Alice P. RADIN Ava, Emu, Ito, Ode, et al.: Cultural Literacy and Classical References in the Crossword Puzzles of the New York Times

That the study of classics has been displaced from a privileged position at the center of a liberal arts education is a fact universally acknowledged and, when two or more classicists meet or correspond, deplored. This unanimity, however, does not extend to agreement on either the causes of this situation or its possible remedies. In order to gain a fresh perspective on this issue, I have undertaken a diachronic study of classical references in that well-known crucible of cultural literacy, the crossword puzzles of the New York Times. Although I began with the assumption that the decline in classics has led to a decrease in such references, my research reveals instead an essential stability of frequency (and of content as well).

The puzzle’s need for well-placed vowels has produced a dialect that cherishes fragments of (once) common knowledge. Thus puzzles preserve words both archaic and arcane (“erst,” “emmet,” “eme”) and rescue from oblivion the names of the formerly famous and infamous (“Otho,” “Ott,” “Idi”). This conservatism was noted by Russell Baker [1975] in his account of “Crosswordland,” where (among creatures and objects familiar in name from crossword puzzles but never encountered in real life) he found “Ava” (“Miss Gardner”) complaining of having been forced to appear in every crossword puzzle ever made. Even today’s “New Wave” puzzle constructors, who disdain “crosswordese” and favor contemporary allusions, make use of “Ava” (and “emu” and “anoa”-- as well as “amo,” “Ino,” “Ares,” “veni, vidi, vici,” “et alia”). Although “New Wave” puzzles, as cruciverbalists Cox and Rathvon point out, are characterized by playful clues, the classical references in them continue, for the most part, to reflect the lexicon of Crosswordland.

The loss of a common body of knowledge is often cited as a major failure of contemporary education. Proposals to restore cultural literacy are generally seen as being helpful to our discipline, inasmuch as the field of classics would necessarily resume a central position. To balance these hopes, I offer the cautionary metaphor of the crossword puzzle, whose classical canon has been shaped by its own needs, and whose conventions demand, in this world full of complexities, diversities, and ambiguities, that each clue have only one correct answer.