How crosswords made Mangesh Ghogre America's 'Einstein'

Back in 1997, like most other engineering students of his generation, Mangesh Ghogre dreamt of moving to the US. Today, he has made his dream a reality but by taking an unusual path. Ghogre was recently awarded the prestigious Einstein visa or EB-1 visa to the US for his niche skill — setting and constructing crosswords. His crosswords have appeared in a number of publications, including the Los Angeles Times and the crown jewel of crosswording, The New York Times.The last word...&#55357;&#56833;Clever @mangeshgho seems to have got Gandhiji into @nytimes crossword today. &#55357;&#56911;&#55356;&#57341; https://t.co/QTBcNFsFjh— Syed Akbaruddin (@AkbaruddinIndia) 1570032857000It all began with him and his classmates picking up The Times of India crossword in the hope that it would improve their vocabulary and help them crack the GMAT (Graduate Management Admission Test). It was helpful, but not in the way he had thought. Ghogre found himself challenged and transfixed by the puzzles he couldn’t quite wrap his brain around. “For the first six months, sometimes the only letter I could fill was ‘s’ because I could tell the clue was plural,” he says from his new home in Princeton, New Jersey. While some would have given up — not knowing American references was a big challenge, for instance — Ghogre decided to keep a diary for clues. “It was like my own Wikipedia for crosswords. I had sections on things like Greek gods and goddesses and American birds and animals.” medium98599077 medium98599113After four-five years of obsessive solving (he estimates he solved over 10,000 in this time) on his daily commute from Panvel to Matunga, he decided it was time to try his hand at constructing one himself. “My first crossword was handmade — imagine making 50 iterations of black and white grids,” he says. While he admits the first one was not good, he kept going, finding a community of like-minded puzzleheads on Yahoo Groups (it was 2007, after all). His dream was crystal clear — he wanted his name to appear under a crossword in The Times of India, so he could show his parents. He realised that the TOI crossword was syndicated from the LA Times, so that was his destination. “With the help of people I met online, I got better. And after 12 long years of solving, my first crossword appeared in the LA Times, and a few months later, in The Times of India.”That moment was like “tasting blood”, says the former investment banker who was the first Indian to make it to the American paper. “From then onwards, I made more crosswords. Half a dozen appeared in the LA Times and there were some in other publications,” he says.The gold standard, though, he learnt, was The New York Times crossword so that’s what he set his sights on. “In 2012, I got in touch with NYT crossword puzzles editor Will Shortz. He saw something in me, this guy in Mumbai making crosswords for American publications. He invited me as a judge for the American Crossword Tournament,” says the 42-year-old. This was a moment of truth — was making crosswords just a hobby or was he really going to spend a substantial amount of money and tell his boss why he was travelling? Yes, yes he would. medium98599289 medium98600622Going to America was fascinating, he says. “I saw all these things that I only knew about through crosswords, like a turnpike or a BLT sandwich. I was introduced at the competition as ‘someone crazy enough to travel 10,000 miles to be here’.” This led to more acclaim and media attention — a Panvel boy becoming a crossword judge over in America was unusual, of course.By this point, he was married with two kids, juggling a hectic investment banking gig with his love of crosswords. But instead of stepping back, he chose to get more involved, this time in a project working to digitise the NYT crossword from 1942-1993. Finally, in 2017, he managed to get a crossword in the newspaper — a special fourth of July crossword, of all things. He was the non-American to do so, using his moniker Mumbaikar as his byline.In 2021, Ghogre came across something called the Einstein visa. “I realised not only did I satisfy the criteria, but I had satisfied it five years ago. It was things like ‘has the media written about you? Have you made changes to your field’. At that point, I was known as someone who had broken stereotypes,” he says, pointing out the predominantly white nature of the international crossword-setting world. medium98607982As Princeton professor Adrienne Raphel, who has written a book on the history of crosswords (including a page about Ghogre) wrote in her recommendation letter, “Historically, the crossword has severely lacked diversity in any sense of the word… Ghogre serves as a role model not only for desis interested in becoming involved in the crossword community, but for people of all backgrounds to find their voice in the world.”“I didn’t tell anyone because it felt silly to assume the world’s most powerful country would give you a green card for making crosswords.” But that’s exactly what happened.