Crosswords are sometimes a family affair. “My mum was always the first thing she did when she opened her diary. I took a liking to it too”, says with tenderness to 20 minutes Cécile, an octogenarian retiree adept at this mind game. A good grill can also be devoured with friends, during a summer aperitif that stretches the hours, for example. It can also be a solitary pleasure, a daily meeting with his brain, his diary and his pen.
In any case, crossword puzzles are always a story of love – or lack of love – between those who create them and those who solve them. If a large majority of the grids in France are developed by robots, a handful of them, the ultimate, are the fruit of professionals from the white box: the verbicrucists. “Before Yves Cunow succeeded him as The Obs, my favorite author was Jacques Drillon. It was luminous with intelligence, definitions that we would have liked to write, ”said Didier Thierry, former retired journalist and knowledgeable cruciverbist. Among the rock stars of crosswords, let us also mention Robert Scipion, Michel Laclos, Max Favalelli but also the writer Georges Perec, all of whom have since disappeared.
Others have followed suit. In the pages dedicated to them, the verbicrucists make the happiness of the cruciverbists every day or every week, or sometimes annoy them and unleash their wrath.
“I really like his way of “grilling””
Among the names that count today, there is in particular Alain Dag’Naud, known as “DNA”, who delights the faithful of the Chained Duck. Or even Philippe Dupuis, “the old gentleman of crosswords” of the World, as he describes himself, with nearly 6,000 grids on the counter. On the side of The Obsit’s Gaëtan Goron, fresh off the boat from Freed after seven years of good and loyal service in crossword puzzles. This 36-year-old verbicrucist plays with definitions, adds a bit of the absurd, and also slips in mathematical operations or symbols. His many fans, some of whom have subscribed to the magazine specifically to follow him, are full of praise for the creativity of his work and his notable traits of humor. “He brought something that we did not know in crosswords: the game, explains Didier Thierry. Goron’s crossword puzzles are great fun. Every summer, he makes giant grids and it’s a remarkable performance. This year he made one in the shape of the map of France… That’s something! For Henri Houdebert, a former associate professor of English and avid crossword puzzler, this verbicrucist is “one of the best, if not the best”. “He is very inventive and I really like his way of ‘grilling'”, he adds.
But in this area as elsewhere, we cannot please everyone. And what makes some happy, makes others unhappy. For Cécile, the definitions of Gaëtan Goron are too “ornate”. “I have a cousin with a French degree, yet he is very intelligent and he can’t understand this author! “, fulminates this retired grandmother. Hermetic to the grids of The Obs, she nevertheless appreciates the crosswords which give her a hard time. But that’s not all. As one appreciates the pen of a writer or a novelist, one likes or dislikes the style of a verbicrucist.
“What’s fun is when you get used to an author’s mindset,” she explains. After a while you come to know what he means, to understand the meaning he attributes to words. Everyone has their own way of defining things. »
“There is something very emotional between the author and the readers”
“Despite everything, there is a repetition in the construction of crosswords and a process that your reader understands very quickly. It enters your system”, confirms Philippe Dupuis, who signs the crosswords of the World For more than 20 years. According to him, a kind of “identification” occurs. “The reader gets into you and is very happy to be part of your family, in quotes,” he analyzes. And to add: “There is something very emotional between the author of the crosswords and the readers. There is automatically an attachment to the author which must correspond to his diary”.
AT The Obs, Gaëtan Goron nurtures this link and encourages this dialogue. To do this, he personalizes his grids or does not hesitate to add snippets of his life in small touches. He says: “One day my three-year-old son said to me ‘dad, I want to paint this.’ I found it too cute. The word really exists in Quebec but in my grid I preferred to put the definition “paint, for my 3 year old son””.
“The more we embody, the more it creates closeness,” he says. In return, the more people open up, the richer the exchange and the more interesting the grids. By email, on social networks or by post, he discusses very regularly with his readers. Some congratulate him, others bring some criticism. “I don’t get a lot of messages from people who aren’t happy, but when they are, just responding to them calms them down. I explain my vision to them, at worst it ends with two different visions,” he says.
Philippe Dupuis also receives letters from his readers, mail “much more often nice than mean”. “They write for lots of reasons. Like the day when there is a typo in the crossword, which can happen, ”he admits. Some also sometimes ask him for clarifications or share differences with him. “The other time in a grid, I had put “AB” for “quite well”. The definition was: “Could do better”. A mathematics teacher wrote to me to tell me that in preparatory class, “AB” is already very good, ”he recalls.
“It’s a perpetual quest to balance the grid”
In crosswords as in love, there are ups and downs. Sometimes it leads to breaking up. But what does it feel like when a cruciverbist leaves you? Philippe Chapuis does not take offense at this. “There are those who say it’s too difficult, but they’re not the ones who do it regularly. And there are those who tell you it’s too easy, there it is. I have been instructed by my editor to do crossword puzzles that are not too difficult. They are a reflection of the newspaper and its readers, so they can be difficult for those who don’t do them, easy for those who do them regularly,” he explains.
All the complexity is therefore hidden there: to satisfy and retain its convinced while making an eye to the newcomers. “At each gate, new people arrive when others have been following me for 8 years. You have to manage to satisfy both. It’s a perpetual quest to balance the grid. You have to put in small entrance doors that are fairly easy so that people who arrive don’t get frustrated and give up. You also have to put in more complicated words and registers of definitions to still surprise people who have been following me for a long time,” reveals Gaëtan Goron.
The cruciverbists speak to the verbicrucists and the latter respond to them. But do the authors also exchange with each other? Yes. “From time to time I wink,” explains the verbicrucist of the World. For example, by putting in my crossword puzzle the three letters “OBS” with this definition: “For those who want to do Goron’s grids”. Will understand who will. »