Juliana Pache was working on The New York Times daily mini crossword one day when she got stumped on a word she felt was too specific to white people.

I was stuck on something, and I was like, This feels like some white shit, just to be honest. Thats the thought that I had in my head. And then I was like, I wonder if theres a Black version of this, the Afro Latinx entrepreneur said.

Pache did some searching for Black crosswords online but didnt have much luck. The puzzles she found were outdated, were only available as PDFs, or didnt have as vast a word bank as she would have liked. So that same day, she bought three domain names with the intention of creating a platform for a digital crossword puzzle highlighting words from the diaspora and culture. Once she realized Black Crossword was the one that stuck, she submitted a trademark application for it that week.

The Queens, New York, native launched Black Crossword on Jan. 27 to a very warm welcome. Since then, Pache has dropped mini puzzles daily featuring words that crossword fans may not commonly find elsewhere.

When I was making it, I wasnt even fully thinking about ... what it would feel like when people would play this. I was kind of like: I want this, so Im going to make it. And I think its cool. I think maybe people will like it, she said. But it hasnt been until it launched and I started to get some feedback that I was like, oh, this is a really cool format to validate the feeling of, this is our language, these are the things we find important.