Word: crosswords
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...perhaps more than anything else, it is the account of the details of the dancers' world which makes Mazo's book fascinating. He has faithfully recorded where the Company members live (West 69th Street), where they eat (O'Neal's), what they do in their spare time (movies and crossword puzzles), their pre-performance rituals (a touch on the shoulder and a good-luck wish of "merde"), even the contents of the candy machine in the dancers' lounge. What would otherwise be trivialities accumulate to form a tantalizing mosaic of a way of life which demands the dedication...
Neither draconian laws nor increased police action is likely to thwart computer thieves. Most authorities agree that computer owners must install more elaborate security measures. Says one: "Cracking a computer system's defenses is about as difficult as doing a hard Sunday crossword puzzle." One computer, protected by a five-digit code number, was illegally entered in minutes when the thief ordered the computer to begin trying every one of the 100,000 possible combinations. But tighter security would cost both money and time. Says Robert Courtney of I.B.M. "If you're running thousands of transactions...
Life on the train, according to the released hostages, was indeed a deadly combination of high stress and boredom. Because all the crossword puzzles had been completed, even the men inside the train began to take up embroidery to pass the time. One man plunged into a deep mental depression, and at one point another simply fainted, apparently from tension. The hijackers maintained strict hygiene inside the train. Every morning blankets were hung out of the windows and beaten to remove the dust. In the afternoon, hostages were assigned to remove excrement from under the train's toilet pipe...
...encyclopedic "newspaper of record" for "thoughtful, pure-minded people," as Adolph Ochs defined his audience when he took over the paper back in 1896. Even a decade ago, you had to be uncompromisingly thoughtful to read the Times. The only relief in columns of soberly worded dispatches was a crossword puzzle or a chess problem, never a comic strip. Gossip was minimal, scandal sanitized-in keeping with the prim slogan, "All the news that's fit to print." The paper seemed edited for someone with a meticulous interest in the rise and fall of Cabinets in obscure countries. TIME...
...portray Alan Casper, Native Intelligence is fine; it is as a real novel that it is hampered by its own wit and restless eclecticism. The materials in the novel run a bizarre gamut from an incredibly difficult crossword puzzle (Sokolov offers to send readers the solution, for a dollar), to a lengthy glossary of the Xixi language, to purported New York Times clippings, to a threatening letter Alan writes President Kennedy. The feeling emerges from it all that Sokolov is playing myriad obscure jokes throughout, that some second satiric meaning lurks behind everything. Is the Xixi language full of esoteric...