| This past week, The New Yorker published its annual Cartoons & Puzzles Issue, a diverting mix of crosswords, logic games, and themed cartoons. The components were created in a spirit of fun—a contrast with the approach taken by the cruciverbalist Henry Hook. “I got into this business to torment people,” he told the staff writer Burkhard Bilger, in a profile published in 2002. In a series of settings, Bilger examines the quirky subculture of crosswords and other games, including a treasure hunt contested across much of midtown Manhattan. In addition to Hook, the so-called Marquis de Sade of the puzzle world, Bilger meets Ellen Ripstein, known as “the Susan Lucci of crosswords” because of her long streak of near-victories at a national tournament. (Bilger also learns that Will Shortz, the crossword editor at the Times, is the only person on the planet to hold a degree in “enigmatology.”) For many, each game is simply that—a game—but one constructor sees them more philosophically, as a metaphor for life itself. “You start out floundering in a void, plagued by questions,” Bilger explains. “And then, little by little, you begin to find answers.” | 
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