Here’s a crossword clue: “Words are flowing out like rain into a black-and-white grid.”
The answer: “Across The Universe.”
The name of Natan Last’s new book (subtitled “The Past, Present, and Future of the Crossword Puzzle”) borrows from the Beatles to show how much space crosswords have filled in our lives.
The author is an immigration policy advocate who has worked for the UN and the International Rescue Committee, but he has also been creating crosswords since his teens for publications such as the New York Times and the New Yorker.
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In “Across the Universe,” Last tracks the history of the crossword for more than a century. He writes about the years of World War II when the New York Times’ puzzle was filled with propaganda – his favorite clue is “Junkyard for Nazi Subs,” with an answer of “The Atlantic Ocean” – to more recent examples, such as a donut-shaped crossword filled with references to “The Simpsons.”
The book is filled with whimsy – he says puns are unfairly maligned and celebrates jokes like the clue “Faux Pas?” for the answer “TV dads” – but also has a more serious side, exploring how puzzles have evolved and dealt with bias and the framing of news events.
He also writes about Will Shortz, the fabled New York Times editor who rebelled against the old school when he took over in 1993 by using more pop culture references and brand names. But Shortz, who recently returned to work following a pair of strokes, has drawn criticism during his tenure for a lack of diversity among puzzlemakers and use of tone-deaf, biased language.
“The Times has gotten better about this,” Last says.
Last spoke recently by video from his Brooklyn home about all these words and what they mean. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q. How does your policy work seep into your crosswords and vice versa?
My mother’s an immigrant, and my dad, who’s from East New York, was surrounded by people speaking Yiddish and the manifold cultures of 1970s Brooklyn. So I’ve always been really interested in immigration. My policy background is in economics and international law. So the immigration angle is about helping people who are tearing themselves away from someplace.
I’m really interested in putting non-English words that ought to be known in the puzzles. English and French, with all of their vowels, fit neatly in a crossword grid that’s dominated by Germanic consonant-heavy words. But Swahili looks that way, too. So if there are words like “asante,” which means “thank you,” then maybe people will remember, and I’ll use those. My educational background exposed me to a lot of the leaders of decolonization in East Africa – they’re famous to lots of people in the world, so I’ll put in someone like Julius Nyerere, the Tanzanian leader who overthrew colonial rule from the British, to say, “This is someone worth knowing.”
And you can make it solvable for people who don’t know. [Puzzlemaker] Eric Agard is great at that. He’ll put a clue in the middle of the grid, saying something like “WNBA All-star who won the MVP,” and then it will be Nneka Ogwumike, a name not intuitively spelled to people who don’t know her. But as a constructor, you can make every single down answer that touches it easy or even a total softball.
Q. You’re on the side that sees crosswords as inescapably political. Is that just in terms of being inclusive of new people and new words, or is it also about words that should or shouldn’t be in there for political reasons?
There’s a constructor, Laura Bronstein, who says every crossword says, “Here are the things you need to know to go be a person in the world.”
So they’re obviously political. If “erotica” is acceptable as an answer, why isn’t “gay erotica”?
One reason the Times is a more sensitive puzzle right now is because they make a ton of money from it, so now it’s no longer just Will Shortz in his study, it’s now marketing analysts and sensitivity readers and all of that infrastructure.
Q. Which leads to the question of what’s outside the box? Someone says you can’t use the word “grope,” and another that you can’t use the basketball term “shooting guard.”
One of the tricky components of trying to decide what gets to be in a crossword is that it’s actually a judgment call. I would love it if it were more like law or moral philosophy, where I could say, “Here is how you do not cause harm.” It’s extremely hard.
When it comes to foreign policy, we’re a very murderous country, and we kill a lot of people. If you really care about that, then putting Obama in a puzzle, despite all the good stuff, when you have the deportations and the drone strikes lined up, that’s a judgment call.
Some people say, don’t put the NRA in puzzles. It’s pretty easy to avoid those three letters. But other people say, put it in and call a spade a spade. You can reference some awful bit of their lobbying or some terrible outcome and tar them with it. Those are both reasonable approaches. I lean more in that second category now where the clue is a lot more powerful than just the mere appearance of the word in the grid.
The best thing you can do is have the courage of your convictions. What’s going too far is too readily presuming you can imagine the solver’s experience in advance.
Q. You note that people use computer programs and now AI for crossword construction, but they can’t come up with creative clues like “Moscow V.I.P. who liked to cook on a ship?” [Nikita Cruise Chef is the answer]. Will humans always be the best at this?
AI is advancing by leaps and bounds, but it’s still not doing puns very well or coming up with word themes. It’s not clever, it’s not interested in dual meanings. We’re funny, we’re clever, we’re infinitely productive when it comes to language. AI doesn’t hold my attention yet. It’s not even a good mimic. And even if they eventually beat us at it, I’m still going to want to make crosswords. So who cares?
Natan Last discusses and signs “Across the Universe” with Megan Amram
When: 7 p.m., January 20, 2026
Where: Vroman’s Bookstore, 695 E. Colorado Blvd, Pasadena
Information: https://vromansbookstore.com/event/2026-01-20/natan-last