The Italian semiotician and puzzler Stefano Bartezzaghi, son of the legendary Piero Bartezzaghi, has published 'Pruebas sin corregir' (Seix Barral), a book that contains 900 deliberate errors that the reader must discover to solve a mystery.
The most devilish brain of the Italian crossword has returned. Stefano Bartezzaghi, semiotician, columnist for La Repubblica, and professor at the IULM University in Milan, has just published Pruebas sin corregir (Seix Barral), a book that is, above all, a challenge: it contains 900 deliberate errors that the reader must find to unravel a mystery. It is not a typical puzzle book; it is a work that parodies literary genres, exposes the miseries of the publishing world, and, in the process, champions error as a driver of creativity.
Bartezzaghi, who inherited from his father Piero—the creator of Italy's most famous crossword—the passion for word games, has been challenging Italians with riddles for over four decades. Since 1987, he has been writing the Lapsus column in La Repubblica, and since 2019, he has been signing the daily crossword of the same newspaper. Now, with this book, he takes a step further: he turns the reader into a detective of typos.
A game of 900 errors to solve a murder
The premise of Pruebas sin corregir is as simple as it is ambitious: in each of the hundred brief chapters, there are nine errors. The reader must identify them and, with them, compose a hidden message that allows them to solve the death of the writer Niccolò Errante—whose surname, 'errante', is not coincidental: it refers both to the wanderer and the one who makes mistakes, in a nod to Don Quixote. The book is, in the author's words, "a tribute to the knight-errant, because to err means to wander aimlessly, but also to make mistakes."
The idea arose from a personal experience. In 1993, Bartezzaghi published his first major book with Bompiani. "I was very excited. It was a good publisher, the cover was illustrated by Tullio Pericoli... I was happy. But I opened the book and the first thing I found was a typo," he recalls with bitter irony. Despite having reviewed the drafts dozens of times, the error slipped through. From that frustration, the idea was born: "Readers are sadistic by nature; they love to write to tell you that you made a mistake, they enjoy catching you out. So I thought: this time I will put the errors in on purpose, it will be up to you to find them and we'll see what happens."
"Readers are sadistic; they love it when you make a mistake. So I thought: this time I will put the errors in on purpose."
A parody of the publishing world and a praise of error
But Pruebas sin corregir is much more than a game. Through the protagonist, an aspiring writer who makes a living as an editor while trying to write his masterpiece, the book brilliantly parodies numerous literary genres—from dense Russian family dramas to South Korean thrillers—and humorously exposes the baseness and meanness of the cultural ecosystem. "I wanted to show the behind-the-scenes of the publishing process, how books are made, but also the miseries of the trade and that constant feeling of always being better and smarter than the rest," Bartezzaghi explains.
The book is also a praise of error. "Semiotics shows us that error is the true engine of creativity. Languages evolve thanks to them; structures that today sound jarring because they are socially spreading eventually become assimilated by codified language over the years. There is no immutable grammar. Rules are established by pure custom, and if custom changes, the rule does too," reflects the author.
For readers interested in word games, intellectual challenges, or simply in a different read, Pruebas sin corregir offers an immersive experience: it is not just read, but actively participated in. The book has been available in bookstores since May 2026. Those who dare to accept the challenge should prepare to spend hours searching for errors and, in the process, discover who killed Niccolò Errante.
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