New hobby prompts big questions
(Originally published March 2023)
As an older adult, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately, asking myself life’s big questions. For example: What is a six-letter word for “scraps”?
I recently discovered the New York Times crossword.
Until a few weeks ago, I hadn’t looked at a Times crossword since I was a teenager; my dad was an aficionado.
In my memory, crosswords related strictly to general knowledge—of which I possessed little as a 13-year-old—and obscure words the crossword creator used just to get all the letters to fit together. By watching my father, I came away knowing only that some dude named “Disraeli” had been in politics somewhere and that “ort” meant “table scrap.”
To me, “ort” was proof that crosswords were dumb. To this day, I have never heard that word in conversation or read it in a book. Disillusioned by crossword creators who would resort to such a crutch, I avoided crosswords for the next 40 years. (I was busy with other stuff anyway.)
Recently, however, I found myself scanning the New York Times games page online. On a whim, I decided to try the daily crossword. I clicked on Monday’s puzzle and, to my surprise, knew the answer to every clue: “Barack _____,” “Number of days in a week,” “Opposite of ‘over.’” I finished the puzzle in 8 minutes and 38 seconds.
I had no idea I was so smart.
Apparently, by virtue of existing for over five decades, I’d expanded my vocabulary, learned about the world, and become some sort of crossword savant. To think I’d ignored my special talent all these years.
I woke up Tuesday morning eager to tackle the day’s puzzle and, with any luck, beat Monday’s time. But Tuesday’s puzzle took a little longer, and I got a couple of clues wrong.
No big deal; I figured I’d bounce back on Wednesday. But that puzzle was even harder.
By Thursday, after I gawked at the puzzle for several minutes—“Etruscan cart”? “Treeless grassland in Southeast Asia”?—I assumed I was suffering from some sort of rapid cognitive decline and should probably see a doctor.
It wasn’t until I opened the Saturday puzzle, whose grid was larger than the others, that I remembered something my dad had told me: The puzzles are designed to get more challenging as the week progresses.
So much for Monday’s delusions of genius. (On the bright side, I got to cancel the MRI.)
Crosswords rely on one’s broad knowledge of everything from current events to pop culture, which can be tough. Call me sheltered, but I don’t know any Finnish Olympic bronze medalists or the singer famous for her 2013 hit “Hot Pockets.”
To make it harder, the creators sneak in abbreviations, slang, and foreign phrases and give no indication as to the number of words in each answer. By the end of the week, I hate whoever these people are.
But the puzzles also involve a lot of clever wordplay I didn’t know about when I was younger, clues that demand less fact knowledge and more creative thinking. These are indicated by question marks. “Who to call after a crash?” for instance, has nothing to do with emergency services; instead, you need “IT support.” Get it?
However, clues like “A frog’s statistician?” or “John Wayne on a city bus?” can totally elude me until I fill in some of the letters shared by other clues. Unfortunately, those tend to be nuggets like “1938 Stroganoff Prize winner ____ Ztlaki.”
In the harder puzzles, the clues are purposely vague, as demonstrated by the aforementioned “scraps.” Is the answer a verb or noun meaning “scuffles” or “fights”? Is it a verb meaning “discards,” as one does with a junk car? Or a noun meaning “leftovers,” as in pieces of fabric or bits of food — orts, one might reluctantly say?
I mull over these curious clues throughout the day, and sometimes, out of nowhere, the answers just come to me. That’s how it was last Thursday, when I was cleaning the bathroom, whispering “scraps” like a secret incantation.
Suddenly yelling, “I’ve got it!” I dropped the toilet brush and ran to the laptop.
I’m pleased to report that the answer to at least one of life’s big questions is, in fact, “melees.”