Hello everyone and welcome to talk nerdy. Today is Monday, May 20th,

2024 and I'm the host of the show Dr. Kara Santa Maria and as always before we

dive into this week's episode, I do want to

thank those of you who make TalkNurdy possible. Remember, like I say every

week, TalkNurdy is and will always be 100% free to download as long as I have the bandwidth to keep

making this show. The way that we're able to continue that work and hire the people that I need

to help support that, you know, on top of my full-time

postdoctoral fellowship and all the other stuff I'm doing is basically from individuals just like you who support the show on a per episode basis.

If you're interested in doing so, all you've got to do is visit Patreon. David J. E. Smith, Mary Niva, Brian Holden, David Compton, Gabriel F.

F. Hormillo, Joe Wilkinson, Pasqualee-Gilati, Riva Keith, and Ulrika Hagman.

Thank you all so very much.

All right, so for this week's show,

I had the opportunity to speak with Dr. Anna Shechtman.

She's a journalist, a crossword

constructor, and a college professor. And she has a

brand new book out called The Riddles of the Sphinx

inheriting the feminist history of the crossword puzzle.

So without any further ado, here she is Dr. Anna Shechtman.

Well Anna, thank you so much for joining me today. I'm so excited to talk about your new book

and just, oh, so many interesting things.

So thanks for being here. Thank you. I'm excited too.

So the book is called The Riddles of the Sphinx,

...