Crossword Puzzle: The Story

I got the idea for this blog entry from 40 Across, "In agreement (hyph.)," which struck me quite philosophically. That got me to thinking about the possibility of there being a story in, of all things, a crossword puzzle. (I'll get back to 40 Across later in this story.)

The reason 40 Across has to come later requires some background. While there are a lot of crossword puzzles I can't do, the ones I am able to do can become boring. So I've invented little additional challenges to make them more interesting. I've entered only the Across solutions, only the Down solutions, and mixed and matched in a patchwork of the blocks formed by the blacked out squares. My latest challenge requires that I get the word solution in the topmost left square, clue number 1, before I can do any of the puzzle. From then on, I can only write in words as they have a letter from a previous answer. This imposes some strange order on my solutions as my mind follows a track sometimes and jumps around others. Thus I will follow some sparse chains to some other area of the puzzle or completely fill every blank. Sometimes I will get a long answer and other times go for seemingly forever without getting the middle letter of a three letter answer. Then, there are times that I can't finish because I can't get the only word that would go an isolated block.

As for this story: It is a relatively easy puzzle from today's Chronicle titled, "Today's Crossword." Square 1 had both an Across clue and a Down clue. One Across was "Portico," which had to be DOOR or STOA. Since I tend to over think some of these things, I checked one Down, which was "did the backstroke," whose answer was obviously SWAM. So, I was off.

Even with the clues right in front of me, I had no clue what the answers to two or three Down were. But ATRA fit four Down, "razor brand," which reconfirmed STOA. I was relieved because like all my crossword puzzles, I was doing this one in ink. Since today was trash day, the W in SWAM and the T in ATRA allowed me to correctly interpret "squander" as WASTE. (Besides being in ink, I also write my letters all in upper case, which is why I'm doing so in this story.) The E in WASTE was the beginning letter for my favorite clue in every puzzle, 13, Down in this case but sometimes Across, or in some larger puzzles, both. This clue was "moderated," with the only choice being EMCEED. Yeah, this is why the early in the week Chronicle crosswords are so suited for this kind of challenge, most of the answers are short.

I would have been ALARMed if I were unable to get "watch feature" after having 60% of the letters. But it was a minor miracle of MIRACLES that I saw MIRACLES when I read the clue "marvels." I wouldn't have been able to without the three letter M, A, and C. Without the letters, I would have interpreted "marvels" as more of an action word.

However I got to it, the real miracle was that this allowed me to learn something, well two somethings: "anklebones" are TALI and "glacial ridges" are OSAR. I may have even known these words at some point in my past, which leads me to this conclusion: By the time any similar clue comes along I can guarantee that I will have forgotten them again.

Then it went south. After I got "salad-dressing cheese" as BLEU and "played loud" as BLARED, there suddenly was a one letter hole. I just couldn't complete "arith. term" or "EEC currency" even though I already had L-D and E-U. It wasn't until much later in the puzzle that I happened to know the answer to "LAX hours," PST, that least common denominator popped into my head. So, the missing letter was C for LCD and ECU, respectively.

Then there was such clues as "river in England." It took half of the letters before I got AVON and I have even been there, at Stratford on Avon, which means on the river Avon. As I recall I even saw the river.

While there are several other words I could write about, I will skip ahead to the clue that started all of this, "in agreement (hyph.)." With the answers to "strong emotion," LOVE, and "captain's shout," AHOY, giving the first two letters EY, it was easy to see that the answer was EYETOEYE. This triggered a round of free association. First I thought of not ever wanting to do things that I would consider shameful and thus not be able to look myself in the eyes in a mirror. This was recently confirmed by my score in the general moral conscience category of the Judgement Index. It turns out that, at least according to this test, I have a very strong moral conscience, a 0 on the scale of 0-8+. Then I started thinking about how being two, or more, minds on an issue can lead to uncertainty or worry and hoping that I could see EYE-TO-EYE with myself.

This has been fun, for me, but I'm not going to write about every single clue and word because, since I didn't finish the puzzle, what is the point? When I couldn't think of the six-letter answer to "Peter, for one" even though I had the first two letters, RA, I stopped doing the entire puzzle. That one word was my only entry into the upper right portion of the puzzle.

Maybe I'll pick it up tomorrow and the answer will just jump out at me. But then why go back. After all, tomorrow is another paper with two crossword puzzles, Sudoku, Word Jumble, Challenger, and Cryptoquip.

Here's hoping you have nothing but success in all of life's puzzles.