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Juliana Pache has always loved crossword puzzles. They fit in with her lifelong obsession with language, culture and history, though she says they always felt a little out of reach.
“I still struggle with them on some things. (the puzzlemakers) “They expect me to know it and what they think is easy is beyond my knowledge,” said Pache, a native of Queens, New York, whose parents emigrated from Cuba and the Dominican Republic.
He recalls how the clues in a short New York Times crossword puzzle from October 2022 were, as Pache described to me, “whiter than usual.” Coincidentally, he had a song stuck in his head that day that he unwittingly loves: a parody from 2010. “Let me smang it” by Yung Humma ft. Flynt FlossyAnyone who has ever searched the Internet for the domain of this song may remember its catchiness and surprisingly approved lyrics: “smang” is a combination of “smash” and “bang,” two slang terms for sex.
“I thought, ‘It would be funny if the word smang appeared in a crossword puzzle,’” she recalls. “I said, ‘That’s the brain of the Internet.’ Especially the brain of the black Internet.”
This random thought led him to search the internet for crossword puzzles focused on Black culture. When he came up empty, Pache decided to build it himself. Thus, Black Crossword was born, a daily online crossword puzzle focused on the Black diaspora. The project has since evolved into the book The Black Crossword: 100 Little Puzzles Celebrating the African Diaspora, now published through HarperCollins.
In Associated Press News At Black Crossword, data journalist Michelle Pera-McGee noted that women and racial and ethnic minority groups have long been underrepresented in crossword puzzles, citing a 2020 study she conducted for data journalism website The Pudding.
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Crosswords should tap into general knowledge, and Pache admits that “they should appeal to you.” However, what some might consider common knowledge can, and often does, put many people off crossword puzzles.
“Some of the things that are covered in mainstream crossword puzzles are very specific to a white audience, which may be male and better off economically,” Pache said.
This exclusion, intentional or not, is what Pache hoped to combat by creating Black Crossword, a project in which he knew nothing about how to make a puzzle.
“I hear all the time from people who say, ‘I suck at crossword puzzles,’ or ‘I’m not usually good at crossword puzzles, but I’m good at these.’”
It’s no surprise that its crossword puzzles have a growing fan base: the site averages around 3,500 visits per day and 1.2 million games played since its launch in 2023.
“I think the big difference is that what I consider our common knowledge is different from what someone would consider common knowledge in a typical crossword puzzle,” he adds.
Since the inception of Black Crossword, Pache says she wanted to make Black cultures from across diasporas visible in her puzzles, and Black Latinx history has long been a growing topic, including through popular hashtags on Twitter. #blacklatinhistorywhich began in 2016.
“I think from experience, my parents are from the Caribbean. I was born and raised here in the U.S., so I relate to a lot of different experiences in blackness,” she said. “And then I also grew up in Queens, where there are all kinds of black people from all over. It just felt right and natural to include the whole diaspora. Otherwise, it would be a little bit limiting.”
Her puzzles feature collections and figures from Black Latin culture, such as the Dominican mangu, Puerto Rican writer and historian Arturo Schomburg, Dominican agricultural activist Mama Tingo and runner Marilady Paulino, who was the first woman to win a gold medal at the Dominican Olympics this summer.
Through this project, Pache addresses the erasure and exclusion of Black people not only in white media, but also in Latinx media, which still suffers and continues to suffer from Blackness, from music to history books to television shows.
“I think what I’m trying to do with Black Crossword is contribute to that narrative,” Pache said. “Because there’s a very rich black history, not just in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, but throughout Latin America.”
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(Jackie Rivera/For The Times; Martina Ibáñez-Baldor/Los Angeles Times)
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