The Forverts Launches A Crossword!
![Yiddish Crossword](https://images.forwardcdn.com/image/970x/center/images/cropped/crossword-1559585926.jpg)
Clue 15 refers to a beloved protagonist of a Sholem Aleichem novel. Image by www.crauswords.com
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts.
Thanks to a generous donation to the Forverts by an anonymous donor, the Forverts has launched a biweekly Yiddish crossword puzzle. The puzzles include clues about Yiddish words and literature, Jewish traditions and pop culture. The first puzzle can be seen here.
The donor, a Jewish philanthropist, is an avid crossword puzzle fan.
Meena Viswanath, a Yiddish-speaking engineer educated at MIT and Georgia Tech, is the creator of the puzzles. She is a lifelong fan of word games. As a child she solved the Forverts Yiddish-language word searches and now completes the New York Times crossword puzzle every week.
While crossword puzzles became a national obsession in the United States in the 1920s, there doesn’t appear to be a crossword puzzle tradition in Yiddish. Word searches and logic puzzles were common in prewar Yiddish newspapers and children’s magazines on both sides of the Atlantic, but crossword puzzles don’t seem to have been a regular feature. They did appear from time to time in several postwar Yiddish publications, including Yugntruf, but there has been no regular Yiddish crossword puzzle feature until now.
While many Hasidic Yiddish publications feature word searches, logic puzzles, sudoku games and trivia questions, none of them are crossword puzzles in the strictest sense. These games, collectively called kestl-retenishn (box riddles), are a popular pastime in many Hasidic homes.
A message from Forverts editor Rukhl Schaechter
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I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forverts' 127-year legacy — and its bright future.
In the past, the goal of the Forverts was to Americanize its readers, to encourage them to learn English well and to acculturate to American society. Today, our goal is the reverse: to acquaint readers — especially those with Eastern European roots — with their Jewish cultural heritage, through the Yiddish language, literature, recipes and songs.
Our daily Yiddish content brings you new and creative ways to engage with this vibrant, living language, including Yiddish Wordle, Word of the Day videos, Yiddish cooking demos, new music, poetry and so much more.
— Rukhl Schaechter, Yiddish Editor