Crossword Puzzles
Crossword puzzles? What's up with this topic? Well, I've enjoyed doing crossword puzzles most of my life. It's a nice, relaxing stimulation of my thought processes to decipher the clues given by the author and fill in the correct words. It's usually the first thing I'll do on an airplane flight, i.e., fill in the puzzle in the airline magazine. But now that I'm retired and choose to take a look at the daily crossword in the newspaper, I'm seeing something I don't like.
In an effort to keep in step with the evolving nature of our society, I guess, crosswords are becoming more challenging. Actually, I would replace challenging with other descriptors: more obtuse, trickier, cuter, too clever by half, and others. You know the ear slap is coming when you see catchwords in clues, such as “like,” “sort of,” “informally,” “sometimes,” “in brief,” “a question mark (?),” or “see clue 67 across” (merely showing your ignorance has been doubled across two clues). Or the insertion of double letters or numbers into spaces. I'm sure all of this causes immense satisfaction for the smug author who has prevented you from connecting with the oblique way his/her brain is wired. And I suppose all of this is to appeal to the army of brilliant die-hard crossword solvers, armed with crossword apps and infinite spare time, who slowly inch up the mountain of clues until they can scream, “GOTCHA, you slimy little wordsmith!”
Now I would like to clarify something. I'm not talking about a puzzle that is just hard in a fair way, with straight-up clues that a smarter and more well-read person will solve better than I. You know, clues like, “Oscar for best supporting actress in 1937,” or “Fungus that causes ringworm.” There's no trickery here; it doesn't require a mind-meld with the author. When I run across one of these straightforward puzzles, I write down the name of the author and experience again the pleasure that I remembered.
So, is it just me whining about this? Old man yells at clouds? Or are puzzle authors on some ego trip to see if they can win a cat-and-mouse game with a fringe group of crossword Mensa ninjas? Like many things in life, I suspect the answer lies somewhere in between. On the one hand, I'm probably not as good at solving crosswords as I thought/wished I was. And on the other hand, avid puzzle doers have probably learned patterns and solvers that allow them to crack the codes more regularly. But I still wonder. Anyway, climbing down from the soapbox, rant over _. After all this, gosh, I hope I don't eventually join that fringe group!
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