, or in a café, or in line at a store, there is a pretty good chance that you will see them playing Wordle, Spelling Bee, Connections, or solving the NYT Mini Crossword. We live in the time of game mania, with crosswords being the ultimate champion. After a huge boom in popularity during the Covid-19 lockdown, 36 million Americans now solve crosswords once a week or more, and nearly 23 million solve them daily. Yet, as longtime New Yorker crossword contributor Natan Last will tell you, the seemingly apolitical puzzle has never been more controversial or more interesting.

In Across the Universe, Natan demonstrates how the puzzle and its most popular makers like the New York Times — still the gold standard for word games — have in recent years been challenged for the way they prioritize certain cultures and perspectives as either the norm or obscure. At the same time, the crossword has never been more democratic. A larger, younger, more tech-savvy, and solidaristic group of people have fallen in love with puzzle solving, ushering in a more inclusive rise to the kinds of people constructing them, challenging the very idea of them and, in fact, what "normal" actually is.

Natan was born deaf in his left ear and learned how to lip read to piece together words or parts of sentences he might have missed in conversation which was where his love for words and language began. He soon started solving crosswords in the back of class, moving on quickly to writing them himself. At 16, he got a Sunday puzzle accepted in the New York Times, making him the youngest person ever at the time to do so. After high school, Natan interned with famed New York Times crossword editor Will Shortz and now writes bimonthly crosswords for the New Yorker.

Natan is a word person so it’s no doubt that the way he approaches language and words is incredible, both on the writing front and in how he works with them in his puzzles.

Natan Last is a writer and immigration policy advocate. He writes bimonthly crosswords for The New Yorker. His essays, poetry, and academic research appear in The New Yorker, The Drift, Los Angeles Review of Books, Hyperallergic, Narrative, and elsewhere. He has worked for the U.N., the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project, the International Rescue Committee, and currently advises the federal government on refugee policy and technology. He lives in his native Brooklyn.

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