Reading Crosswords
It is no wonder why many voracious consumers of culture, both “high” and “low, both inside and outside the academy, curl up on the weekend or escape midweek drudgery with a crossword, coffee stain lining the newspaper or—to use a more contemporary metaphor—finger sliding across a smartphone. In the same way they do with a literary text, crossword “readers” often find the crossword pleasurable, interesting, and mentally challenging. This is not, however, to say that these harmless amusements aren’t ultimately types of ideological vehicles, however slight they may seem.