Ben Tausig, Crossword Constructor

This cruciverbalist is tilting down the high-brow, stodgy world of crossword puzzles

By Meghan Murphy
Published: January 20th, 2007 | 3:12pm

Maybe you do it once or twice a week. Maybe just on special occasions, such as vacations or long trips. Perhaps you're committed to doing it daily, pulling out your pencil (or pen, if you're confident) every morning as you flip past world news, stock reports, and sports scores until, finally, you arrive at the crossword puzzle. But, if you're a member of a generation named by one of the last few letters in the alphabet, chances are you probably felt a little alienated by a lot of the clues. One crossword constructor, or "cruciverbalist", is trying to change that.

Ben Tausig is a 26-year-old Brooklyn, New York resident, plays in an experimental band and could be the one of the youngest full-time professional puzzlers in the country. Adding intrigue to his already interesting story, he says that it all started on a plane ride to Tibet. " I was trying to do the crossword puzzle on the plane and I couldn't finish this corner, so I started trying to fill in the corner myself," Tausig says.

That first foray triggered his curiosity about the elusive world of crossword construction. When he returned to the United States a month later, he began researching listservs and Web sites that provided resources for puzzle makers. When he found a list called "Cruciverb", he also found himself a mentor (Nancy Solomon, a regular contributor to the New York Times crossword). Soon, he was selling puzzles to USA Today and The LA Times, and one year later he was able to became a full-time cruciverbalist.

Though he finds his first puzzles embarrassing now ("You kind of come up with these awkward themes that still sort of work," he says), they led him to pitch a weekly puzzle to The San Francisco Guardian, and the alt-weekly responded by signing on for four puzzles. "I guess it worked out well, so I kept doing it for them," he says. "and then I kind of expanded and added more papers and sold them the same puzzle. I think The [Detroit] Metro Times was next, and then The [Chicago] Reader."

Tausig's puzzles even appeared regularly in The Village Voice for a few months, but The Voice suffered an ironic twist of fate when they were bought out by The New Times, a conglomerate of alternative weeklies that, in their attempts to standardize their publications, seems to be anti-crossword.

Now that he's published in a variety of cities weekly under the title "Ink Well", he modifies each week's puzzle with city-specific clues that reference sources of civic pride like music venues, local bands, and regional food. This feature, as well as his clues requiring a knowledge of pop culture, is met with some resistance by a few more conservative members of the larger community of crossword constructors. It also resembles the early career of the infamous cruciverbalist, Will Shortz.

Before Shortz, now the editor of The New York Times crosswords and known as a general puzzle-making celebrity, crosswords were more like exercises for people with good reference sets. "[They included] a lot of esoteric facts and words people wouldn't know," Tausig says, such as references to arcane classical texts, Latin, and other languages. In other words, these were puzzles for the elite, educated classes.

"Will Shortz transformed The Times puzzle into a puzzle anyone could do. He used the content of The Times as what was fair game for the puzzle. Lots of pop culture clues, lots of contemporary political stuff, colorful phrases like 'on the go', 'by the way', phrases people use naturally in speech. I always respected that ... they're not stodgy and musty."

Tausig claims he likes to take this ethic even further, "because people who read alt-weeklies are capable of taking, you know, 'edgier' stuff. I think there's a different category of slang you can use, different artistic interests you can draw on," he says, excitement rising in his voice. "A reference to Tortoise is fairly universal for readers of alt-weeklies. I thought it would be kind of nice to write a puzzle that spoke to people who had those particular interests."

Tausig considers his puzzles somewhat contrarian because he's open to references older constructors might consider "too teeny-bopper." He was recently involved in a discussion over whether or not the phrase "TRL" (in reference to the MTV mainstay, if there is such a thing) could be used legitimately in crossword construction. The older constructors were adamantly against it, saying no solver would know the reference. Tausig came out in favor of making clues relevant to non-traditional crossword solvers.

But relevant doesn't mean easier. Take for example the clue for a four-letter word, beginning with "d": Gay Christian. Chances are, "Dior" didn't spring to mind immediately. To arrive at this, you'd have to do some solving around this answer and some mind stretching. It's this clever, almost sneering, wit that makes "Ink Well" so fun to solve.

"[Religion] is perfect for the sense of humor I like to convey in puzzles. It's really easy to be shocking." Tausig says that it works especially well to skew religious clues with music or sexuality.

Music comprises a large part of "Ink Well," as compared to other puzzles. It's no surprise then that Tausig plays in an experimental outfit with friends and is doing graduate studies in ethnomusicology at NYU. "I've been interested in music for a long time as it relates to culture, ethnomusicology being sort of the anthropology of music."

Presently, he's working on a compendium of his puzzles for a book with Sterling Press, and continuing his crossword outreach to the non-traditional solvers. He's co-writing a the children's puzzle book with his friends, owners of a small press. In the book, an evil villain, named "Mad Tausig" leaves challenges, such as minefields, that little solvers must use their "cruciverbalizer" to get through.

Tausig has recently taken on a new project with seven other crossword constructors. He's now the crossword editor for The Onion AV Club. Tausig and the other constructors take turns passing the construction torch and test out each others' puzzles. "It's a nice opportunity to give young talent a bigger audience," Tausig says, "and also to introduce new solvers to crosswords through a puzzle that fits their interests." The puzzle can be found both in print and online.