It started a couple of years ago when Juliana Pache was doing a crossword puzzle and got stuck. She was unfamiliar with the reference that the clue made. It made her think about what a crossword puzzle would look like if the clues and answers included more of some subjects that she was familiar with, thanks to her own identity and interests—Black history and Black popular culture. When she couldn't find such a thing, Pache decided to do it herself. In January 2023, she created blackcrossword.com, a site that offers a free mini-crossword puzzle every day, per the AP. And this week marked the release of her first book, Black Crossword: 100 Mini Puzzles Celebrating the African Diaspora.
"I had never made a crossword puzzle before," Pache, 32, said with a laugh. "But I was like, I can figure it out." Each puzzle on Pache's site includes at least a few clues and answers connecting to Black culture. (One clue on Friday read, "Parks in an Outkast song," with the answer being "Rosa.") The book is brimming with the kinds of puzzles that she estimates about 2,200 people play daily on her site—squares made up of five lines, each with five spaces.
Pache, a native of the New York City borough of Queens with family ties to Cuba and the Dominican Republic, had a couple of goals in mind when she started. Primarily, she wanted to create something that Black people would enjoy. I'm "making it with Black people in mind," she said. "And then if anyone else enjoys it, they learn things from it, that's a bonus but it's not my focus." She also wants to highlight the differences between different Black cultures around the world. (Read the full story, which explores the tricky concept of "general knowledge" in crossword puzzles.)
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