Blood & Ink Video

Crossword Puzzles

(c) 2009 G.N. Jacobs

Recently, I rediscovered crossword puzzles as a way to kill time and boost my already considerable vocabulary. It’s interesting how similar the various puzzles are regardless of the writer and/or publishing venue. They look the same using similar Javascripts and many of the same words, day after day. Here are my thoughts for livening up the puzzles.

I can’t do anything about the look because why do you reinvent the wheel? Whether it is the Los Angeles Times or USA Today, the online engine works especially well for my brute force technique. I try letters until I get the color that says I got the right answer. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t even think about a paper crossword these days. I don’t know where my pencils are.

But, I would vote several words, placeholders and other answers off the island and into that Disney vault where movies out of DVD rotation go. I would start with epee. I mean no disrespect to the remaining practioners of the redheaded stepchild of the fencing world, but at least ten puzzle appearances in two weeks is a bit much. How about saber, foil, rapier, broadsword or claymore?

I’m also getting sick of seeing variations of Aloe Vera, usually the aloe part, on my puzzles. Aren’t there other herbs and remedies available for use? I anxiously await the clue – “reputed to be good for energy and virility” – so that I could use ginseng. I sure don’t go near the real stuff, because I have all the virility I need. If I could afford saffron at the grocery store, I’d include this spice too, oh well.

Another clue for the vault would be “a large shoe,” which always nets E-E-E as the answer. It’s amazing how many times this shows up whenever the creator needs a three-square answer to make the other more important answers fit into that neat square box. You’d think that a puzzle maker would throw in the almost equally large D-D-D just to frak with the audience.

Puzzles have become littered with Roman numerals and Greek letters as another type of placeholder answer. Well, I survive these questions largely because I did go to college and took at least one Classics class. No, I did my reading in English, but some osmosis about numbers and letters did seep in. Either that, or I learned my Roman numerals from trying to decipher the pretentious copyright statements on many TV shows.

For some reason, Otto I and Otto come up quite frequently. The first is an obscure Holy Roman Emperor. I am educated enough that I can reasonably converse about most French and English kings, but those German and Austrian guys that held the title Holy Roman Emperor? What? Who?

I remember only one really good story starring a Holy Roman Emperor. Henry IV pissed off the pope and got excommunicated. Since appearing to be a good Christian was required to be king anywhere in Europe, Henry stripped down to sackcloth and ashes and waited barefoot in the snow until the pope forgave. Of course, the next time they saw each other, Henry led an army that dictated terms to the pope and the Papal States. Further comment about such ironies of the unholy intersection of religion and politics is best left for another essay.

That Otto I comes up so much suggests I need to read more nonfiction. OK, I will just as soon as I get through Guns, Germs and Steel, The World is Flat and The Ten-Cent Plague. The good news is that Otto without any modifiers is very easy for someone with more books to read than time; it’s a Simpsons’ clue. Personally, I wouldn’t get on the bus with Otto, but then I’m not a cartoon character with script immunity.

The Simpsons are very well represented in other clues. Doh, Moe and variations on Ned Flanders top the list. The creators seem impressed that this show that seems as if it’s been on practically forever has added two words to the OED: doh and meh. Some writers go the character that only the diehard fans would know, they have twenty plus seasons from which to choose. But, my brute force method solves everything in time.

What surprises me by their absence are Star Trek puzzles. You’d think that with Paramount drumbeating the countdown to 5/8/09 and the movie, which will largely determine if Star Trek gets to stay alive as a franchise that there would be more puzzles. I miss seeing phaser, Klingon, Romulan, Jefferies Tubes, warp drive and warp core in puzzles. Yeah, this is where you the reader remind me to write the damn thing myself. So, when I find a puzzle writing engine that talks to Macs, I’ll let you know.

Now, I can’t really complain when the puzzle goes for a broad appeal with a lot of recent music references, but I still do. I know Classic Rock very well and can hold my own with Jazz and Classical. My reason for the snobbery is that the music sucks more with each passing year. We live in a world where American Idol has replaced both the concept of paying dues and the contributions of the few record label A&R men who knew their jobs. This offends at so many levels, so of course I’m ignorant of this new stuff.

I have other peeves with the recording industry that play out in my puzzle-verse. Do you think if they worked with more of their artists to get good instead of dumping them at the first tiny dip in sales that I’d know more about them? And don’t get me started on Hip Hop, a genre of which I am proud of my ignorance.

I grew up on the four-part complexity of rock and so I’m never going to like the abject simplicity of rap that is a drum line (often sampled) and lyrics. And then it became even harder to like rap, because finding someone with something to say other than Hos, blunts and sticking it to Whitey has become impossible. So, these types of questions really zap my solve rate.

The reason why I said I can’t complain about questions for which I don’t get the cultural reference is that if solving the puzzle is so damn important, then between my dictionary and a Google search I have no excuses. I’m just lazy and would rather discover the new information by virtue of solving around the dumb clue than actually search some of these things online. I also simply fill in vowels and consonants like on Wheel of Fortune.

This is years of writing experience telling me where the remaining letters go if I know a few, but don’t get the clue right away. Q, J, X and Z are almost useless letters that the Donald would probably fire if we let him be in charge of the OED. That is why they’re so valuable on the Scrabble board.

My puzzle experience (assuming that’s a skill worth putting on your resume) also says to be ready for the writer foxing things up with a secondary definition. For any word that has two or more sub-meanings in the dictionary, expect the clue to refer to the most obscure sense of the word that will lead you initially to some other word entirely. On paper, this is frustrating, but just a time waster online. Which is the point.

Aunt May was on a Roll

© 2009 G.N. Jacobs

 

            What follows comes with no solutions, but something is off. I recently had a conversation at my favorite comic book store, the kind for which I deserve combat pay.

            We refer to her as Aunt May, a reference to Spider-man’s silver-haired caregiver. Our Aunt May is a retired teacher who seems to need to blow off steam about everything. When spooled up, she’s quite hostile.

            I spent four hours as the object of her unfocused rage at the world, when I would rather discuss the relative usefulness of various items in Batman’s utility belt. Aunt May yelled at me over things with which I have very little responsibility. It began with a tirade against the current Israeli invasion of Gaza.

            While I don’t support Israel’s selective memory that allows some of its policies to do a toe dance with the racism performed by Nazi Germany, I do realize that there are two sides to the fight neither very palatable. I didn’t have the heart to mention that the Israel – Palestine conflict is as much about rockets and suicide bombers as it is about Palestinian ghettos. In short, the easiest way to avoid an Israeli invasion is to not shoot rockets. I said nothing; Aunt May was on a roll.

            About this time, my friend and Supreme Autocratic Ruler of the Comic Book Store, Adam, put his fingers to his temple and asked her and, to a lesser extent, me to use our indoor voices. Gee, I missed the memo about reverting to five-years-old. And the rambling tirade changed subjects to various domestic horrors.

            I was at a loss to understand how Bernie Madoff’s allegedly being a Jew had anything to do with stealing $50 billion. To me thievery is universal; it’s wrong everywhere on Earth. But, Aunt May blathered on that if Madoff could rob Elie Wiesel’s foundation, then clearly Jews had lost their moral center. I did speak up here, but she cut me off. Aunt May was on a roll.

            Then came the recent Satan Claus Killings juxtaposed with the Amish School Slaughter and the Virginia Tech Slaughter. Of course, my eyes glazed over at the mention of Amish girls lined up against the wall and shot. It was a while ago and other barbarities had succeeded it.

            Aunt May took umbrage at my blank eyes mistaking me for being part of the problem. She even at one point said I should have my head examined, the classic out for people who don’t really want to have an actual discussion. If I really were part of the problem, I would have hit her for combative need to lash out. But, I said and did nothing of the sort, because I know who I am and Aunt May was on a roll.

            It didn’t matter to her that trying to understand things seems to keep me calm; I was just not outraged enough over Santa Claus killing off his in-laws. Aunt May clearly didn’t like me calmly explaining that Satan Claus felt he’d lost everything, even his dog, to the in-laws. Remaining calm only set the woman off more and variations of – How can this happen? – peppered her speech.

            Given that I sensed a fondness for a proactive prevention program, I did try to tell her that said measures would destroy the freedom she abused to yell at random people in a comic book store. Like a lot of things I didn’t get very far. I pictured Soviet-style mental health where dissent and disagreement are mental health problems that threaten the state. I imagined flipping the bird to the moron behind the wheel and having to answer to a Public Psychology Board that typically cokes people up on a 1000 milligrams of Thorazine just for insulting another driver. Aunt May was on a roll.

            True, not every part of this conversation was a tirade. She did calm down later as the topics became more personal. I said a few emotionally neutral things about my Dad and she went on about her “so-called friends.” My only contribution was to tell her that choice of association is the only real choice many people have.

            Yes, telling unstable people personal things can be dangerous, but it did calm her down. Some things need to burn out, like Aunt May being on a roll.

            At some point here, I mentioned being a writer. And I got the injunction to use my words to change the world, which is something I thought I already did. But, I suspect that she doesn’t understand that fiction is equally good for that process. I couldn’t tell her that I learned as much about the duality of Man from the classic Batman story The Killing Joke as I have from eight years of therapy. But, that part digresses into another essay.

            Believe it or not, we shook hands as she left.

            What did I learn from this mostly incoherent encounter? Aside from the obvious to any with a pair of eyes, I learned nothing. The world and the people in it are messed up and remaining calm buys as much grief as does flipping out. In short, I’m owed combat pay for Aunt May was on a roll.