Crossword editors are strange arbiters of cultural relevance. Read tweets by Awkwafina or Olivia Wilde on learning that they’ve been immortalized in the black-and-white grid—it’s the bookish version of handprints on a slab outside Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. But any pub-trivia attendee—exposed to categories on craft beer or things that smell like sourdough or whatever the emcee is into—will tell you that personnel is policy. That crossword mainstays such as The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and The Wall Street Journal are largely written, edited, fact-checked, and test-solved by older white men dictates what makes it into the 15x15 grid and what’s kept out.

Play: The Atlantic crossword

When editors review a puzzle submission, they mark it up—minus signs next to obscurities or variant spellings, check marks next to lively vocabulary. But one editor’s demerit is another solver’s lexicon. Constructors constantly argue with editors that their culture is puzzle-worthy, only to hear feedback greased by bias, and occasionally outright sexism or racism. (Publications are anonymized in the editor feedback that follows.) MARIE KONDO wouldn’t be familiar enough “to most solvers, especially with that unusual last name.” GAY EROTICA is an “envelope-pusher that risks solver reactions.” (According to XWord Info, a blog that tracks crossword statistics, EROTICA has appeared in the New York Times puzzle, as one example, more than 40 times since 1950.) BLACK GIRLS ROCK “might elicit unfavorable responses.” FLAVOR FLAV, in a puzzle I wrote, earned a minus sign.

“Popular music,” the American Values Club crossword editor Ben Tausig told me, “where lots of young women and people of color are visible, is regularly dismissed as too ephemeral for a ‘Great Crossword Puzzle.’” He added, “Ephemerality is the code word; exclusion is the result.”

And while some corners of culture are kept out of crosswords, some troubling aspects of language creep in. The New York Times puzzle has weathered deep sensitivity issues of late, including allowing a racial slur in the grid in January 2019, despite unequivocal protestations from those who saw the puzzle prepublication. Other transgressions include clues for ILLEGAL (“One caught by border patrol”); MEN (“Exasperated comment from a feminist”); and HOOD (“Place with homies”). In many cases, editorial changes warp a constructor’s original, inoffensive clue.

Read: How Will Shortz edits a New York Times crossword puzzle

Will Shortz, the Puzzles editor at the Times, has cited low submission rates from underrepresented groups as one reason for lack of constructor parity, but tone deafness and opacity can put constructors off the newspaper. (I was once Shortz’s editorial assistant, and I contribute crosswords to the Times.) In a Facebook thread with Shortz and other commenters, Rebecca Falcon, a 30-year-old constructor, posted: “I can’t feel good about putting my work into an outlet that I feel has very different values than my own.” She continued: “Is there anything being done to address these issues?” Shortz gave a thoughtful answer citing recent increases in women bylines, saying parity was “an important issue for us.” But when prodded about insensitive edits, he denied them, adding: “If a puzzlemaker is unhappy with our style of editing, then they should send their work elsewhere (or publish it themselves to keep complete control).”