June 24, 2019 • 38 mins
How much paper is printed every day? Who's designing it and who's keeping on tabs on how much we have? Featuring interviews with crossword constructor Matt Gaffney and Steven Peterman of The Sketchbook Project. Learn more at www.ephemeral.show
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
A femeral is a protection of my heart radio. In
the discipline that is ephemer studies, the number one subject
is this paper. Institutions like the UK's Center for Ephemera
Studies at Reading University or the ephemer Society of America
(00:25):
maintain collections with no shortage of examples. Bus tickets, handbills,
breeding cards, stamps, pamphlets, advertisements, and calendars passed to name
a few, but not all. Ephemera is historical. Multitudes of papers,
imbued with the hard work and creativity of their designers,
(00:46):
are produced every day with an uncertain future. Today the
stories of two individuals working in very different but equally
ephemeral uses of the printed page. What is is that
elevator pitch version of is like if if you meet
someone in a bar and ask you what you do? What?
What do you say? The quick pitches that we are
(01:08):
the world's largest collection of sketch books that anyone can
be a part of. My name is Steven Peterman. I'm
the founder and director of the Sketchbook Project in Brooklyn
Art Library. The Sketchbook Project was born out of frustration
from a lack of creative outlets. There were a lot
of galleries that were doing call for entries and you
(01:29):
would pay and you were not guaranteed to be in
a show. And on the other hand, there were these
sort of like elite galleries that you had to apply
for her and maybe you got in or a few
people did. Stephen and his friends wanted to put together
an exhibition. We're the only bar for entry was a
person's interest. He describes their early efforts as one dimensional.
(01:51):
We're just gonna send out a disposable camera to a
hundred people, or we're going to send out a canvas
two hundred people and see what happened. Everybody sees nature
through different This is a couple of years before like kickstarters,
so we were essentially crowdfunding the project but did not
know what to call it. So we were like, hey,
if we get all these people to do it, we
can have this really cool exhibition six months to a
(02:12):
year in we we decided to use sketch books, called
it the Sketchery Project, and we filled up five people
really fast and sort of limited it to that, and
then we did that for a few years and we're like,
what happens if we just keep going? Two and ten
are big peak year where we had twenty thousand people
(02:33):
signed up for the project. That allowed us to be
able to do more and higher people. And that's when
we moved up to New York and opened up. The
initial iteration of our library of twelve hundred books within
a year would become eleven thousand. Year over year, the
number of submissions would grow exponentially. At the time of
(02:54):
this recording, we have forty one thousand books from over
a hundred different countries. With twelve years of practice, the
Sketch Book Project has their submission process down to a science.
We are still crowdfunded through participation. So you buy the
blank book from us, which is also your like ticket
into the library. If someone's interested, they can find us
(03:18):
online or go up to one of our exhibitions and
by the blank book, it comes with instructions on how
to get it back to us and how to contact
us and things like that, and then it also has
like a list of the themes. You fill it up
before you send it back. You then log into our website,
you create an account and you actually catalog your book,
so that means you put in your name, your bio
(03:38):
and artist statement about your book. You put in your mediums.
You use the materials, you use general key terms and
tag words, really anything you want. All of that becomes
searchable in our library system. When you're done, you'll sign
an envelope and ship it to us. We then catalog
them into the library system. Your book as a bar
(03:59):
cut on the back that originally got and you use
that to connect to our account. We'll scan it and
if you followed instructions properly, it prints out at barcode
with your name and your city on it and your
theme and everything that you chose, and you get a
little call number in the library. We replace your old
barcode with the new barcode, so you have your name
and everything on there, and then your books on the shelf. Initially,
(04:22):
your book will travel with the bookmobile throughout the summer.
We do different exhibitions, We do different pop ups all
over the country, and sometimes we travel international as well.
And then at the end of your tour, your book
will then live permanently in the Brooklyn Art Library. That
whole time, it's searchable by anyone. You can get email
(04:42):
or text message notifications when someone looks at your book,
so you can just be like sitting there one day
and you get it's like Steven from Brooklyn is currently
viewing your book at Brooklyn Art Library. Unlike the thousand
likes you may get by sharing something on Instagram, if
this person is having this intimate moment with your art
org and like whole to get and flipping through it.
Once the book is living in the library, someone may search.
(05:05):
You know, maybe your book was about dogs, maybe your
book was about death. They see your book and it
looks interesting and they hit check out and we'll pull
the book off the shelf for you. You always get
a random book as well, which is the book to
the right of it on the self. Most of the
time people love the random book more than the book
that they searched for. The system is extremely random, and
we that's why we love it. People have a natural
(05:28):
fear of like walking in and they're like, well, I
don't know what to pick, and we're like, just just
embrace it, just go with it. You don't know what
you're gonna get, and if you embrace the randomness, you
can truly like get lost in this entire collection. Kismet
is the word that comes to mind my introduction to
the Sketchbook Project and this conversation was equally serendipitous. The
(05:51):
book mobile was parked outside my office. Okay, and their bookmobile,
by the way, it's five piaggio. Ape is awesome. Well,
it's so small you can drive it. It goes, you know,
twelve to eighteen miles per hour depending on the wind speed.
(06:11):
She put on like a flatbed or something. Actually it
fits in the van. It is. It is like a
little Russian doll. The touring collection contains or so newest submissions.
The first thing you notice is how similar they all are.
Everyone starts with the same thing. It's a five by
seven book, like a blank one here. Yeah, just it's
(06:33):
real basic. It's staple bound. They're sixteen, so thirty two
back in front. And the second thing you notice is
how incredibly different they all are. We really like encourage
people to make it their own. And so she used
the long noting and the book is about Yeah. Part
of the challenge, I feel, is that you use the
(06:56):
original book in some way, as you can see a
lot of the signs having done and there's threading, or
or you can literally just changing the type of finding.
Some people literally just take the partet off, stick it
on a new book. Yeah, so they just kept the
cover trunk covering back from there and then filled it
with this like long folding. But I think it's really
(07:17):
interesting to people that want to change it and find
a way to change it within that format. Let's think
she used the original paper. She might a glued you guess,
include some thicker paper on top that looks pretty thin
when it starts, but you can expand it up to
an inch. So this is the whole thing folds out,
sold out. It's like a single piece. It can open
(07:38):
up to whatever you want as long as it folds
back down to that original size. That's all that we
ask of you. And it is amazing what people can
do with that. So he's like a dude that's working
doing grammar example of time using this to like blow
off steir. I mean, we could get you know, where
the adult contact comes in here. Yeah, but the artist
says eighteen plus. That's nice that they pay to that.
(08:01):
The sketchbooks end up in the sketchbook a lot. Yeah,
people will draw like the library, or or draw like
the cover of our sketch book or something. This is
much more what I would normally think of as a
sketch book, practicing, drawing like figures, writing in like quotes
from folks, some some dried flowers. Yeah, this is a
kind of sketch movement I think I could do. This
(08:23):
collection is a kaleidoscope because it reaches a diverse group
of contributors. Anyone can participate and be creative. We have children,
we have very old people. We have everywhere in between.
And we have moms and dads and art students and
professional illustrators and first time artists. We have over a
hundred different countries. We have every continent in the world.
(08:44):
We have two books from an arcticle, but we're not
quite sure they're legit or not. But high school students
or little kids come in and we're like, name any
country you can think of, and we'll have a book
from it. We don't jury the content. We want people
to share their perspective no matter what. And so other
than I would say literally like three bad apples, every
(09:05):
other book has been okay to be on the cell.
We have books about people who had survived cancer. We
have books of like memorials of of people. We have
books about childhood abuse. This is forty one thousand stories
like it's it's taken on its own living organism. Part
(09:27):
of what gives this organism life and fuels the success
of the project has to be the tactility of the
medium itself. People love to hold the books, especially when
we go to elementary schools who did not have the
same chiletood that we had and did not interact with
physical books as much. It's so interesting to see them
(09:48):
like touch the textures, I mean, and adults do that too.
We do have a digital archive, but that's never been
the same for us. That's like great for people that
want to share their work. It's also been twelve years,
so some of the books are becoming old and showing
where and unless the book is like truly falling apart,
(10:09):
which then we'll contact the artists and have them fix that.
We sort of just it happens. It's an organic process.
We moved spaces after six years, and we realized a
lot of the books in the front that had been
there for six years had more like fading on the
side than other books, and because they were in the
other window. I'm sure there are people who might listen
(10:30):
to this and be like, oh, that's BS, But I
think it's about this archive literally evolving. Why would we
put it in like plastic bags and keep it all perfect.
It's it's all part of this living thing, I guess
it is. It's just like a piece of somebody. And
I don't think that you necessarily get that with a
different medium. No, you wouldn't. And we do other you know,
(10:53):
we still do canvas space projects. We just did one
and it's fun and it's you know, we got a
lot of awesome artwork back it. It's it's not the same.
We just have found out of the years that people
feel really comfortable sharing in in a book format. It's
it's sort of universal all ages. It's something that they
can approach. I've yet to find an art related material
(11:16):
that I could convince someone who is not an artist
to take part in it. People are constantly like, my
book would be filled with stick figures, and we're like,
who cares? So what draw a million stick figures? Like
that actually would be a pretty awesome book. I get
there's people who just don't want to ever make arts,
but even still, like you probably have a story to tell.
(11:41):
A constant accumulation of ideas on paper. Does all of
this combined achieve something that no individual work could alone.
Is the whole greater than the sum of its parts.
For Stephen Peterman, it depends on where you're standing. It
really is depends on what direction you go into it.
I mean, when you're sitting there and it's it's anonymous,
(12:03):
and the human brain can't count how many books are
sitting on the self around you. It all blends together.
They're all the same color basically, so it's sort of
just one mass if you do the math. I think
there are two million plus spreads of art work in
the collection. I don't even think a brain can hold
that many. It's tough to comprehend it. And we got
(12:24):
four thousand every year or so. So all the ones
we have with us in our book mobile are brand new.
I've never seen any of them, and that is my
favorite part of it. But if you start talking to people,
are you you meet these artists who are like, I
just drove here from Canada and I want to see
my book and I haven't seen it in five years.
We went to an artist studio in Brooklyn just a
(12:47):
few months ago, and she gave us a book. She
had done a few other books, but then she gave
us one of her books from like two thousand and
thirteen that she never handed in because she started it
the week before sandy hit and then her house slid. It.
She then finished it and it was so dark she
couldn't give it up for five years. We came to
interview her and she's like, actually have a surprise for you.
(13:08):
I have this book. This woman came in the other day.
She's on her second sketch book. She was a police
officer in the World Trade Centers. She survived cancer, probably
from the World Trade Center. And then she also was
on the Amtrak train that crash. All of these things
and so her first book was about cancer and now
(13:31):
she's making a book about her amtrack crass. She drove
up from Florida, her friend drove over up here because
she needed to make this pilgrimage to her book in
the library and like see it. We went all the
way to Australia once with the project and we met
this woman. We were on the other side of the world,
and she was like sixt and she came up Twist
and she's like, I want to thank you guys. I
(13:52):
had never made art my whole entire life. I did
the Sketcher Project, and then I enrolled an undergrad art
school in her sixties. I'm on the other side of
the world. Then this person is telling me how I
helped them go back to school as a senior citizen.
Was so cool. Not only have we had people come
in to see their book, but we're getting a lot
of people that are like, can I get my book back?
Like I'm embarrassed that you have it from ten years ago.
(14:14):
They never knew how long we'd be around. I mean,
we're just an arts organization. So just the fact that
we're getting into this second decade of the project, it's
become like a time capsule. I actually I was doing
an interview or something and they asked me to pull
my book and it was my oldest one and it
was not embarrassing, but it's like this is so weird,
(14:36):
like this is not how I think now, And it
was very like email. We're starting to have this evolution
where like we are growing as people and the books
are living in this archive. I think that's the key
to the Sketchbook Project. Things don't proceed in a single
direction idea submission archive. Time capsule. Instead works readers and
(15:01):
creators exists as well, documented points inside a nebula interacting
with each other over and over and new and unpredictable ways.
You can go to the High Museum, or you can
go to the moment and you can look at the
art and then you feel inspired, but like what do
you do with that? Like you just it ends. The
(15:23):
story ends at when you walk away from that painting.
I mean less you're buying a Popes card from the
from the gift shop. But in our case, our hope
is that you look at this literally their emails written
in the back. You connect with this person who wants
to connect to do They want to be a part
of a global community, so you could connect with them.
But then also you maybe you're inspired, maybe you then
create a book and then you inspire someone else and
(15:44):
it creates this full circle experience. So the inspiration, viewing
and creation never stops. There's just like an endless circle
of it. And so I I love creating the atmosphere
that you walk out and you're like, oh no, I'm
I can do this, Like I'm gonna go do this
and then I'm gonna work on it and then I'm
gonna send it and inspire somebody else in the process.
(16:05):
You know. Our hope is that the archive lives on forever.
Like we have no plans. We would never like separate
the collection. Our long term goal for it is to
set up a foundation that maintains this collection. My wife
and I talked about all the time that we have
been chosen for this. We cannot do anything other than this.
This is what I've spent from thirty three I have
(16:27):
worked on this project, and no plans to not. There
are not many people who share the profession of Matt
Gaffney right now, let's see, there's me, there's him, it's her.
(16:52):
Right now, There's probably six people who do it for
a little a couple of hundred, maybe speros hundred who
do it as a serious hobby. And then there's people
who may be only write two or three puzzles a
year about some of them are very good. I met Gaffney,
and I've been read across his professionally. I guess this
twenty years this year. If you do crosswords, chances are
(17:18):
you've attempted one of Matt's. They are everywhere. The Wall
Street Journal, the New York Times, Games Magazine, to name
a few and in my humble opinion, he writes some
of the finest puzzles around. I've spent many of the
lazy morning or stolen Moment in an illuminated corner scribbling
guests across one of his publications. But just in case
(17:40):
you've not fallen under the spell of this incredibly addictive
and popular puzzle, here are the basics that crossword. In
the American version of a crossword, which is what most
of your listeners will be familiar with, there are clues
to words that are woven through the grid each letter
in an Amy crossword as part of both and across
(18:02):
and a downwards, So you get two chances at each letter.
So if you don't know the Opera crew letter on
the crossword, you might know the sports clue on the
down one, so you get two shots at each one.
That's kind of like a courtesy of market fairness to
the solver that you get two shots at each letter.
Do you need any help? The official first thing that
(18:24):
we now acknowledge is what became the American crossword period
in December of late teen thirteen, play a guy named
Arthur wynn w y n n E. There has been
some proto crossword type things before then, but he was
the one who formalized it into what now is considered
the first American cross work. The shape was sort of
a diamond shaped. The center wasn't used, but the other
(18:47):
aspects of it were similar. Newspapers took quickly to the
crossword as a way to get more eyes on the page.
Lowspapers pagan as a matter of course by everyone. News
to a crossroots sort of gravitated towards being fifteen by
fifteen for a daily size, kind of a nice little
size for something to do every day. It's like you
to get, of course, seem every day instead of a
(19:08):
seven course meal, which is a Sunday cross room. That's
twenty one by twenty one square is much bigger, and
that's big enough that people just want to solve it
once a week. Generally they're si delicious. Now with the
Internet eclipsing newspapers in many ways, including crosswords, you have
an explosion in puzzles of other sizes. Smaller is better
(19:30):
now is with everything else. Some people like to solve,
you know, ten by ten crosswords because you can knock
out five of them in half an hour instead of
one puzzle and a half. Now you get that same
rush five times instead of one time. For Matt, this
interest started before he even knew it. A cross word
was I was told by my parents that they never
(19:51):
really taught me to read. I just started cutting letters
out of magazines and books and rearranging them so natural
propensity to anagram saints and look letters and words in
a strange way. When I was eight or nine, I
started to solve puzzles and magazine The mainstay of his
youth was Dell Champion, a popular game magazine you can
(20:12):
still find in the checkout counter. After a few years
of solving Dell puzzles, Matt thought to himself also to
write one of these, and then I sent one in.
I was thirteen at the time, and they didn't accept
that one, but the editor, a guy named Wayne Robert Williams,
took the time to wake me a two page letterback
critiquing exactly why they were taking this puzzle and asking
(20:32):
me to send others if I had any other ideas.
So I didn't. I had my first puzzle published ever
in the December issue of Dell Champions, so that was cool,
and then it was off to the races. I loved
it now the trick was to turn his hobby into
a full time job. I didn't really enjoy steaming much
of those of the gage students. I had two intellectual
(20:54):
passions as a teenager, and they were crossed the puzzles
and chest. So I thought I would love to be
able to be a professional chess player or a crossword
writer for a living. I tried chess, but by hi
or so it was clear I was not gonna be
the next Bobby Fishers. So I thought, well, okay, maybe
maybe I'll be the Bobby Fisher of crosswords, and cross
has worked at a better point. I'm better across them
(21:17):
at chess. It turns out one of the reasons there
are so few full time crossword constructors is that, in
addition to the skill set required, the business end of
crosswords is well cutthroat. Generally, publications take submissions from hobbyists
and pros alike. Large outfits like The New York Times
(21:40):
maybe a hundred submissions per week. It's then the job
of the editors to pick which puzzles will run when
and what might need to be changed. So you've written
a great puzzle, chopped it around endlessly, maybe you've written
fifty puzzles and finally one is accepted for publication payday,
except you may have to wait until your puzzle is
(22:02):
actually published, which can be months. Three hundred bucks across
where it is with the Times doles out for a
daily size and a thousand for Sunday submission, but that's
the highest end of the scale. Some pay as little
as twenty five or fifty dollars. There was a pecking order,
you know, like in anything else, there's a hierarchy. But
(22:23):
I started to approach it as doing something other than
just freelancing, which you can't really make a living at.
Very difficult this week on the Internet cafe online gaming
in the mid to late nineties. The Internet was still
as infancy then and the software had just come out
recently that will allow people to solve on screen, or
it had matured to the point where it was good software.
(22:44):
So I went in query several hundred websites. I went
to Slay and said you need a political cross road
every week. And I went to PGA tour dot com
and said you need a golf cross road every week.
And I went to Billboard magazine said you need a
music cross for every week. The big newspapers and magazine
had their gigs and they had their solvers, But I
(23:04):
was sort of like the little fishing boat that could
get into the little of cracks where the big boats
cutting finds. You have to be innovative, you have to
keep reinventing yourself, and you have to be answered premarnially
like in anything else. But I've been doing it for
twenty years now without other sources of income. A well
constructed crossford is a thing of beauty. It's not haphazard
(23:26):
but balanced right brain, left brain order and artistry. There's
three main parts to cross were. The first one is
the theme. This time our puzzle will have some cool
words it which will help you identify a famous landmark.
That's the set of usually longer entries in the grid
that have some unifying motifs to them, hopefully something clever. Now.
(23:51):
There are some feamless crosswords or freestyle crosserts that don't
have the theme at all, but most crossers do have
the theme. The team is sort of like the reason
for existing up the cross word. It's a solo at
the cross road. That's what makes it unique. I could
of go around with my theme Antenna on low level alert.
(24:11):
I'm always on the lookout for interesting nine ten fifteen
letter towards or phrases. If if I hear one of
the TV shows or somebody says something, I'll think, I
wonder if I can make a team from that. It's
a weird I don't know if you can call it
a talent, but so were predilections. But crosser writers we
all tend to do that. So then once you go
(24:33):
up with the theme, you try to get the best
possible set of entries for that theme. You don't want
to miss any good ones. You don't want to have
somebody coming later and say, oh, this is really good,
but for this one, you should us this instead and
say I just didn't think of that. So you really
want to put the time interest. The late Moral Regal,
who many consider the greatest American crossing writer of all time,
(24:54):
called that cooking the theme, So you want to cook
your theme. Second partist to make the grid. Crosswords have
what's called a hundred navy degree rotational symmetry, which means
that if you turn the grid upside down, the black
square pattern will remain the same that just came about
for aesthetic reasons. There's no actual solid reason why you
have to have it that way, but that's the standard now.
(25:17):
It's like you put the longest beams in a building
in first and then filling everything around that. It's the
same with the cross where you put the longest entries
in first and then put the what we call the
fill the shorter entries around it. You don't want to
have a duplication the grid, so if you have you know,
oven at one across, you don't want to have ovens
in eighteen down or something. And you want to maximize
your film too, you're gonna need some crosswords stand by
(25:38):
words like aria and era E R A, which is
the most common entry in all of crosswords by wide
margin three letters period of time. Era ERA is correct
just because it's three letters long, which is the shortness
and entry can be in a standard cross rood, and
it's got all good letters and two valves. So you're
gonna have a bunch of those. But you also want
to have some fun stuff too that has high value
(25:59):
letters in scrip of a in it, like kazoo. You
want to have stuff that's contemporary. Somebody had cardi B
in across rood the other day, so you want to
have stuff like that just to show the solver that
cross Rood was not written thirty years ago. And then
the third part. Once you're happy with the field, then
you want to clue. It's six letter word a city
(26:20):
where the squares have fun on the common and the clues, well,
you want to maximize those two. You want to decide
what difficulty level it's going to be. Eight letter worry
one of the biggest defeats of all time. You could
have a grid with very simple words that any sixth
grader would know every single word in the script. But
you can make it a beyond expert level of solved
just by making the clue to fall out a word
(26:42):
the color of Jack Benny's eyes, a clue that's a pun,
or that's a clever plan, words that's generally appreciate. It
set a lot of word. If you have a lot
of this on the ball, you can be a good
pool player. Then you edit it and send it to
you whoever has agreed to pay for it, and then
it's done. By the early odds, the genre felt like
(27:04):
it was at a standstill what I call a theme
crisis in American crosswords. Let's say there's a mountain that
had a bunch of golden and everybody went there for
decades picking at the mountain. After six year, seventy years
and started to get kind of picked over, and you
still have the occasional little knife find in there, but
(27:25):
it was tougher and tougher, and it wasn't like it
used to be. There was a quote from Oscar Wilde.
I think I'm getting it verbatim. It said, to love
oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance. Okay, so
that's kind of an amazing quote, and that's why a
famous person. But the reason it's appeared in so many
crosses because it's forty five letters long, and they cleave
(27:45):
fifteen fifteen fifteen. To love Oneself is is fifteen the
beginning of as fifteen lifelong romances fifteen, and it also
pleased perfectly syntactically. To love oneself is second line across
the middle of the grid, the beginning of a and
then you have to see what's doing one is because
(28:06):
you're just no beginning of a lifelong romance. That quote
is perfect. It's like it was written to appear in
a cross roots. So it's been used in probably a
dozen cross roots. I know it'sn't appeared in the near
times at least three times over the decades. And there's
others too, like the understanding Way was really kind. His
name is fifteen letters. The sun also rises as fifteen
letters and a farewell to arms team letters perfect. It's
(28:28):
appeared in so many cross rout themes. Another one is
the United States Independence Day and the fourth of July,
all fifteen letters, and it's such as those those are
basic ones, but even more complex teams have become used
and seen before. And it was a bit frustrating, actually,
because you would come up with a theme and then
check online to see if somebody had done and somebody
had often done it. It was kind of annoying. Now,
(28:50):
I should say, you can still find nice tames, and
people have expanded steaming in other ways. But I was
sort of the guy who said, Okay, this mountain of
gold used to be great, but it's picked over. What
about that mountain over there that was going to be tried?
That mountain, so contest crosswords from me? Where that mountain was?
That mountain over there? Contest crosswords for matt up the
(29:11):
ante On the whole affair, I mostly known for those.
Now that's what I'm become known for it. I wanted
to find something that would really give crosswords a boost,
taking in a different direction. And what I came up
with was actually not an idea that I created, but
I just remembered it from my use when I used
to solve Dell Champion crossrood puzzles. This certain type of
puzzle where it wasn't just a crossword where you are
(29:33):
given the grid and the clues and when you feel
in the last letter you's done. In a contest crossword,
an additional puzzle lurks somewhere on the page, often when
you can't even attempt to solve until you've successfully completed
the grid. Along with the grid, you also got a
set of instructions telling you you were looking for a
specific thing, like the answer to this contest is a
(29:55):
world capital or a Hitchcock movie, something specific like that,
a letter words starting with B or whatever. You solve
the puzzle, and then after you're done, you have to
find that hitch Kind grove, your world chapel or whatever,
and it's hidden somewhere using some unique mechanism. It's hidden
in the grid or the clues or both, so it's
like a little treasure hunt. And some of them are
(30:16):
very simple, but they can also get hellishly complex where
it can take even the best solvers days to finally
get the answer. The really rejuvenated crossroots in a way,
I would say now other constructors have started writing these
contest crossroots as well. Big places like the Well Street
Journal publishes one every Friday. I write it every other Friday,
and they're very fun to write as well as to sell.
(30:38):
Twenty one across a five letter word, you can lose
a lot of money on one of these. Why has
this hundred year old word game proven a resilient form
of entertainment because crossroads evolved alongside the languages and cultus
(31:00):
of which they are a part. Crosswords that right now
would be considered to niche or too millennial oriented, or
too strange or something full of like slength that nobody
over thirty five have ever heard of, wouldn't be as
likely to be published if they had to go through
(31:22):
you know, some old editor like me, some old gatekeeper
or people older than me who just says, I don't
know any of this stuff. It's not going in there.
Because now they can publish online there's other crosswords specific
publications that cater to them, and they've built their own
fan bases. So it's proven to be a flexible for
an entertainment. And I would say it it's we're extainly
not decreasing in populard. I would say, it's actually growing up.
(31:51):
Do you just sit down and do crosswords too? That
aren't your crosswords? You know? I solve very selectively. Usually
it's to test solve the puzzle for a friend, and
the other one of three times will be if some
real a list name comes up and I don't want
to miss this one, or if a certain cross root
has gotten a lot of buzz online as it's come out,
I'll say, okay, let me print this out and see
(32:12):
what's going on. I read a website called Diary of
the cross Roof feed every day that reviews five or
six puzzles a day in New York Times, Universal News, Day,
Wall Street Journal, all the big ones, a lot of
the independent cross roots. So I'm in touch with almost
every major cross roots that's published, and I've at least
laid eyes on it if I haven't solved it. Despite
(32:35):
this tight knit community for Matt Gaffney the experience on
the other end of the crossword can be elusive for
puzzle constructors, Like many types of writers, there's a fundamental
disconnect between you and your audience. I don't often get
to see cross roots in the wild, you know. Sometimes
I'll stumble upon somebody in a bar or on a
(32:57):
train or something, and they'll be solving one of my crosswords.
But crosswords, writing them as solitary is solving them as
generally solitary. At parties or in social events is where
I get to hear people of actual solving experiences, and
also what they like and what they look for and
across words. I tend to view the crossword as art.
They tend to view it as entertainment. They're solving it
(33:18):
for minutes of pleasure, enjoyment, fun, past the time, whatever.
I understand that it's an experience for people like that,
but I'm also looking at it to be as artistically
interesting as possible, and some of that translates over. You
can enjoy beer, but you're not gonna know what the
brewer does, and there are certain things you don't even
care about that the brewer puts lots of time and
(33:40):
effort into making sure are to him good, but to
you you might not even know. So take a single
crossword puzzle, all those puns, tricky hints, word play, and
the hard fought battles in every square, and multiply that
by one a day for twenty years. How much of
(34:01):
that can be saved. We have these busy lives and
the going down, and we wonder what's gonna last and
what can our brains even hold. So you do have
this nostalgic since that life is fleeting. None of us
can printed. You know, you have that sort of look
when you get a slowing river across or pushing by,
And then sometimes you have reason to go back and
look at one from eight or ten years ago, and
(34:24):
you say, even if it's one I write, I, sometimes
I won't even remember it. I'll say I said that
I wrote this. It makes sense, it sounds like something
I would have done. I don't even remember. To a
crossword solver, the crossword may very well be a famor
just a way to pleasantly passed minutes, and then they
never have to think about it again. Either way of
looking at it as aren't or as entertainment is fine
(34:45):
with me. Let me ask you this is it? Is
it still a fun gig twenty years plus later, an
incredible job, and I'm going to be doing this as
long as I am able. Ephemeral is written, assembled by Quilliams,
(35:56):
and produced by Annie Reese, Matt Frederick, and Tristan McNeil.
Production assistance this episode from Trevor Young and additional mixing
from Josh Thain, with technical assistance from Sherry Larson. Matt
gaffney is the author of Gridlock, crossword puzzles and the
mad geniuses who create them. You can find links to puzzles,
(36:17):
books and a fabulous online crossword contest at mcgaffney dot com.
And to submit your own sketch book and join the
global community, visit Sketchbook Project dot com. If you're lucky
enough to be in New York, go and visit the
Brooklyn Art Library in Williamsburg. Somewhere in that nebula of
books is a new submission from yours truly. Just search
(36:38):
for the keyword ephemeral and for more from this archive,
search no further than ephemeral dot show Next time on Ephemeral.
(37:04):
It was a very high paced, very stressful job. Words
are coming in your ear you're talking to somebody else.
You're checking the wires to make sure that other people
have completed their calls. You're also making notes about how
long the call lasted, because you're going to charge the
customer based on how long the call lasted, note where
the call went to. And you're doing this with a
board of fifty calls that are coming in all at
(37:24):
the same time. The army did have to use men sometimes,
and they found that it took the average infantrymen sixty
seconds to complete a call. It took the average woman
ten seconds. So in war time, the difference between sixty
seconds and ten seconds is the difference between living or
getting your head blown off and the word wild and
(37:51):
inacquen Shoe final podcast from I Heart Radio, Isn't the
I Heart Radio of Apple Podcasts of Whenever using your
favorite shows
A femeral is a protection of my heart radio. In
the discipline that is ephemer studies, the number one subject
is this paper. Institutions like the UK's Center for Ephemera
Studies at Reading University or the ephemer Society of America
(00:25):
maintain collections with no shortage of examples. Bus tickets, handbills,
breeding cards, stamps, pamphlets, advertisements, and calendars passed to name
a few, but not all. Ephemera is historical. Multitudes of papers,
imbued with the hard work and creativity of their designers,
(00:46):
are produced every day with an uncertain future. Today the
stories of two individuals working in very different but equally
ephemeral uses of the printed page. What is is that
elevator pitch version of is like if if you meet
someone in a bar and ask you what you do? What?
What do you say? The quick pitches that we are
(01:08):
the world's largest collection of sketch books that anyone can
be a part of. My name is Steven Peterman. I'm
the founder and director of the Sketchbook Project in Brooklyn
Art Library. The Sketchbook Project was born out of frustration
from a lack of creative outlets. There were a lot
of galleries that were doing call for entries and you
(01:29):
would pay and you were not guaranteed to be in
a show. And on the other hand, there were these
sort of like elite galleries that you had to apply
for her and maybe you got in or a few
people did. Stephen and his friends wanted to put together
an exhibition. We're the only bar for entry was a
person's interest. He describes their early efforts as one dimensional.
(01:51):
We're just gonna send out a disposable camera to a
hundred people, or we're going to send out a canvas
two hundred people and see what happened. Everybody sees nature
through different This is a couple of years before like kickstarters,
so we were essentially crowdfunding the project but did not
know what to call it. So we were like, hey,
if we get all these people to do it, we
can have this really cool exhibition six months to a
(02:12):
year in we we decided to use sketch books, called
it the Sketchery Project, and we filled up five people
really fast and sort of limited it to that, and
then we did that for a few years and we're like,
what happens if we just keep going? Two and ten
are big peak year where we had twenty thousand people
(02:33):
signed up for the project. That allowed us to be
able to do more and higher people. And that's when
we moved up to New York and opened up. The
initial iteration of our library of twelve hundred books within
a year would become eleven thousand. Year over year, the
number of submissions would grow exponentially. At the time of
(02:54):
this recording, we have forty one thousand books from over
a hundred different countries. With twelve years of practice, the
Sketch Book Project has their submission process down to a science.
We are still crowdfunded through participation. So you buy the
blank book from us, which is also your like ticket
into the library. If someone's interested, they can find us
(03:18):
online or go up to one of our exhibitions and
by the blank book, it comes with instructions on how
to get it back to us and how to contact
us and things like that, and then it also has
like a list of the themes. You fill it up
before you send it back. You then log into our website,
you create an account and you actually catalog your book,
so that means you put in your name, your bio
(03:38):
and artist statement about your book. You put in your mediums.
You use the materials, you use general key terms and
tag words, really anything you want. All of that becomes
searchable in our library system. When you're done, you'll sign
an envelope and ship it to us. We then catalog
them into the library system. Your book as a bar
(03:59):
cut on the back that originally got and you use
that to connect to our account. We'll scan it and
if you followed instructions properly, it prints out at barcode
with your name and your city on it and your
theme and everything that you chose, and you get a
little call number in the library. We replace your old
barcode with the new barcode, so you have your name
and everything on there, and then your books on the shelf. Initially,
(04:22):
your book will travel with the bookmobile throughout the summer.
We do different exhibitions, We do different pop ups all
over the country, and sometimes we travel international as well.
And then at the end of your tour, your book
will then live permanently in the Brooklyn Art Library. That
whole time, it's searchable by anyone. You can get email
(04:42):
or text message notifications when someone looks at your book,
so you can just be like sitting there one day
and you get it's like Steven from Brooklyn is currently
viewing your book at Brooklyn Art Library. Unlike the thousand
likes you may get by sharing something on Instagram, if
this person is having this intimate moment with your art
org and like whole to get and flipping through it.
Once the book is living in the library, someone may search.
(05:05):
You know, maybe your book was about dogs, maybe your
book was about death. They see your book and it
looks interesting and they hit check out and we'll pull
the book off the shelf for you. You always get
a random book as well, which is the book to
the right of it on the self. Most of the
time people love the random book more than the book
that they searched for. The system is extremely random, and
we that's why we love it. People have a natural
(05:28):
fear of like walking in and they're like, well, I
don't know what to pick, and we're like, just just
embrace it, just go with it. You don't know what
you're gonna get, and if you embrace the randomness, you
can truly like get lost in this entire collection. Kismet
is the word that comes to mind my introduction to
the Sketchbook Project and this conversation was equally serendipitous. The
(05:51):
book mobile was parked outside my office. Okay, and their bookmobile,
by the way, it's five piaggio. Ape is awesome. Well,
it's so small you can drive it. It goes, you know,
twelve to eighteen miles per hour depending on the wind speed.
(06:11):
She put on like a flatbed or something. Actually it
fits in the van. It is. It is like a
little Russian doll. The touring collection contains or so newest submissions.
The first thing you notice is how similar they all are.
Everyone starts with the same thing. It's a five by
seven book, like a blank one here. Yeah, just it's
(06:33):
real basic. It's staple bound. They're sixteen, so thirty two
back in front. And the second thing you notice is
how incredibly different they all are. We really like encourage
people to make it their own. And so she used
the long noting and the book is about Yeah. Part
of the challenge, I feel, is that you use the
(06:56):
original book in some way, as you can see a
lot of the signs having done and there's threading, or
or you can literally just changing the type of finding.
Some people literally just take the partet off, stick it
on a new book. Yeah, so they just kept the
cover trunk covering back from there and then filled it
with this like long folding. But I think it's really
(07:17):
interesting to people that want to change it and find
a way to change it within that format. Let's think
she used the original paper. She might a glued you guess,
include some thicker paper on top that looks pretty thin
when it starts, but you can expand it up to
an inch. So this is the whole thing folds out,
sold out. It's like a single piece. It can open
(07:38):
up to whatever you want as long as it folds
back down to that original size. That's all that we
ask of you. And it is amazing what people can
do with that. So he's like a dude that's working
doing grammar example of time using this to like blow
off steir. I mean, we could get you know, where
the adult contact comes in here. Yeah, but the artist
says eighteen plus. That's nice that they pay to that.
(08:01):
The sketchbooks end up in the sketchbook a lot. Yeah,
people will draw like the library, or or draw like
the cover of our sketch book or something. This is
much more what I would normally think of as a
sketch book, practicing, drawing like figures, writing in like quotes
from folks, some some dried flowers. Yeah, this is a
kind of sketch movement I think I could do. This
(08:23):
collection is a kaleidoscope because it reaches a diverse group
of contributors. Anyone can participate and be creative. We have children,
we have very old people. We have everywhere in between.
And we have moms and dads and art students and
professional illustrators and first time artists. We have over a
hundred different countries. We have every continent in the world.
(08:44):
We have two books from an arcticle, but we're not
quite sure they're legit or not. But high school students
or little kids come in and we're like, name any
country you can think of, and we'll have a book
from it. We don't jury the content. We want people
to share their perspective no matter what. And so other
than I would say literally like three bad apples, every
(09:05):
other book has been okay to be on the cell.
We have books about people who had survived cancer. We
have books of like memorials of of people. We have
books about childhood abuse. This is forty one thousand stories
like it's it's taken on its own living organism. Part
(09:27):
of what gives this organism life and fuels the success
of the project has to be the tactility of the
medium itself. People love to hold the books, especially when
we go to elementary schools who did not have the
same chiletood that we had and did not interact with
physical books as much. It's so interesting to see them
(09:48):
like touch the textures, I mean, and adults do that too.
We do have a digital archive, but that's never been
the same for us. That's like great for people that
want to share their work. It's also been twelve years,
so some of the books are becoming old and showing
where and unless the book is like truly falling apart,
(10:09):
which then we'll contact the artists and have them fix that.
We sort of just it happens. It's an organic process.
We moved spaces after six years, and we realized a
lot of the books in the front that had been
there for six years had more like fading on the
side than other books, and because they were in the
other window. I'm sure there are people who might listen
(10:30):
to this and be like, oh, that's BS, But I
think it's about this archive literally evolving. Why would we
put it in like plastic bags and keep it all perfect.
It's it's all part of this living thing, I guess
it is. It's just like a piece of somebody. And
I don't think that you necessarily get that with a
different medium. No, you wouldn't. And we do other you know,
(10:53):
we still do canvas space projects. We just did one
and it's fun and it's you know, we got a
lot of awesome artwork back it. It's it's not the same.
We just have found out of the years that people
feel really comfortable sharing in in a book format. It's
it's sort of universal all ages. It's something that they
can approach. I've yet to find an art related material
(11:16):
that I could convince someone who is not an artist
to take part in it. People are constantly like, my
book would be filled with stick figures, and we're like,
who cares? So what draw a million stick figures? Like
that actually would be a pretty awesome book. I get
there's people who just don't want to ever make arts,
but even still, like you probably have a story to tell.
(11:41):
A constant accumulation of ideas on paper. Does all of
this combined achieve something that no individual work could alone.
Is the whole greater than the sum of its parts.
For Stephen Peterman, it depends on where you're standing. It
really is depends on what direction you go into it.
I mean, when you're sitting there and it's it's anonymous,
(12:03):
and the human brain can't count how many books are
sitting on the self around you. It all blends together.
They're all the same color basically, so it's sort of
just one mass if you do the math. I think
there are two million plus spreads of art work in
the collection. I don't even think a brain can hold
that many. It's tough to comprehend it. And we got
(12:24):
four thousand every year or so. So all the ones
we have with us in our book mobile are brand new.
I've never seen any of them, and that is my
favorite part of it. But if you start talking to people,
are you you meet these artists who are like, I
just drove here from Canada and I want to see
my book and I haven't seen it in five years.
We went to an artist studio in Brooklyn just a
(12:47):
few months ago, and she gave us a book. She
had done a few other books, but then she gave
us one of her books from like two thousand and
thirteen that she never handed in because she started it
the week before sandy hit and then her house slid. It.
She then finished it and it was so dark she
couldn't give it up for five years. We came to
interview her and she's like, actually have a surprise for you.
(13:08):
I have this book. This woman came in the other day.
She's on her second sketch book. She was a police
officer in the World Trade Centers. She survived cancer, probably
from the World Trade Center. And then she also was
on the Amtrak train that crash. All of these things
and so her first book was about cancer and now
(13:31):
she's making a book about her amtrack crass. She drove
up from Florida, her friend drove over up here because
she needed to make this pilgrimage to her book in
the library and like see it. We went all the
way to Australia once with the project and we met
this woman. We were on the other side of the world,
and she was like sixt and she came up Twist
and she's like, I want to thank you guys. I
(13:52):
had never made art my whole entire life. I did
the Sketcher Project, and then I enrolled an undergrad art
school in her sixties. I'm on the other side of
the world. Then this person is telling me how I
helped them go back to school as a senior citizen.
Was so cool. Not only have we had people come
in to see their book, but we're getting a lot
of people that are like, can I get my book back?
Like I'm embarrassed that you have it from ten years ago.
(14:14):
They never knew how long we'd be around. I mean,
we're just an arts organization. So just the fact that
we're getting into this second decade of the project, it's
become like a time capsule. I actually I was doing
an interview or something and they asked me to pull
my book and it was my oldest one and it
was not embarrassing, but it's like this is so weird,
(14:36):
like this is not how I think now, And it
was very like email. We're starting to have this evolution
where like we are growing as people and the books
are living in this archive. I think that's the key
to the Sketchbook Project. Things don't proceed in a single
direction idea submission archive. Time capsule. Instead works readers and
(15:01):
creators exists as well, documented points inside a nebula interacting
with each other over and over and new and unpredictable ways.
You can go to the High Museum, or you can
go to the moment and you can look at the
art and then you feel inspired, but like what do
you do with that? Like you just it ends. The
(15:23):
story ends at when you walk away from that painting.
I mean less you're buying a Popes card from the
from the gift shop. But in our case, our hope
is that you look at this literally their emails written
in the back. You connect with this person who wants
to connect to do They want to be a part
of a global community, so you could connect with them.
But then also you maybe you're inspired, maybe you then
create a book and then you inspire someone else and
(15:44):
it creates this full circle experience. So the inspiration, viewing
and creation never stops. There's just like an endless circle
of it. And so I I love creating the atmosphere
that you walk out and you're like, oh no, I'm
I can do this, Like I'm gonna go do this
and then I'm gonna work on it and then I'm
gonna send it and inspire somebody else in the process.
(16:05):
You know. Our hope is that the archive lives on forever.
Like we have no plans. We would never like separate
the collection. Our long term goal for it is to
set up a foundation that maintains this collection. My wife
and I talked about all the time that we have
been chosen for this. We cannot do anything other than this.
This is what I've spent from thirty three I have
(16:27):
worked on this project, and no plans to not. There
are not many people who share the profession of Matt
Gaffney right now, let's see, there's me, there's him, it's her.
(16:52):
Right now, There's probably six people who do it for
a little a couple of hundred, maybe speros hundred who
do it as a serious hobby. And then there's people
who may be only write two or three puzzles a
year about some of them are very good. I met Gaffney,
and I've been read across his professionally. I guess this
twenty years this year. If you do crosswords, chances are
(17:18):
you've attempted one of Matt's. They are everywhere. The Wall
Street Journal, the New York Times, Games Magazine, to name
a few and in my humble opinion, he writes some
of the finest puzzles around. I've spent many of the
lazy morning or stolen Moment in an illuminated corner scribbling
guests across one of his publications. But just in case
(17:40):
you've not fallen under the spell of this incredibly addictive
and popular puzzle, here are the basics that crossword. In
the American version of a crossword, which is what most
of your listeners will be familiar with, there are clues
to words that are woven through the grid each letter
in an Amy crossword as part of both and across
(18:02):
and a downwards, So you get two chances at each letter.
So if you don't know the Opera crew letter on
the crossword, you might know the sports clue on the
down one, so you get two shots at each one.
That's kind of like a courtesy of market fairness to
the solver that you get two shots at each letter.
Do you need any help? The official first thing that
(18:24):
we now acknowledge is what became the American crossword period
in December of late teen thirteen, play a guy named
Arthur wynn w y n n E. There has been
some proto crossword type things before then, but he was
the one who formalized it into what now is considered
the first American cross work. The shape was sort of
a diamond shaped. The center wasn't used, but the other
(18:47):
aspects of it were similar. Newspapers took quickly to the
crossword as a way to get more eyes on the page.
Lowspapers pagan as a matter of course by everyone. News
to a crossroots sort of gravitated towards being fifteen by
fifteen for a daily size, kind of a nice little
size for something to do every day. It's like you
to get, of course, seem every day instead of a
(19:08):
seven course meal, which is a Sunday cross room. That's
twenty one by twenty one square is much bigger, and
that's big enough that people just want to solve it
once a week. Generally they're si delicious. Now with the
Internet eclipsing newspapers in many ways, including crosswords, you have
an explosion in puzzles of other sizes. Smaller is better
(19:30):
now is with everything else. Some people like to solve,
you know, ten by ten crosswords because you can knock
out five of them in half an hour instead of
one puzzle and a half. Now you get that same
rush five times instead of one time. For Matt, this
interest started before he even knew it. A cross word
was I was told by my parents that they never
(19:51):
really taught me to read. I just started cutting letters
out of magazines and books and rearranging them so natural
propensity to anagram saints and look letters and words in
a strange way. When I was eight or nine, I
started to solve puzzles and magazine The mainstay of his
youth was Dell Champion, a popular game magazine you can
(20:12):
still find in the checkout counter. After a few years
of solving Dell puzzles, Matt thought to himself also to
write one of these, and then I sent one in.
I was thirteen at the time, and they didn't accept
that one, but the editor, a guy named Wayne Robert Williams,
took the time to wake me a two page letterback
critiquing exactly why they were taking this puzzle and asking
(20:32):
me to send others if I had any other ideas.
So I didn't. I had my first puzzle published ever
in the December issue of Dell Champions, so that was cool,
and then it was off to the races. I loved
it now the trick was to turn his hobby into
a full time job. I didn't really enjoy steaming much
of those of the gage students. I had two intellectual
(20:54):
passions as a teenager, and they were crossed the puzzles
and chest. So I thought I would love to be
able to be a professional chess player or a crossword
writer for a living. I tried chess, but by hi
or so it was clear I was not gonna be
the next Bobby Fishers. So I thought, well, okay, maybe
maybe I'll be the Bobby Fisher of crosswords, and cross
has worked at a better point. I'm better across them
(21:17):
at chess. It turns out one of the reasons there
are so few full time crossword constructors is that, in
addition to the skill set required, the business end of
crosswords is well cutthroat. Generally, publications take submissions from hobbyists
and pros alike. Large outfits like The New York Times
(21:40):
maybe a hundred submissions per week. It's then the job
of the editors to pick which puzzles will run when
and what might need to be changed. So you've written
a great puzzle, chopped it around endlessly, maybe you've written
fifty puzzles and finally one is accepted for publication payday,
except you may have to wait until your puzzle is
(22:02):
actually published, which can be months. Three hundred bucks across
where it is with the Times doles out for a
daily size and a thousand for Sunday submission, but that's
the highest end of the scale. Some pay as little
as twenty five or fifty dollars. There was a pecking order,
you know, like in anything else, there's a hierarchy. But
(22:23):
I started to approach it as doing something other than
just freelancing, which you can't really make a living at.
Very difficult this week on the Internet cafe online gaming
in the mid to late nineties. The Internet was still
as infancy then and the software had just come out
recently that will allow people to solve on screen, or
it had matured to the point where it was good software.
(22:44):
So I went in query several hundred websites. I went
to Slay and said you need a political cross road
every week. And I went to PGA tour dot com
and said you need a golf cross road every week.
And I went to Billboard magazine said you need a
music cross for every week. The big newspapers and magazine
had their gigs and they had their solvers, But I
(23:04):
was sort of like the little fishing boat that could
get into the little of cracks where the big boats
cutting finds. You have to be innovative, you have to
keep reinventing yourself, and you have to be answered premarnially
like in anything else. But I've been doing it for
twenty years now without other sources of income. A well
constructed crossford is a thing of beauty. It's not haphazard
(23:26):
but balanced right brain, left brain order and artistry. There's
three main parts to cross were. The first one is
the theme. This time our puzzle will have some cool
words it which will help you identify a famous landmark.
That's the set of usually longer entries in the grid
that have some unifying motifs to them, hopefully something clever. Now.
(23:51):
There are some feamless crosswords or freestyle crosserts that don't
have the theme at all, but most crossers do have
the theme. The team is sort of like the reason
for existing up the cross word. It's a solo at
the cross road. That's what makes it unique. I could
of go around with my theme Antenna on low level alert.
(24:11):
I'm always on the lookout for interesting nine ten fifteen
letter towards or phrases. If if I hear one of
the TV shows or somebody says something, I'll think, I
wonder if I can make a team from that. It's
a weird I don't know if you can call it
a talent, but so were predilections. But crosser writers we
all tend to do that. So then once you go
(24:33):
up with the theme, you try to get the best
possible set of entries for that theme. You don't want
to miss any good ones. You don't want to have
somebody coming later and say, oh, this is really good,
but for this one, you should us this instead and
say I just didn't think of that. So you really
want to put the time interest. The late Moral Regal,
who many consider the greatest American crossing writer of all time,
(24:54):
called that cooking the theme, So you want to cook
your theme. Second partist to make the grid. Crosswords have
what's called a hundred navy degree rotational symmetry, which means
that if you turn the grid upside down, the black
square pattern will remain the same that just came about
for aesthetic reasons. There's no actual solid reason why you
have to have it that way, but that's the standard now.
(25:17):
It's like you put the longest beams in a building
in first and then filling everything around that. It's the
same with the cross where you put the longest entries
in first and then put the what we call the
fill the shorter entries around it. You don't want to
have a duplication the grid, so if you have you know,
oven at one across, you don't want to have ovens
in eighteen down or something. And you want to maximize
your film too, you're gonna need some crosswords stand by
(25:38):
words like aria and era E R A, which is
the most common entry in all of crosswords by wide
margin three letters period of time. Era ERA is correct
just because it's three letters long, which is the shortness
and entry can be in a standard cross rood, and
it's got all good letters and two valves. So you're
gonna have a bunch of those. But you also want
to have some fun stuff too that has high value
(25:59):
letters in scrip of a in it, like kazoo. You
want to have stuff that's contemporary. Somebody had cardi B
in across rood the other day, so you want to
have stuff like that just to show the solver that
cross Rood was not written thirty years ago. And then
the third part. Once you're happy with the field, then
you want to clue. It's six letter word a city
(26:20):
where the squares have fun on the common and the clues, well,
you want to maximize those two. You want to decide
what difficulty level it's going to be. Eight letter worry
one of the biggest defeats of all time. You could
have a grid with very simple words that any sixth
grader would know every single word in the script. But
you can make it a beyond expert level of solved
just by making the clue to fall out a word
(26:42):
the color of Jack Benny's eyes, a clue that's a pun,
or that's a clever plan, words that's generally appreciate. It
set a lot of word. If you have a lot
of this on the ball, you can be a good
pool player. Then you edit it and send it to
you whoever has agreed to pay for it, and then
it's done. By the early odds, the genre felt like
(27:04):
it was at a standstill what I call a theme
crisis in American crosswords. Let's say there's a mountain that
had a bunch of golden and everybody went there for
decades picking at the mountain. After six year, seventy years
and started to get kind of picked over, and you
still have the occasional little knife find in there, but
(27:25):
it was tougher and tougher, and it wasn't like it
used to be. There was a quote from Oscar Wilde.
I think I'm getting it verbatim. It said, to love
oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance. Okay, so
that's kind of an amazing quote, and that's why a
famous person. But the reason it's appeared in so many
crosses because it's forty five letters long, and they cleave
(27:45):
fifteen fifteen fifteen. To love Oneself is is fifteen the
beginning of as fifteen lifelong romances fifteen, and it also
pleased perfectly syntactically. To love oneself is second line across
the middle of the grid, the beginning of a and
then you have to see what's doing one is because
(28:06):
you're just no beginning of a lifelong romance. That quote
is perfect. It's like it was written to appear in
a cross roots. So it's been used in probably a
dozen cross roots. I know it'sn't appeared in the near
times at least three times over the decades. And there's
others too, like the understanding Way was really kind. His
name is fifteen letters. The sun also rises as fifteen
letters and a farewell to arms team letters perfect. It's
(28:28):
appeared in so many cross rout themes. Another one is
the United States Independence Day and the fourth of July,
all fifteen letters, and it's such as those those are
basic ones, but even more complex teams have become used
and seen before. And it was a bit frustrating, actually,
because you would come up with a theme and then
check online to see if somebody had done and somebody
had often done it. It was kind of annoying. Now,
(28:50):
I should say, you can still find nice tames, and
people have expanded steaming in other ways. But I was
sort of the guy who said, Okay, this mountain of
gold used to be great, but it's picked over. What
about that mountain over there that was going to be tried?
That mountain, so contest crosswords from me? Where that mountain was?
That mountain over there? Contest crosswords for matt up the
(29:11):
ante On the whole affair, I mostly known for those.
Now that's what I'm become known for it. I wanted
to find something that would really give crosswords a boost,
taking in a different direction. And what I came up
with was actually not an idea that I created, but
I just remembered it from my use when I used
to solve Dell Champion crossrood puzzles. This certain type of
puzzle where it wasn't just a crossword where you are
(29:33):
given the grid and the clues and when you feel
in the last letter you's done. In a contest crossword,
an additional puzzle lurks somewhere on the page, often when
you can't even attempt to solve until you've successfully completed
the grid. Along with the grid, you also got a
set of instructions telling you you were looking for a
specific thing, like the answer to this contest is a
(29:55):
world capital or a Hitchcock movie, something specific like that,
a letter words starting with B or whatever. You solve
the puzzle, and then after you're done, you have to
find that hitch Kind grove, your world chapel or whatever,
and it's hidden somewhere using some unique mechanism. It's hidden
in the grid or the clues or both, so it's
like a little treasure hunt. And some of them are
(30:16):
very simple, but they can also get hellishly complex where
it can take even the best solvers days to finally
get the answer. The really rejuvenated crossroots in a way,
I would say now other constructors have started writing these
contest crossroots as well. Big places like the Well Street
Journal publishes one every Friday. I write it every other Friday,
and they're very fun to write as well as to sell.
(30:38):
Twenty one across a five letter word, you can lose
a lot of money on one of these. Why has
this hundred year old word game proven a resilient form
of entertainment because crossroads evolved alongside the languages and cultus
(31:00):
of which they are a part. Crosswords that right now
would be considered to niche or too millennial oriented, or
too strange or something full of like slength that nobody
over thirty five have ever heard of, wouldn't be as
likely to be published if they had to go through
(31:22):
you know, some old editor like me, some old gatekeeper
or people older than me who just says, I don't
know any of this stuff. It's not going in there.
Because now they can publish online there's other crosswords specific
publications that cater to them, and they've built their own
fan bases. So it's proven to be a flexible for
an entertainment. And I would say it it's we're extainly
not decreasing in populard. I would say, it's actually growing up.
(31:51):
Do you just sit down and do crosswords too? That
aren't your crosswords? You know? I solve very selectively. Usually
it's to test solve the puzzle for a friend, and
the other one of three times will be if some
real a list name comes up and I don't want
to miss this one, or if a certain cross root
has gotten a lot of buzz online as it's come out,
I'll say, okay, let me print this out and see
(32:12):
what's going on. I read a website called Diary of
the cross Roof feed every day that reviews five or
six puzzles a day in New York Times, Universal News, Day,
Wall Street Journal, all the big ones, a lot of
the independent cross roots. So I'm in touch with almost
every major cross roots that's published, and I've at least
laid eyes on it if I haven't solved it. Despite
(32:35):
this tight knit community for Matt Gaffney the experience on
the other end of the crossword can be elusive for
puzzle constructors, Like many types of writers, there's a fundamental
disconnect between you and your audience. I don't often get
to see cross roots in the wild, you know. Sometimes
I'll stumble upon somebody in a bar or on a
(32:57):
train or something, and they'll be solving one of my crosswords.
But crosswords, writing them as solitary is solving them as
generally solitary. At parties or in social events is where
I get to hear people of actual solving experiences, and
also what they like and what they look for and
across words. I tend to view the crossword as art.
They tend to view it as entertainment. They're solving it
(33:18):
for minutes of pleasure, enjoyment, fun, past the time, whatever.
I understand that it's an experience for people like that,
but I'm also looking at it to be as artistically
interesting as possible, and some of that translates over. You
can enjoy beer, but you're not gonna know what the
brewer does, and there are certain things you don't even
care about that the brewer puts lots of time and
(33:40):
effort into making sure are to him good, but to
you you might not even know. So take a single
crossword puzzle, all those puns, tricky hints, word play, and
the hard fought battles in every square, and multiply that
by one a day for twenty years. How much of
(34:01):
that can be saved. We have these busy lives and
the going down, and we wonder what's gonna last and
what can our brains even hold. So you do have
this nostalgic since that life is fleeting. None of us
can printed. You know, you have that sort of look
when you get a slowing river across or pushing by,
And then sometimes you have reason to go back and
look at one from eight or ten years ago, and
(34:24):
you say, even if it's one I write, I, sometimes
I won't even remember it. I'll say I said that
I wrote this. It makes sense, it sounds like something
I would have done. I don't even remember. To a
crossword solver, the crossword may very well be a famor
just a way to pleasantly passed minutes, and then they
never have to think about it again. Either way of
looking at it as aren't or as entertainment is fine
(34:45):
with me. Let me ask you this is it? Is
it still a fun gig twenty years plus later, an
incredible job, and I'm going to be doing this as
long as I am able. Ephemeral is written, assembled by Quilliams,
(35:56):
and produced by Annie Reese, Matt Frederick, and Tristan McNeil.
Production assistance this episode from Trevor Young and additional mixing
from Josh Thain, with technical assistance from Sherry Larson. Matt
gaffney is the author of Gridlock, crossword puzzles and the
mad geniuses who create them. You can find links to puzzles,
(36:17):
books and a fabulous online crossword contest at mcgaffney dot com.
And to submit your own sketch book and join the
global community, visit Sketchbook Project dot com. If you're lucky
enough to be in New York, go and visit the
Brooklyn Art Library in Williamsburg. Somewhere in that nebula of
books is a new submission from yours truly. Just search
(36:38):
for the keyword ephemeral and for more from this archive,
search no further than ephemeral dot show Next time on Ephemeral.
(37:04):
It was a very high paced, very stressful job. Words
are coming in your ear you're talking to somebody else.
You're checking the wires to make sure that other people
have completed their calls. You're also making notes about how
long the call lasted, because you're going to charge the
customer based on how long the call lasted, note where
the call went to. And you're doing this with a
board of fifty calls that are coming in all at
(37:24):
the same time. The army did have to use men sometimes,
and they found that it took the average infantrymen sixty
seconds to complete a call. It took the average woman
ten seconds. So in war time, the difference between sixty
seconds and ten seconds is the difference between living or
getting your head blown off and the word wild and
(37:51):
inacquen Shoe final podcast from I Heart Radio, Isn't the
I Heart Radio of Apple Podcasts of Whenever using your
favorite shows
Ephemeral News
Host
Alex Williams
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