Crossword Puzzles

My father is one of those very rare people who actually does know just about everything. A rocket scientist’s rocket scientist if you will. Makes me feel so stupid sometimes. But that’s another story…

He’s one of those folks who can sit down with the New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle and have it all finished up in less than an hour. He’d do it faster but at age 93 he writes very slowly. Me. Hell, I need all week to work on it. And may still not quite finish it. Not because I don’t have time. No. It’s because I don’t know the answers. But I do it in ink to pretend I know it all.

But it was by my dad’s example that I grew so fond of crosswords. I can’t do a sudoku to save my life, but I’m getting pretty good with the crosswords. It’s a matter of knowing a lot of stuff. Including the answers to oft repeated clues. I have a puzzle dictionary somewhere. But I don’t know where.

For me, starting each puzzle is a little like watching a baseball game. After the first pitch my stress level rises dramatically. Because I know that in slow progression there will be several hundred more pitches. Each carrying tremendous importance. In a perfect world the pitcher should throw three balls per inning. Yielding three pop flies. And three easy outs. But of course it’s a game of balls and strikes and foul balls. Walks and runs, hits and errors. And it takes several hours of throwing, catching, hitting and running to get it over with. All while I root for my team.

So it is with the crossword. The first clue. And many to follow. Hopefully filling in the squares with letters spelling words. Go through all the across clues and fill in what you can. Then the same with the down. Then try to build something off of the few letters I’ve filled in. It’s going to take forever!  And I wish I knew more words!

Once things start filling up it gets a little easier. The answers are more apparent when you have half the letters staring at you. Maybe. At least it’s easier to guess.

And eventually all the boxes are filled and I’m done. There may be some very strange spellings in there. And there will certainly be big blobs of ink where I’ve changed my mind and the letters. But it’s done.

And some days I’ll do five or six or of them. Provided the first one doesn’t throw me for a loop. I love baseball. And crossword puzzles. Sometimes it’s just hard to sit through them calmly.

That’s part of my story. What’s yours?