The Crossword Show is the New York Times crossword puzzle meets Wait Wait...Don’t Tell Me!, with more rap than you’d expect. Host Zach Sherwin (Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Epic Rap Battles of History) presides as comedian Negin Farsad and Emily Flake solve an actual crossword puzzle live on stage, with everything displayed on a big screen so the audience can follow along. As the panelists decipher the clues, Zach takes the show down rabbit holes of comedy, music, wordplay, and trivia, all inspired by the various answer words. More and more connections emerge as the show unfolds, and everything ultimately ties together for a grand finale that’s as satisfying as it is astonishing. You need literally zero crossword expertise to be dazzled by this brain-tickling, one-of-a-kind experience!
“Jaw-dropping.” —SFGate
“Tons of fun.” —New York Times
NEGIN FARSAD is the host of the podcast Fake the Nation and a regular panelist on Wait Wait… Don't Tell Me! She is the director of the films Nerdcore Rising and The Muslims Are Coming!, and her romantic comedy, 3rd Street Blackout, is streaming on Peacock. She was selected as a TEDFellow for her work in social justice comedy and can be seen in Birdgirl, Not Okay, and Hillary Clinton's Apple TV+ show, Gutsy. Farsad's debut memoir, How to Make White People Laugh, was nominated for the Thurber Prize for Humor.
EMILY FLAKE is a cartoonist, writer, performer, illustrator, and teacher living in Brooklyn, New York. Her work appears regularly in The New Yorker, McSweeney’s and many other publications. Her most recent book is Joke in a Box: How to Write and Draw Jokes. She was nominated for a WGA award for her work on Command-Z, a webseries directed by Steven Soderbergh, in 2023. Her drawings appeared on Broadway in 2024 as part of All In: Stories About Love, based on the work of Simon Rich. She co-hosts a regular comedy show called FDK with fellow comedian Hollie Harper, and performs all over New York and beyond. She is the founder and proprietor of St. Nell’s, a residency program for women and non-binary creators working in any creative discipline, based in Williamsport, PA. She was a Yaddo fellow in 2025. She has won two pie-baking contests and she’s very smug about it.
ZACH SHERWIN is a Los Angeles-based comedian who has written for Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Epic Rap Battles of History, and MAD Magazine, and performed on America’s Got Talent, The Pete Holmes Show, and Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell. He is also the creator and host of The Crossword Show, in which a panel of comedians solves a crossword puzzle live onstage in front of an audience. In 2022, he published his debut crossword in the New York Times. For more, please visit linktree.com/zachsherwin.
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