I like working crossword puzzles.  Perhaps it’s simply because I like words, and always have.  Or, maybe I like crosswords for the same reason I like reading mystery novels and why I liked geometry class---I like solutions.

At any rate, they are fun. Actually, some of them are fun.  Others are horrible, rotten things that are designed to make life miserable.

To me, a crossword puzzle should be solvable without having to visit the New York Public Library.  The Sunday New York Times puzzle, for example, is well-nigh impossible to solve unless one has a very complete reference library at hand. “Apollo’s mother-in-law’s servant’s cousin’s middle name.” 

Only once did I ever enjoy working one of those particular puzzles.  It was during deer season, many years ago, and I was in hunting camp.  A very bright fellow named Buffalo Phil and I decided to tackle the Sunday puzzle, sitting there in front of the big fireplace.  What he didn’t know, I did, and what I didn’t know, he did, and between the two of us, and after several hours, we managed to complete it.

Doing difficult crosswords as a group project can be fun, for that very reason---people fill the knowledge gaps.

Every now and then, the writers of crosswords just get too darned cute.  For example, I remember struggling and struggling over a crossword once and finally figuring out that the author had written the thing so that anytime a word had a syllable with a “to” “too”  or “two” sound, it would be replaced with a “2” so that the word “intuitive,” for example, became “in2itive.”  I wadded that one up and threw it in2 the trash.

When I was in 9th grade, my science teacher gave us a test in the form of a crossword puzzle that he had written.  This was quite a feat, really, because it is hard to write a crossword puzzle. 

But, he did it, and it must have taken him hours.  Why did he do it?  I don’t know.   It sure made it easy to ace the test. 

If you knew half the answers, you could get the other half right by completing the grid. Of course, a lot of the students had never done a crossword puzzle and didn’t understand how they worked and failed the test anyway, so he ended up in the post-test review having to not only go over the test questions, but also to teach everyone how  to do crossword puzzles.  Since I understood both how to do the puzzle and knew the material, I spend that particular hour throwing spitballs and passing notes to my buddy Turk Mudge. 

Come to think of it, that’s how I spent most hours in that class. 
                                  Jim Whitehouse

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