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87 reviews for:
Thinking Inside the Box: Adventures with Crosswords and the Puzzling People Who Can't Live Without Them
Adrienne Raphel
3.29 AVERAGE
87 reviews for:
Thinking Inside the Box: Adventures with Crosswords and the Puzzling People Who Can't Live Without Them
Adrienne Raphel
3.29 AVERAGE
Man, I love crosswords and was really excited to read this, but I couldn't finish it b/c the author mentions Ernie Bushmiller without talking about Nancy at all.
Fun, and I learned some things about the NYTimes crossword. Since I don't usually do that one--I prefer Simon & Schuster--this was a little inside baseball for me. But I did learned some random trivia so that's fun.
to the people saying if you love crosswords you will love this book: not so!! i love crosswords and very much Did Not love this!! just watch wordplay instead!!
it would’ve taken so little for me to enjoy this book but i just couldn’t. a lot of it (unrelated anecdotes and asides, overlong analogies, etc)felt like the author was just trying to meet word count. eh oh well, it was a quick read
it would’ve taken so little for me to enjoy this book but i just couldn’t. a lot of it (unrelated anecdotes and asides, overlong analogies, etc)felt like the author was just trying to meet word count. eh oh well, it was a quick read
informative
lighthearted
relaxing
medium-paced
Unfortunately, I was really disappointed by this book. Very little of it is actually about crosswords, and it certainly lacks the coherence of a good crossword - cryptic or otherwise. While I learned a few fun facts, I found most of the content tenuously connected to crosswords and found some of the book's claims and conclusions quite dubious. My biggest gripe was the egregious use of footnoting:
"The host asked her, 'Is Mickey Mouse a dog or a cat?' 'Cat,' she'd snapped.*"
"* In the 1806 edition of Merriam-Webster's Dictionary, cat is defined as a 'common domestic animal,' and dog is defined as a 'common domestic animal.'"
I'm sorry, what???!!!
"The host asked her, 'Is Mickey Mouse a dog or a cat?' 'Cat,' she'd snapped.*"
"* In the 1806 edition of Merriam-Webster's Dictionary, cat is defined as a 'common domestic animal,' and dog is defined as a 'common domestic animal.'"
I'm sorry, what???!!!
Definitely capitalizes on crossword lovers insatiable need for trivia, but in the best way. Fun, easy, full of good factoids.
Fun and a pretty quick read - though probably not all that interesting unless you like crosswords, obviously. Luckily, I do, and I enjoyed the author's journey through the history of puzzles. I would've liked a little less focus on the New York Times crossword puzzle; while it's still clearly the most prominent, I think there's a lot more interesting (and certainly more inclusive) work being done in the indie-puzzle world. There are brief mentions of that, and a good section dealing with several of the more recent racial/gender controversies in the NYT puzzle, but I would've loved longer interviews with people like Ben Tausig or the editors of the Inkubator. Overall, though, I really did enjoy this and the epilogue about a crossword cruise is hilarious!
This was a tough one to get through. While the facts and findings were interesting and educational, I found the prose to be somewhat choppy. Better editing might have made this a more palpable exploration of one of my favorite pastimes.
medium-paced