Crossing Words
The Source
I know a lady living at Knollwood Retirement Village who loves breakfast…it’s her favorite meal…but she won’t leave her room until she’s completed her morning crossword puzzle. I find that remarkable. Were I to do that my eggs and bacon would become leftovers for supper. Each Monday morning when our Spirit of Peoria riverboat leaves for Starved Rock, First Mate Rick has stopped at a newsstand and brought on board copies of the Peoria Journal Star, the Chicago Tribune, the Springfield Journal Register, USA Today, and the New York Times (if he can find it.) The guests enter via the first deck and take on a load of omelets, biscuits and gravy, then gravitate toward the upper decks where they find Rick’s papers neatly laid out on the table near the bar. On some mornings it’s a mad rush. Passengers (and you can tell which ones they are as they approach the sight of the newspaper display….their eyes light up and I think I saw one lady drool) will pretend to be nonchalant as they dig through the papers for the crosswords. Some surreptitiously do the crossword then return itto the paper. Some stuff the entire newspaper into their travel bag for later crosswording. I’ve never actually witnessed a heroin addict getting his first fix of the morning but it’s surely something akin to what I witness every Monday on the boat. I went about 55 years ignoring crossword puzzles, then I read an article about nuns in a Wisconsin nunnery who lived to extreme old age with nary a trace of dementia. The one thing they had in common (other, I suppose, than their costumes) was their addiction to crossword puzzles. Hey, if it can keep a nun in her right mind it might work for a wayward Presbyterian. So I tried my first puzzle…after reading the unofficial rules on an Internet sight. • Most crosswords are designed to get more difficult with each passing day of the week. • Two-letter words are not allowed. • They must be symmetrical. If you have a black square in the upper left-hand corner, you must have one in the right. • If there’s an abbreviation in the clue, then the answer will be abbreviated. • There are some answers that you’ll use over and over...Ali, idea, ore, ale, ate, aria, oleo, Eden, aloe, arena, eerie, irate, erase...all vowel-heavy and frankly boring. • Do not be standing between a boat passenger and the USA Today when the boat heads north. (Okay, I made that one up.) So as I stroll the decks of the boat I observe the way different personalities attack their morning crossword. Some are anal, carefully working the puzzle from the top down, refusing to skip ahead to something easier until they’ve lettered in every white space….I think they are Baptist. Some are more slapdash (Democrats, I suspect) and wander all over the puzzle, filling in blanks here and there as the whim strikes them. Some would never let an ink pen touch their crossword, preferring a pencil instead (Republicans…covering up their tracks with the eraser.) One lady said she always started from the bottom up…an obvious Socialist. I’ve quizzed a few about whether they ever buy books of crossword puzzles. Most puzzle purists pooh-pooh the idea. They seem to imply that each morning’s crossword is a task given them by God and that to buy an entire book of tasks would be masochistic. …tempting the devil. So I attempt the occasional puzzle. I’ve not owned a pencil since fifth-grade so my inked crossword soon looks like Bic and Parker Brothers had an orgy in my newspaper. I take wild stabs, ridiculous guesses, and can never spell “aerie” correctly. I get bored or frustrated halfway through the puzzle and end up drawing a big X through the entire thing. One Monday morning Rick brought aboard a copy of the Sunday New York Times. I’d always heard about their Sunday crossword so I snuck up to the second deck and stole the puzzle while the little ladies were still munching their omelets. I read the first clue. I read the second clue. The third, the fourth, I skipped down to the last. Forget that! It was then and there that I decided that the life of a nun was not for me.