[HN Gopher] The elite, underpaid, and weird world of crossword w...
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The elite, underpaid, and weird world of crossword writers
Author : anarbadalov
Score : 76 points
Date : 2022-11-05 13:48 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (newrepublic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (newrepublic.com)
| Magi604 wrote:
| Crossword puzzles seem like something an AI can generate, with
| things like topics or niches or word length/"difficulty" as
| options to toggle.
| nkurz wrote:
| I found this to be an odd set of paragraphs:
|
| _For would-be constructors without such personal connections,
| there's the Crossword Puzzle Collaboration Directory. The
| Facebook group launched in 2018 with an associated Google form
| that pairs newcomers with mentors. It has always been explicit
| about its aims to provide resources to underrepresented groups:
| "This matching form is intended specifically for [women, people
| of color, LGBTQIA+ people, and disabled people] as a tool for
| addressing structural inequities in the crossword industry.
| Because our mentors' time is finite, if you're not a member of
| any such group, we ask that you refrain from using the form."_
|
| _The explicit intentions aren't enough, though, and in fact at
| times the group has served the opposite purpose. When
| professional opera singer Daniel Okulitch, a white man, was
| inspired to try his hand at crossword construction after he first
| started regularly solving them during the pandemic, he found his
| way to the group. In response to a question he posted, Okulitch
| was contacted by Brad Wilber, a longtime constructor (60 Times
| puzzles since 2005) and an opera fanatic. A fan of Okulitch's
| singing, Wilber offered his services as a mentor. Okulitch has
| now published three Times puzzles, including two with solo
| bylines._
|
| On one hand, obviously people should be able to choose on
| whatever basis they want where to concentrate their volunteer
| mentoring efforts, and I appreciate the delicacy of their
| discouraging phrasing. On the other, it seems remarkable that
| they New Republic would appear to celebrate the restriction of
| services on the basis of sex and skin color. Can you imagine the
| reverse, where black women or disabled transexuals are
| discouraged from applying? Is the article trying to call
| attention to this tension, or are we expected to take it for
| granted?
|
| And what's meant by "the explicit intentions aren't enough"? And
| is the point that Okulitch ("a white man") doesn't qualify under
| the "LGBTQIA+" heading? Are we supposed to assume that a white
| male opera singer couldn't be Gay or Bi or Trans or
| Queer/Questioning or Intersex or Asexual or "+" (anything else)?
| Or that he is at least one of these, and that's we he was able to
| participate? Wouldn't it be simpler (and better) to just let
| people who are excited about crosswords post a message and see if
| they meet someone interested in mentoring?
| [deleted]
| squokko wrote:
| All of this is stupid. It doesn't matter who writes crosswords,
| and all the rest of it, including this comment, and probably
| mine, is pointless complaining, shouting into the abyss.
| pvg wrote:
| _remarkable that they New Republic would appear to celebrate
| the restriction of services on the basis of sex and skin
| color._
|
| They don't. That's exactly the sort of tendentious detail-
| plucking and overinterpretation the site guidelines ask you to
| avoid.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| >The explicit intentions aren't enough, though, and in fact
| at times the group has served the opposite purpose.
|
| The tone suggests "gosh darnit, a cis white man was able to
| connect with a fellow hobbyist when he shouldn't have".
| pvg wrote:
| I don't think it suggests anything of the sort but even if
| it did suggest it to someone - again, there's a guideline
| and a million moderator comments about not looking for a
| single irritant to respond to in an article. Especially if
| the response to the irritant is essentially a trope in
| itself.
| Msw242 wrote:
| The frustration you're feeling is that, no matter how
| obvious the tone or implication, advocates will never
| acknowledge that it is real because what you are describing
| is a phenomenon that cannot exist.
|
| It's gaslighting.
| danielfoster wrote:
| This is just one group. Presumably mentors could connect with
| mentees through other groups and channels.
| conviencefee999 wrote:
| Eh it's safe to say other groups don't exist this is pretty
| common for many topics and branches for things.
| danielfoster wrote:
| Life isn't always fair.
| ysavir wrote:
| > And what's meant by "the explicit intentions aren't enough"?
| And is the point that Okulitch ("a white man") qualifies under
| the "LGBTQIA+" heading? Are we supposed to assume that the a
| white male opera singer couldn't be Gay or Bi or Trans or
| Queer/Questioning or Intersex or Asexual or "+" (anything
| else)? Or that he is at least one of these, and that's we he
| was able to participate? Wouldn't it be simpler (and better) to
| just let people who are excited about crosswords post a message
| and see if they meet someone interested in mentoring?
|
| I think the point is that despite the given disclaimer and
| rules, disqualifying individuals are still making use of the
| group and supporting each other.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| The author seemed to be trying to build an article partly on
| a hook of "trying to be woke backfired" but in this segment,
| he intentionally conflates the facebook group and the google
| form for mentoring, which seems to have confused several
| here.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| Why should they pay more if they already get 100x more
| submissions than they need? It's clear that almost all
| constructors do it for fun so paying more isn't going to improve
| quality. For solvers the real value add comes from the editor and
| selection process that ensures reasonable quality and
| consistency.
|
| I'm also curious when we switch to AI generated crosswords. It
| seems like it shouldn't be too long from now that they match
| human constructors.
| bobro wrote:
| Why would you think AI would be able to make enjoyable puzzles?
| Are there any examples where AI does a good job at the word
| play and culture references that make crosswords so enjoyable?
| thom wrote:
| I have been back and forth, but I suspect this will turn out
| to be one of those things people think is innately human but
| then quickly move on from when models do it well in the next
| 5 years. Culture references are just patterns in giant text
| corpuses, as far as crosswords are concerned.
| whateveracct wrote:
| Our of curiosity, do you regularly do crosswords? Like the NYT
| or otherwise?
| Khannor wrote:
| Note that the NYTXW is not the only crossword publisher out
| there.
|
| I construct crosswords from time to time, and I always send my
| best puzzles to the NYT first, simply because they're the most
| prestigious and pay the most. (And you can't send a crossword
| to two publishers at once.)
|
| On your other note -- it's really not difficult to make a bad,
| or even mediocre, autogenerated crossword using pretty simple
| software. There's several free or inexpensive programs out
| there (I use CrossFire). The main obstacles for AI-generated
| crosswords are:
|
| (a) the "theme", the 3-5 longer answers that the Mon-Thu and
| Sun puzzles are usually centered around, most of which involve
| wordplay and misdirection -- it's possible, I'd like to see an
| AI reliably come up with those.
|
| (b) the clues, though I don't think these are intractable
| either.
| [deleted]
| gergi wrote:
| If anyone finds this interesting, I would also like to recommend
| watching Jon Stewart's _Wordplay_. It is much more interesting
| than it sounds.
| jpmattia wrote:
| Can confirm: If you're into crossword puzzles (and maybe even
| if you're not) it's a fun documentary.
|
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0492506/
| jl6 wrote:
| Diversity is what will kill crosswords, and I don't mean
| diversity in the skin color or gender of the setters, but the
| fragmentation of culture where nobody watches the same TV
| channels or reads the same newspapers any more. We increasingly
| hive off into our own bubbles of preferred content, tied only by
| whatever cultural commonality we acquired in grade school.
|
| There's just too much art, too many books, too many TV shows, and
| too much access to it all, to go back to the mostly-shared corpus
| of mostly-mutually-understandable cultural references we had in
| the 20th century. You would think that people would at least have
| read the _really_ famous books, or seen the _super popular_ TV
| shows, but I am regularly surprised to meet people who haven 't.
|
| Fair clues are foundational to crosswords, and foundational to
| fairness is understanding what the solver can be expected to
| know.
|
| A Guardian crossword last week referenced The Beatles, Anthony
| Eden, and the Russian revolution. Fair game? All part of a
| standard British upbringing, surely? Perhaps for now, but for how
| long?
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Or, it'll lead to more micro-communities creating crosswords
| that are topical and relevant to them, for example:
|
| https://www.private-eye.co.uk/crossword
|
| Private eye crossword, with downloadable version for use in
| apps, which references british (and world) politics.
| jl6 wrote:
| Yes, probably. My favorite such example is this regex
| crossword:
|
| https://jimbly.github.io/regex-crossword/
| yieldcrv wrote:
| despite there being much more fragmentation for what a pop
| culture reference is, than the 1900s, people still act
| surprised when you aren't aware of a cultural reference from
| their own little microcosm
|
| like the default isn't to just briefly explain it, the default
| is to genuinely confused for the next 5 minutes and derail the
| whole conversation
| 8bitsrule wrote:
| >foundational to fairness is understanding what the solver can
| be expected to know.
|
| No kidding. I've been seeing puzzles lately where so many
| answers are so completely obscure that finding half of their
| letters isn't enough. Unsolveable. Which leads me to wonder (
| _who_ could _know_ all this stuff?) if the answers aren 't
| being filled in by machine.
| javajosh wrote:
| quesera wrote:
| It doesn't strike me as anti-anything to point out that
| structural inequalities exist.
|
| Cultural divides are real, and standardized testing (or
| crosswords) written by members of a majority culture are likely
| to be inaccessible to some others.
| javajosh wrote:
| That's not what the TFA said. The "proof" for structural
| inequality was that crossword puzzle authors are mostly white
| men. That's it. There was no charge of rejecting women or
| people of color from writing crossword puzzles systematically
| or individually. And in fact the three black people
| encouraged to write the puzzles quit because of "lack of
| time".
|
| The cultural inaccessibility is not a problem, as you noted
| in your (now deleted) anecdote about how you don't get
| _Lemonade_. Not everything has to be accessible to everyone.
| Audiences largely self-select, and it makes no sense to
| attack something because the audience is all one color, and
| even less sense if this only upsets you if it's one
| particular color.
| quesera wrote:
| I deleted that anecdote because it was unnecessarily
| personal and distracting.
|
| But yeah -- _Lemonade_ was not written for me. And as I
| originally wrote, if it was the only record available
| iTunes /Spotify, I would have no cultural connection to
| popular music. (good thing, bad thing, you decide!)
|
| Crossword puzzle authors being only white men is absolutely
| culturally separate from many people.
|
| And maybe that's OK. It's no one's job to be all things to
| all people. Still, it's clearly structurally unequal.
|
| Now...whether it's important or interesting that other
| cultures are denied the pleasures of crossword puzzles...
| That's a good question. I'm of the general opinion that
| those other cultures are not missing much.
|
| Crossword puzzles might just be an old white person
| anachronism that will fade out in a generation or two. The
| likelihood of that increases if crosswords are not
| accessible to our future majority-minority population.
| gsk22 wrote:
| > The "proof" for structural inequality was that crossword
| puzzle authors are mostly white men.
|
| If structural inequality is not to blame, how do you
| explain the discrepancy between the demographics of puzzle
| setters and the public at large, then?
| javajosh wrote:
| How do you explain the demographics of _anything_? And
| why do you think it 's your job to "fix" all human
| endeavor to reflect demographics? Why is that a good
| outcome? How do you measure the demographic BTW? Because
| if it's global demographics most human endeavors have not
| near enough Asians, and far too many English speakers.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > the artists, web developers, professors, and other titles that
| imply a degree of wealth and elite connections
|
| Yes. You hear web developer, you think, "Probably knows the
| Clintons."
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