More than 50 million Americans do crossword puzzles on a regular basis. "Puzzle addiction" is usually meant as a lighthearted metaphoor, but the term contains more than a nugget of truth.

"Combining the soul-baring confessional of Brain on Fire and the addictive storytelling of The Queen's Gambit, a renowned puzzle creator's compulsively readable memoir and history of the crossword puzzle as an unexpected site of women's work and feminist protest. The indisputable 'queen of crosswords,' Anna Shechtman published her first New York Times puzzle at age nineteen, and later, spearheaded the The New Yorker's popular crossword section. Working...