#anna shechtman

[pneumaticpresence]

Anna Shechtman, The Riddle of the Sphinx: The Feminist History of the Crossword (2024)

[pneumaticpresence]

Freudian psychoanalysis runs on word association and linguistic substitutions. Freud's case study of Dora is a case in point: his analysis of his patient's second dream, for example, in which, in her telling, she compared a darkened forest to a Secessionist painting of woodland nymphs, allowed him to draw out the double meaning on nymphae, signifying both mythological sprites and also, evidently, the labia minora. From Dora's dream Freud correctly deduced that she had been covertly reading an encyclopedia—even, and maybe especially, its entries on sex and the body—and that she therefore knew the term's taboo second meaning, however buried it was in her unconscious. He could then make his final deduction: Dora wished to be vaginally penetrated, just as she had entered the forest in her dream.

Such symbolic displacement (forest = vagina) is the bread and butter of Freudian psychoanalysis; it should also be familiar to the average solver of a crossword puzzle. Freud was inventing a new language—the language of the unconscious—but it operated according to the logic of the "old" one, as it was being elaborated in the field of modern linguistics during the same period. This new science of language established a general truth of usage: words don't serve as proxies for "real" objects in the world; they serve as proxies for other words, gaining meaning only through these substitutions. The meaning of the word forest, for example, is determined as much by its antonyms, its negatively defined substitutions (not desert, not ocean), as it is by its synonyms (woods, thicket, jungle), all of which conjure figurative associations that inhere in the word's meaning. Freud saw the unconscious as the realm of the unspeakable, and so the sexual fantasies it guarded could only be articulated by way of figurative proxies. In other words, a pipe is not just a pipe; a forest is not just a forest.

Crossword clues also play on such substitutions. A clue can be straight-forward: three letters for "consume" (answer: EAT); or it can play on linguistic misdirection: three letters for "not fast" (answer: EAT). Although crossword clues might provide insight into the mechanisms of the unconscious, they are not, ultimately, written in its language. The average solver wouldn't know what to make of six letters for "forest" (answer: VAGINA), but the potential for words to mean so much with so little context remains the puzzler's—and the Freudian's—great pleasure.

—Anna Shechtman, The Riddle of the Sphinx: The Feminist History of the Crossword (2024)

[kammartinez]

Unsolvable Puzzles: Anna Shechtman on the Feminist Psychology Behind Crosswords

Anna Shechtman’s The Riddles of the Sphinx is, so I am told, a memoir of recovery from anorexia and a group biography of the women who devel

[kamreadsandrecs]

Through a Grid, Darkly: On Anna Shechtman’s “The Riddles of the Sphinx” | Los Angeles Review of Books

Adrienne Raphel reviews Anna Shechtman’s “The Riddles of the Sphinx: Inheriting the Feminist History of the Crossword Puzzle.”...

[kammartinez]

Through a Grid, Darkly: On Anna Shechtman’s “The Riddles of the Sphinx” | Los Angeles Review of Books

Adrienne Raphel reviews Anna Shechtman’s “The Riddles of the Sphinx: Inheriting the Feminist History of the Crossword Puzzle.”...

[puzzlenation]

5 Questions for Crossword Constructor Erica Wojcik!

In today's blog post, we've got 5 Questions for crossword constructor Erica Wojcik! @ewojcik

Welcome to 5 Questions, our recurring interview series where we reach out to puzzle constructors, game designers, writers, filmmakers, musicians, artists, and puzzle enthusiasts from all walks of life! This feature is all about exploring the vast and intriguing puzzle community by talking to those who make puzzles and those who enjoy them. And this marks the second edition of a new series of…

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[archivio-dfw]

The End of the Tour: il circuito chiuso di David Foster Wallace | SUR

Una recensione di The End of the Tour, il film su David Foster Wallace.

Dal blog della casa editrice Sur.

In attesa che arrivi anche in Italia The End of the Tour, il film su David Foster Wallace tratto dal libro di David Lipsky Come diventare se stessi, pubblichiamo una recensione originariamente apparsa sulla Los Angeles Review of Books.

[fancypuzzlelady-blog]

Puzzle Trouble: Women and Crosswords in the Age of Autofill | The American Reader

I can't believe I didn't link to this sooner! Anna Shechtman delivers the sharpest, most well-informed critique of the gender gap in crossword construction I've heard thus far. Thank you, Anna, for elevating the conversation.

Seriously, check out her anecdote about that one time she submitted a grid with MALE GAZE in the fill to the New York Times.