Word: crosswords
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...fond words my Hebrew professor had used to describe him. I had never met him. My plan to search him out in office hours went by the way-side, like my unfulfilled pledges to exercise at the Malkin Athletic Center and do the New York Times crossword regularly...
...bringing up to date what many perceived as a stodgy puzzle. He began adding in clues from television (He's from Ork) and pop culture (Singer Sonny____) with the more traditional references to the Apostles and the dates of Nero's reign. Shortz explains his perspective on the crossword's evolution: "In the early days, puzzles were just words in a grid, definitions were basically out of a dictionary--bookish sounding. Today's puzzles usually have themes, generally the long answers make a connection." With reference to the injection of modernity, he adds, "I used...
...this sense of completion, we must turn, perhaps paradoxically, to the crossword puzzle, which is the epitome of vexing emptiness. What the puzzle does not offer at first glance, however, it makes up for in promise: we know that it is possible to finish the task of the crossword puzzle, should we have the strength and skill. Further, it enables us to use our linguistic and calculating capabilities toward a pure pursuit, without the sense of response we demand from conversation, or the compensation we get from employment. The crossword puzzle is a two-dimensional siren, and it is only...
Admittedly, not every crossword puzzle is deserving of such epic compliments as those lavished above. In discussing "the crossword puzzle," I am thinking specifically about a particular puzzle which is the standard of all solvers, that published in the New York Times. According to the Times's puzzle editor, Will Shortz, the Times first published a Sunday crossword in 1942--the last of the big general interest newspapers to do so--and began the daily puzzle in 1950. He credits the ironic success of the late-arriving Times's puzzle to the newspaper's current status and to the innovations...
With the future of the printed newspaper in doubt, even staunch advocates of traditional paper-and-pencil scratchwork may in the end have no choice but to download the puzzle from the Times's Web site. Still, the principle behind the crossword will remain the same that it has been since its inception at the beginning of the century: a daily challenge of knowledge and wit for those who need some mental downtime or distraction from the banalities of daily life and work. Whether we're taking about train-bound commuters or bored students in Sanders Theatre, there will always...