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The Riddles of the Sphinx: Inheriting the Feminist History of the Crossword Puzzle
Bottom of the pile
24
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
3/100Critics
44/100Scholars
Author:
Anna Shechtman
Publisher:
HarperOne
Date:
March 5, 2024
A puzzle creator's memoir and history of the crossword puzzle as an unexpected site of women's work and feminist protest.
What The Reviewers Say
A surprising and ambitious investigation of language and the varied ways women resist the paradoxes of patriarchy both on and off the page..
A book too mischievously multiform to classify. It is in part a history of the crossword puzzle.
Shechtman has spent the better part of the past decade agitating for greater diversity among puzzle makers and for crosswords that reflect a more capacious sense of common knowledge, a project she expands upon and complicates in The Riddles of the Sphinx.
Shechtman is delightful when sly... and she sees the implications in every bit of linguistic play.
