{"id":18308,"date":"2021-03-13T09:06:42","date_gmt":"2021-03-13T17:06:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/?p=18308"},"modified":"2021-03-13T09:07:46","modified_gmt":"2021-03-13T17:07:46","slug":"whos-the-expected-audience-for-american-crossword-puzzles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/2021\/03\/13\/whos-the-expected-audience-for-american-crossword-puzzles\/","title":{"rendered":"Who\u2019s the expected audience for American crossword puzzles?"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<p>Interesting article: \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/lifestyle\/crossword-puzzle-diversity\/2021\/03\/10\/884828e0-753c-11eb-9537-496158cc5fd9_story.html\">For crossword constructors, an inclusivity debate: What\u2019s \u2018common knowledge\u2019 and who decides?<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\r\n<p>In particular, the article talks about the importance of publishing crosswords by constructors who aren\u2019t white men, and the backlash from white male puzzle solvers against using words that are common knowledge to some people (especially Black people) but aren\u2019t part of the standard white-male crossword-answers trivia canon.<\/p>\r\n<p>(The article is specifically about American crosswords, not about (for example) British-style cryptic crosswords, but I imagine similar issues apply to the creation of any kind of puzzle that relies on cultural knowledge.)<\/p>\r\n<p>And that issue is connected to a much broader issue: whenever you\u2019re creating anything, there\u2019s a question of who you expect your main audience to be, and how much explaining and accommodating to do for people who aren\u2019t part of that audience.<\/p>\r\n<p>The article itself reads to me a little like it\u2019s assuming the reader is non-Black; for example, it opens with a set of questions that the article author seems to assume readers won\u2019t know the answers to. But I may be reading too much into the phrasing.<\/p>\r\n<p>PS: Content warning for mention of Woody Allen.<\/p>\r\n<p>PPS: As usual, don\u2019t read the comments on the article.<\/p>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[123,105],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-puzzles","category-political-issues"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18308"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18308\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18310,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18308\/revisions\/18310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}