How Crossword Whiz Mangesh Ghogre Brought A Piece Of India To An American Tradition

My favourite part of my morning is doing the New York Times crossword on my way to college. On some days, I can finish it in 30 minutes. On others, I spend all day breaking my head over one clue I just can’t crack. It isn’t a perfect science. The one thing I have noticed, however, is that clues are often deeply embedded in American culture — obscure celebrities, sidelined sportspeople, forgotten monuments, historically insignificant events. You’d have never heard of these things unless you were an American. I don’t sound stupid for taking a whole day now, do I? But when I found out there’s an Indian man — a Mumbaikar, nonetheless — behind the NYT crossword, that feeling of stupidity came flooding back.

It’s one thing to solve a crossword. It’s another to build one so good that the world’s most famous puzzle pages put your name on it. Mangesh Ghogre managed to do just that in a space so deeply American that it expects you to know who played second base for the Yankees in 1962.

Ghogre wasn’t supposed to end up here. He was an engineering student, just another Indian kid cramming for the GMAT, drowning in word lists. But instead of using crosswords to improve his vocabulary, he got hooked on them. The puzzles were full of odd cultural references — PBJs, greenbacks, and figures he had no reason to know — but that just made the challenge more enticing. It was like playing a game with the dictionary, except the dictionary kept moving.

And then, he broke in.

In 2010, he became the first India-based crossword constructor published in the Los Angeles Times. In 2013, a spot in The New York Times followed. In 2017, he co-authored a Fourth of July-themed crossword, a surreal moment for someone raised on Indian English, who had to learn that ‘greenback’ meant money and not, well, something green on someone’s back. Here was a man from a country that had thrown off the yoke of British English, who was now planting his flag in a distinctly American linguistic landscape. 

To understand the audacity of this achievement, you have to understand the place of crosswords in American culture. They’re not just word puzzles. They’re part of the cultural fabric. The New York Times crossword is a badge of intelligence, a daily ritual, and a marker of belonging all at once. The crossword is a cultural monolith, an Ivy League of words that demands its solvers not only know their Shakespeare but also their Simpsons. American crosswords carry the weight of the country’s mythology: its slang, its icons, its pop culture, its sports heroes. If you can make a puzzle that fits, it means you get America — and America gets you.

For an Indian to crack that code is no small feat. We have our own word games — our riddles, our poetic tricks — but they play by different rules. Indian English itself is a beast of its own: the quirks of Hinglish, the lyrical tilt of our sentence structures, the way we bend and twist words to our own rhythm. But Ghogre figured it out, playing by their rules while sneaking in a little of his own world. 

When he published his Mahatma Gandhi-themed crossword in NYT in 2019, it was more than just a clever puzzle. He pushed back against the crossword’s traditional insularity. It was a small, almost imperceptible act of linguistic play, but also an act of cultural reclamation. A reminder that Indian names, Indian ideas, Indian histories, too, could fit inside those hallowed grids.

And yet, despite his mastery, despite his accolades, there were moments that reminded him of his outsider status. American crosswords have an unsettling way of flattening cultures into convenient shorthand. We’re boxed into a handful of predictable words — NAAN, SARI, RANI, RAJA, DELHI. A nation of 1.4 billion people, boiled down to a few syllables that fit well in a grid. It’s a real reminder that the global South is, more often than not, an afterthought. 

But in spite of this, Ghogre managed to expand the aperture. His Taj Mahal-themed crossword in 2023, commemorating Independence Day, was a direct challenge to the idea that American crosswords are solely American. Each of his puzzles is a small, insistent act of presence. An assertion that the world, in all its diversity, belongs inside those black-and-white grids.

What makes Ghogre’s story stand out isn’t just that he got in — it’s that he’s bringing something new to the table. Maybe one day, an Indian crossword will be just as much of a daily ritual. Maybe young solvers in Mumbai will get to fill in clues that feel like their own world, rather than ones borrowed from across an ocean.

Mangesh Ghogre mastered the rules of American crosswords and reshaped them. And in doing so, he has ensured that every puzzle he constructs is not just a test of knowledge, but a bridge between cultures. After all, a crossword is nothing but a series of crossings — words, ideas, histories, lives. And Ghogre, this boy from Mumbai who dreamed in black-and-white squares, has ensured that India will always have a place in that grid. 

P.S. Bobby Richardson was the Yankees second baseman in the 1962 World Series. 

Follow Ghogre here.

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