Report: “Dartmouth College Librarian Laura Braunstein Works to Diversify Crossword Puzzles”

From Seven Days:

…a crossword puzzle is a perfect pandemic activity. Solvers no longer even need a physical paper or book of puzzles. The Times crossword app delivers a daily puzzle straight to your phone and offers a huge archive; the Washington Post, Slate and Merriam-Webster are in the online crossword game, too.

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Still, crossword constructors like Lebanon’s Laura Braunstein have noticed disparities in who, exactly, creates them. Simply put: “There just aren’t a lot of women or people of color in the crossword world,” she said.

Together with Tracy Bennett, a Michigan-based copy editor and crossword constructor, Braunstein founded the Inkubator, which publishes two puzzles a month — soon to be three — by women and nonbinary people and offers mentorship for beginner constructors. The Inkubator, now in its second year, raised more than $30,000 on Kickstarter from 800 backers and currently has about 1,300 subscribers.

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Braunstein, 50, a digital librarian at Dartmouth College, has been solving crosswords since childhood.

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