The New Yorker:

For decades, the pursuit was identified with first-wave feminists and bored housewives. How did it come to be defined by a pervasive gender gap?

By Anna Shechtman

In July, 2013, Will Shortz, the New York Times’ longtime puzzle editor, asked me to be his assistant. I had just graduated from college, and, to my mind, the invitation had little rationale. It arrived on the heels of minimal correspondence: two e-mails in which Shortz had accepted two of my puzzles, with minor revisions. I doubted his motives for hiring me as much as my qualifications for the job. Surely, there were many more prolific and talented crossword constructors who could have assisted him. The only thing that distinguished me, I thought, was my gender: I was a young woman, and this was a field rife with men. Shortz was clear that I would work with him between September and the following May, when his longtime summer assistant, Joel Fagliano, would graduate and take up the job full time. I assumed, in other words, that I was not only a pinch hitter but a diversity hire.

This account has since been humbled by the memory of my in-box, which holds a much more extensive correspondence between me and Shortz. I had selectively remembered the two acceptances but forgotten three rejections. I had also repressed a long chain of e-mails about a potential Bloomsday puzzle, commemorating the publication of Joyce’s “Ulysses,” which he vetoed. (“For solvers who aren’t familiar with “Ulysses”—which would be a large number of people—I don’t think this puzzle would be very satisfying.”) Apparently, I had been courting Shortz’s attention and approval for three years. And, once I got it, I negated it. My revisionist history protected my ego (only two e-mails, two acceptances), but it also exposed me to more ego-withering insecurity (Shortz barely knew me; I had no track record). If my gender hadn’t informed Shortz’s offer, it had deformed my self-image as a worker: my ambition was offset by suspicion, and my efforts were overshadowed by a large chip on my shoulder.

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