{"id":373720,"date":"2026-10-15T09:34:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-15T09:34:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/373720\/"},"modified":"2026-10-15T09:34:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-15T09:34:09","slug":"solve-a-special-detective-novel-themed-crossword-puzzle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/373720\/","title":{"rendered":"Solve a Special Detective Novel Themed Crossword Puzzle"},"content":{"rendered":"

The New York Times regularly publishes Special crossword puzzles for subscribers. The puzzles are designed to have the difficulty of an early-week puzzle and to use the theme throughout. The title of this puzzle<\/a> is \u201cWhodunnit?\u201d It was constructed by Rian Johnson, an Oscar-nominated director who created the \u201cKnives Out\u201d films and the television series \u201cPoker Face,\u201d and Christina Iverson, a puzzle editor.<\/p>\n

The golden age of detective fiction is generally considered to have been in the 1920s and \u201930s. The formula for those stories is fairly standardized: A mysterious group of people find themselves in a mansion at the invitation of an eccentric host. A crime, usually a murder, takes place, and it\u2019s up to the cast to solve it. There\u2019s a mystery afoot, so naturally, a detective appears.<\/p>\n

Despite the cookie-cutter nature of the main plot elements, a few star writers emerged who were able to keep readers guessing. Many of these great authors were women and even today are still some of the most printed authors in history. I remember being taught Agatha Christie and Ngaio Marsh novels in school, to learn about plot structure, and on the one hand, I think fondly of these works, which were ultimately part of what pushed me to pursue writing.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, many of these works are reflective of the time they were written. Writers in this \u201cgolden age\u201d used many racist stereotypes, and in several cases their work has been edited or updated to remove passages that are overtly offensive or rooted in discrimination.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019m glad that a new crop of modern authors, such as TK and TK, are continuing the detective fiction tradition in a more inclusive way today. These novels are puzzles at their core, and using logic to solve the mystery before it\u2019s revealed in the book is, to me, the main pleasure in reading them. And let\u2019s not forget: Games are meant to be fun. A mystery that needs solving activates the same part of my brain that seeing a blank crossword grid does. There\u2019s a deep human need to fill in the blank.<\/p>\n

That spirit of this fun lives on today. Take Rian Johnson, a co-constructor of today\u2019s puzzle and the writer-director of the \u201cKnives Out\u201d series of detective films. In the first, a best-selling mystery author dies, and Benoit Blanc, a charismatic and inquisitive private eye played by Daniel Craig, must investigate.<\/p>\n

These films are emblematic of the modern version of the grand mystery, along with others like \u201cAnatomy of a Fall,\u201d \u201cGone Girl\u201d and even \u201cParasite,\u201d to an extent. They show that despite over a hundred years of changes to the genre, it endures as one of the most popular for good reason. Even if you guess the answer wrong, they\u2019re just plain fun.<\/p>\n

Solve the Puzzle.<\/a>Try This Clue<\/p>\n

66-Across<\/a>: Fingerprint or footprint, e.g.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The New York Times regularly publishes Special crossword puzzles for subscribers. The puzzles are designed to have the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":373721,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[43445,43444,44226,137583,9,11,10,137584],"class_list":["post-373720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-agatha","tag-christie","tag-crossword-puzzles","tag-marsh","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-ngaio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373720\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/373721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}