So today I started the book Crossworld, in which the author discusses the history (and even some sociology) of the puzzles, documents his own addiction to the New York Times puzzle, and enters the world of competitive puzzling.

At the beginning of the book, the author notes that he is from a town "at the northernmost end of Boston's North Shore (white-clapboard public buildings, preppies, gulls wheeling in the deep, snug, boat-filled harbor)..." As I also hail from such a town, I glanced back at the cover to get the author's name. Turns out that the author, Marc Romano, was in my brother's high school class. I knew him a little bit (about as much as an 8th grader can know a senior who isn't a family friend), and the book seems like him in tone and spirit (that being said from 20 years after our last meaningful interaction, which was undoubtedly not that meaningful).

It's a pretty good book, owing something to Word Freak but able to stand in its own right. Some of the Amazon reviews feel that Marc's a little too-focused on himself in the text, but as a blogger I don't have much ground to stand on making that argument. I will say that I'd have liked a little more meat to the history of the puzzles, but I don't think there's a great deal of primary source material from which to work.