CLUELESS in CARROLLTON

ProetryPlace Blog 24          CLUELESS IN    CARROLLTON

    For quite a few years during which I was fully occupied with earning a living, helping rear a family in support of my wife’s primary efforts and occasional community involvements including terms on the city council, the Red Cross board and other civic organizations, I had little time for or interest in games.

    Even after our nest was empty and retirement implied some free time, I kept fully occupied developing new interests and shedding some older ones. For a while I found Sudoku a challenging amusement involving critical placement of just nine numbers. I became somewhat proficient and started to lose interest. Numbers were not enough. I was writing more and I felt an itch for words.

    One day, I picked up my wife’s crossword puzzle book and started filling squares. That did it. I have continued lettering squares ever since, finding satisfaction in the completed matrix and much more.

    The small daily puzzles in our small daily newspaper are graded in difficulty, becoming more and more challenging as the week progresses. Today, being Saturday, the usual 10 to 30 minute task stretched to an hour as I struggled with clues that were unusually obscure, deceiving or ambiguous.

    I thought I had nailed “Native of Moscow” with “Russian,” only to find the word I needed was “Idahoan,”  also seven letters ending with “an.” Similarly, clue 24-down “Bouquet.” Required the answer “smell,” not “scent,” “Santa’s team member” was “Donner” not “Dasher” and “turn” not “spin” was the only fit for the clue, “rotate.”

    I have no clue at all about some clues. These get filled in by answering parallel and perpendicular neighbors, and often are still not recognizable to me even when the puzzle is complete. So, after I have finished the puzzle, I grab my iPad to seek enlightenment through Google, Wikipedia or Webster.

    Today, I discovered that Galahad’s mother was Elaine, all the puzzle required. But Wikipedia supplied the additional information that he was illegitimate and that Lancelot was his father. Hanky-panky in King Arthur’s court again! Leave it to the French. I also learned that the long white gowns that various clergy and altar attendants wear cinched at the waist are called albs—a funny little word, don’t you think?

    How many people do you know who know the capitol of Ghana? It is Accra (11 across).  Did you know that Accra is a port city located on the southern coast of that big land-lump of the African continent that bulges out into the Atlantic Ocean? And did you know that it was settled three centuries after Paris, France but now has nearly one million great population? Neither did I, and I doubt that the crossword author did either.

    Reading a good crossword puzzle has some things in common with reading a good novel, nonfiction or poetry. In these works (excepting perhaps haiku) the author does not present herself directly to the reader. Yet in the end, a connection, a bond exists between the author and the reader. Often, establishing this subliminal link facilitates the understanding of crossword clues and recognition of underlying themes, enabling one to say to the author, “Aha, I see where you are coming from (or leading to).”

    So, do not belittle the lowly crossword as a form of literature. It aint Beowulf, but it has much to offer and takes less time than reading the same—unless you choose to research some of the answers.

    BTW, the photo is an internet image from the fascinating Ghana collection.

Richard Allen Anderson http://richardandersonblogs.blogspot.com ProetryPlace