Crossword puzzles have been a fixture in New York Magazine’s pages since the first issue hit newsstands in 1968 — in which the puzzle was created by none other than Stephen Sondheim. (He even wrote a guide on how to do a real crossword puzzle.) In the decades since, we’ve continued and expanded on the tradition, and though you can now complete a new crossword on our site almost any day of the week, there’s still something special about getting that latest issue in the mail, flipping straight through to the back, and starting to cross off clues, one-by-one, with a pencil in hand.
And if you’re really going to do it right, you’ll want that pencil to be a Blackwing. (Another fun fact about Sondheim: He was a known fan of writing with Blackwings, and it’s said that he hoarded boxes of them.) Stationery nerds have long known that the difference between writing with a standard yellow pencil and a Blackwing is the difference between riding in the bed of a pick-up truck and the backseat of a Rolls-Royce. They’ll both get you where you need to go, but one will make the journey a whole lot nicer.
So when we had a chance to collaborate with Blackwing to design a special crossword-puzzle pencil, it was a no-brainer. Our Blackwing x New York Magazine pencil is made with extra-firm graphite that’ll stand up to intense spurts of filling in squares, and it’s got a green eraser in the signature squared shape just in case you need it. If you can’t wait for the next issue to put your new pencils to the test, don’t panic: The set comes with an exclusive puzzle, created by our team, that you can start solving as soon as you sharpen your Blackwing.
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