From the pages of The Atlantic, a new torment for woke sophisticates:
The hidden bigotry of crosswords.
That sound you hear is barrel-bottom-scraping.
The popular puzzles are largely written and edited by older white men, who dictate what makes it into the grid—and what is kept out.
The world of woke crossword-puzzlers – because that’s a thing that exists – is one in which enthusiasts, via social media, grumble about white men, bemoan the insufficient prominence of “queer or POC colloquialisms,” share “off-colour jokes about hypothetical titles for a Melania Trump memoir,” and fret about the exact ratio of male and female names used as clues. Because a lack of “gender parity” in crossword puzzle clues constitutes one of “the systemic forces that threaten women.”
Crossword puzzles can do that, apparently.
The list of possible crossword-puzzle wrongdoings is, of course, extensive, ever-growing and not entirely straightforward.
Transgressions include clues for ILLEGAL (“One caught by border patrol”); MEN (“Exasperated comment from a feminist”); and HOOD (“Place with homies”).
I’ll give you a moment to steady yourselves, to recover from all that gasping.
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