Roars of laughter and approval
billowed from the Downtown United Presbyterian Church last Thursday night as
Will Shortz, the New
York Times crossword puzzle editor, charmed the sell-out Rochester Arts and
Lecture crowd with secrets of the trade. He had the normally polite and
reserved audience shouting answers to tricky crossword clues and volunteering
to participate in his mind-bending word games.
It’s a pleasure for me to report that
Will Shortzis
a not a fiend. He is a very genial fellow. Though fans of the Times puzzles have a love-hate
relationship with him.
Shortz
doesn’t make up the puzzles himself. He has a stable of about 300 constructorswho do that, but he usually rewrites
about half of the clues,adding
OBFUSCATORY ambiguities that turn run-of-the-mill puzzles into pun-filled
stumpers.
Google
gives you 120,000 references for “Will Shortz.” I
won’t duplicate the bio stuff here, but one oft-repeated factoid is worth
including. He is the only recipient ever of an academic degree in enigmatology — a study program he crafted for himself at IndianaUniversity. He also earned a law
degree, but got hooked on puzzles and never took the bar exam.
Sixty-four million Americans are cruciverbalists — devotees of crossword puzzles. That’s
considerably more than almost any non-political, non-religious group you can
think of. If they all agreed on anything they’d be a force to be reckoned with.
That’s not likely. Crossworders are an
individualistic bunch (an OXYMORON?).
Crosswords have earned a lot of good
press recently as evidence comes in that challenging mental activity keeps
brains alert and agile. Some studies even show that new nerve cells grow when
we exercise our brains with problem-solving activities.
Crossword puzzles, like jazz, were
invented in America
(1913), and like jazz, spread back to Europe. In WWII, Britain’s
top secret decoding center at BletchleyPark recruited expert crossword
solvers to decrypt German military communications created on the notorious
Enigma machine.
In the ’20s, crossword puzzles became
an international craze. A volume of crosswords was Simon and Schuster’s first
published book. Fads, like the Charleston,
Hula Hoops, Yo-Yo’s and Pet Rocks have come and gone, but crosswords have
earned a permanent place in our culture. The New York Times, Shortz told us with a
knowing smile, was the last metropolitan newspaper to get in on what has turned
out to be a moneymaking bonanza.
Shortz
started, and presides over, the annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament,
held every March in Stamford, Connecticut.
Over a weekend, several hundred puzzlers work against the clock, vying for the
top purse of $4000.
For Times puzzles, Shortz has strict rules.
Obscenities don’t make it. ACNEis
about the worst physical affliction allowed. Cussing is limited to words like
DARN, DRAT,and ZOUNDS. The Times crossword is thus a rare BASTION
of predictable decency.
Other rules are technical. No
two-letter words, no letters that are not a part of both a DOWN and an ACROSS
entry. The black squares must make a symmetrical pattern. Too many black
squares make the puzzle too easy, so the ratio of white to black has to be at least
70/30. And you must be able to trace a path of filled-in letters all the way
from the first square to the last with no isolated enclaves.
Anyone can submit a puzzle, but
constructing one is devilishly difficult. Shortz gets
an average of 70 submissions a week — and replies to them all.
Asked about his staff, Shortz CHORTLED: “I’m it.” He has help with the annual
tournament, but at the Times he’s the
whole ENCHILADA. He’s not at the office that much — only an hour a week —
and sleeps till 10:30 a.m.
The pleasure of solving a tough
puzzle is PALPABLE. When all else goes wrong with your day, you can always GIRD
up your LOINSand say to yourself:
“Well, I solved the puzzle — and that’s not nothing.”
For more information on Rochester
Arts & Lectures’ upcoming events, visit www.artsandlectures.org.
This article appears in Dec 14-20, 2005.
