Stephanie Burt Discusses the Crossword as a Form With Adrienne Raphel

At Los Angeles Review of Books, Stephanie Burt interviews poet and writer Adrienne Raphel, whose first book of prose, Thinking Inside the Box (Penguin) advances her dissertation on "crosswords and their literary implications." Burt spoke to Raphel about the history and future of crosswords in mid-May. From their conversation:

An earlier version of your book project tried really, really hard to find connections between the history of crosswords and the history of poetry, which didn’t quite work. I wonder whether crosswords as a verbal or paraliterary form are in some ways an alternative to, or an opposite for, “literary” arrangements of language as we usually understand them? Or whether you are trying to start telling us how to see crosswords as a literary form? One with subgenres, a formal history, connotation, emotional arcs for the reader/solver, perhaps even a “protagonist” or central character — but who would that be?

You’re right that trying to force a connection between crosswords and poetry never really worked! To answer your question with another question, here’s another way I’ve been thinking about crosswords and literary form: why can’t AI solve crosswords better than humans can? Or, what are the things about crosswords as a form (literary, paraliterary) that still tap into some sort of ineffable human creativity? I’m interested in all the things that crosswords ask our brain to do, both in constructing them and solving them: the ways in which clues and answers relate, and the ways all of those associations pull on riddle, metaphor, symbol, et cetera. And I’m also interested in the totally math-brain ways in which the grid’s letters get put together.

Can you give examples for our LARB audience? I know there are examples in the book.

A great example clue by the amazing Erik Agard is: “Pool noodles.” The answer is mind meld. So “pool” is a verb and “noodles” means “brains.”

Read on at LARB.