In defense of trivia in crosswords

Trivia has long been a bugbear of mine. A grid full of missed references is like a desert full of empty oases. You scour about desperately from pool to pool hoping you'll find a sip of water but instead you're hit with a clue like "The only bird with calf muscles."

Recently I've been thinking more about the subject of trivia in crossword puzzles. Why does so much of it exist in good crosswords, and why does it bother me so much?^[1] What I've come away with is a newfound respect for trivia and its rightful place in the crossword grid. It doesn't serve to belabor a solve with esoteric references, but to emphasize the difficulty of the grid and the puzzle mechanisms at the crosses.

Ideally the words in a crossword grid are recognizable, guessable, or interesting to a solver. That’s the baseline. But if the every word in the grid falls into one of these three categories, what's left for a constructor trying to introduce difficulty? That is mostly the responsibility of the clues, which may range from rote, “Opposite of NNE” (SSW), to esoteric “The only bird with calf muscles” (EMU). Clues must define their respective words and they're given a huge amount of leeway to do so, be it through trivia or other means.

The problem is that trivia exists on a binary spectrum: you either know it or you don’t. That’s why it’s so grating to see a piece of esoteric trivia blocking a solve. How are you expected to know the answer?

The answer is you're not. At least, not directly. Crosswords employ obscure trivia as a means of instilling difficulty. The constructor knows (probably) that the general public does not have some innate knowledge of bird calves, but trusts that their grid is tight enough for solvers to piece it together from contextual clues.

The best you can do with trivia clues is to appreciate the small details that serve as the real hints. "Ethiopian gem" (OPAL) makes it apparent that you're searching for a kind of fancy rock; "The only bird with calf muscles" implies that you're looking for a pretty big bird (although you'd be forgiven for not knowing what an EMU is in any context).

On top of hinting at the parameters for the answer, trivia serves up some post-solve flavor. You found the solution, nice work. Here's a little factoid for your future self. Puzzles would be dry if these types of details were totally omitted.

Maybe I'll lighten up the next time I'm stumped in a grid full of Taylor Swift references, thinking of the greater puzzle elements at play in the broad game of crossword calculus. Or maybe the constructors could just choose some better trivia.

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