The Dreaded Crossword Puzzle
Wordplay is not my bag. While I can construct a decent sentence and write a compelling story, anything involving cleverness bewilders me. I find riddles and puns baffling. Asking me to finish a complex limerick is like asking a dog to play the piano. Hell, even vocabulary is a challenge for me. It’s okay. I’m not complaining or being hard on myself. I’m just providing some background for my next illogical pursuit.
The dreaded crossword puzzle.
At least five different times in my life I’ve delved into crossword puzzles and tried to understand them. It’s a skill I want to have. I see people who are no smarter that I – my mother, for instance – filling out the New York Times puzzle each day, and I want what they have. I want to be clever, to be given a clue with a question mark and see right away that when I’m asked, “Chicago balloonists’ needs?” that I should consider “ill winds” as the answer. I want to discern that the clue “Ghostbusters and The Police” is asking for “trios.” I want to understand that “Lucky strikes” is a clue for the word “ores.”
This stuff kills me. I like facts. I like names and dates. And even though I find vocabulary daunting, I’m okay if a crossword puzzle gives me a clue of, say, “hostile” for a synonym of, say, “truculent.” I may not get it right away. Hell, I may not get it at all. But at least I know what they’re asking for and what’s expected of me. There have been times when I’ve looked up the answer to a crossword clue and I’ll have no idea what it means. Others are just infuriating to me. One puzzle I tried to complete had the clue, “bum.” The initial “just the facts, ma’am” side of me thought, “hobo.” Ah, but then my newly-discovered clever side of me thought, “borrow,” as in, “Can I bum a cigarette?” But before I could pat myself on the back, I – after struggling mightily and getting nowhere – discovered that the answer was “no good.” So the clue wasn’t a noun and it wasn’t a verb. It was a fricking ADJECTIVE! As in, “You got a bum deal.”
Son of a…!
Last October I ordered a book of Monday New York Times puzzles. As a new puzzler, I was just learning the rules, so even Mondays were a challenge. I had to learn the consistency in tenses between clue and answer, that Sp. can mean Spanish, that an abbreviation in the clue means an abbreviation in the answer, and that “with, to Maurice” is asking for the French word for “with” (which I do not know, but at least I now know what’s being asked!). It took a little time. I also learned to spot various themes of the puzzles, such as shaded grey areas that contain anagrams of the same letters, or circled letters that spell a phrase (such as a diagonal patter going up that spells “what goes up” followed by a diagonal pattern going down that spells “must come down.”). That sort of thing.
After getting through a bunch of Monday puzzles, I visited my daughter in California, who, after spending some of her winter holiday filling out crossword puzzles with me, decided to purchase her own book of two-hundred puzzles. But this one was a book of Tuesday puzzles, and she regretted her purchase instantly, laboring just to get half a puzzle completed. I, having gotten through a chunk of my Monday puzzles, traded my half-finished book of Mondays for her book of Tuesdays, as I thought I was ready to graduate to the next level.
Not so fast.
It’s now September and I’m on puzzle 196. I didn’t achieve my first perfect puzzle until 166 and I’ve only completed one since then! So yeah, to date I have completed two – THAT’S TWO!! – puzzles that were 100 percent correct. On many, many others I was just one or two letters off, sometimes due to carelessness, sometimes because I had to guess about things like the first name of Spiner of “Star Trek T.N.G.” Is it Brett or Brent? I guessed Brett, which was wrong. That stuff I can live with. Either you know it or you don’t, unless you manage to work your way to the correct answer through another clue/answer.
As for the wordplay stuff, I’m getting better. Slowly. Just last night I was given the clue, “It’s taken by witnesses” and was able to come up with “stand.” I know. It’s not earth-shattering. It’s not even clever. But this was a big accomplishment for me. More impressive was my solving a bunch of clues in a puzzle a few days ago:
Thesis topic for sex ed? “Quickie study”
Cameras taking pictures of permanent markets?” “Sharpie shooters”
Pompom on a skullcap? “Beanie sprout”
Pretty good, eh? I mean, this was HUGE for me! I’m slowly learning to think just a bit outside the box. I’m not always able to open it, but I’ve at least cut through the twine and packing tape.
One of the answers to last night’s puzzle was the ubiquitous “ewes.” What on earth did puzzle makers do before this word, OR before Oprah Winfrey, Sammy Sosa, Nora Ephron, Yoko Ono and Uma Thurman were celebrities? Not a puzzle goes by when I’m not filling in one of those names. I’ve also learned that an eagle’s nest is called an aerie, that the river in Florence, Italy is the Arno, that the volcano in Sicily is Mount Etna, and that the Greek letter for H is Eta. Also, that the Concorde was an SST and that a common camera lens is an SLR.
So yeah, I’ve absorbed a little bit of trivia that may come in handy in no particular place in my life except crossword puzzles.
I’m getting better, but I’m not ready for Wednesdays just yet. I may never be. For my Tuesday puzzles I think I’m at a 20/60/20 breakdown. Twenty percent I get close to solving or maybe actually solve. 60 percent I need to look up a word or two to solve. And twenty percent I have no fricking clue what the puzzle maker was smoking when he came up with this sadistic game, perhaps as a way of taking out all of his worldly anger and frustration on pathetic puzzle-solver wannabes by having the nerve to categorize his puzzle as a “Tuesday” and not a “Thursday.” To him, I say, you win. You’ve proven that I’m a dunce. Nicely done.
In the meantime, I – a glutton for punishment – have purchased another book of two hundred Tuesday puzzles. Wish me and my self-esteem luck.