From 2018 until 2023, I edited the monthly crossword puzzle for Canadian edition of Reader’s Digest magazine. Although machines can write coherent crosswords, those created by humans tend to be more clever and surprising. Plus, we wanted ours to feature Canadian spellings, geography, public figures and so on.

Tasked with enrolling a Canadian cruciverbalist or two, I was lucky enough to find Barbara Olson and Derek Bowman, who helped us to hit upon just the right format for our undersized pages and our audience of casual yet keen solvers.

Editing the crosswords involved commissioning them, solving them (fun!), brainstorming with creators about titles (also fun!) tweaking their difficulty level, fact-checking them and fitting them into a print layout.

Interestingly, the most challenging aspect of the job was defending crosswords for being what they are. North American English-language crosswords have their own logic and conventions. People who are used to solving these puzzles have internalized these unwritten rules. But for those who don’t have much experience, the wording and formatting of crosswords can seem bafflingly arbitrary.

At the time, I was the only person on the editorial team with a habit of solving crosswords in my spare time, so I regularly found myself explaining to other editors why a particular clue contained an abbreviation, for instance, or ended with a question mark.

This was beneficial, in the end: it forced me to arrive at a more formal, less strictly intuitive understanding of how crosswords are written. It made me a better puzzle editor in the same way that being able to articulate the conventions of English grammar rather than simply relying on what “sounds right” makes me a better prose editor.

The section is now edited in-house, in the capable hands of another enthusiastic crossword solver. If you enjoy a puzzle on the more accessible end of the spectrum, you should check it out!