Word: crosswords
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...after a while: critics betray this by calling thrillers a "craft" or a pulp writer a "masterful technician," generally revealing that the formulas don't hold up for long and that while reading them is somewhat understandable in this cruel world, the activity is about as respectable as doing crossword puzzles or eating Darvon. Life's little sordid pleasures...
...rationally conceived but intuited through dreams and visions. A vast scholarship supported these theories. Whether or not one accepts them in the mystical sense, there is no denying the energy and intellect behind their authorship. Jung had the capacity to treat the universe as if it were an enormous crossword puzzle. Everything was interrelated; starting at any point, he could fill in all the blanks...
...elusive. If one goes hunting for callipygian, he cannot look under "buttocks, rounded" or some such, but must hit "shapely buttocks" or "beautiful buttocks." ("Buttocks that are fat" yields steatopygia-which is a different matter altogether.) Bernstein's backward dictionary is a kind of combination thesaurus and crossword-puzzle dictionary. It gives only the "target" words, not their pronunciations and derivations. For moments of verbal parapraxis the deipnosophist seeking just the mot juste (ulotrichous? schlep?) may wish to keep it handy. Too frequent a reliance on the book, however, may have the reader sounding like William F. Buckley...
...hear people saying vague things about their ordinary lives because they don't have anything to do but talk. You listen to a couple of policemen boast; a few words erupt from Old Man Boyle, their senile ward; three crotchety sisters settle on a bench to complete their crossword puzzle; and a wanton woman who might have scrubbed floors in Blooming dale's for 20 years reminisces. Except there's something off-beat about this everyday company. There's a plaintive note in all of their voices that echoes the whine of the harmonica that was playing before you heard...
Book Notes. The verdict apparently will hinge largely on whether the jury is most persuaded by Joan, who may be impressive on the stand, or by the state's circumstantial evidence. The state will stress a note that Joan made in a crossword-puzzle book, which it will contend indicates she intended to escape. The defense will insist that the note referred to her hope for release on bail while appealing her conviction...