Crosswords

A crossword puzzle I constructed was recently published in the New York Times. If the blogosphere is any indication, it was a smashing success. The day it ran I carefully read every comment on my favorite NY Times crossword puzzle blog (www.rexwordpuzzle.blogspot.com), and I was blown away by the overwhelming positivity of the feedback. I would post a few quotes from the blog comments, but I do not want to toot my own horn too much.

The truth of the matter concerning puzzle constructing is that I do not really have all that much to toot about these days. The aforementioned puzzle was the only one accepted by the NY Times out of about eight recent submissions. Now, I know the NY Times is the most popular puzzle, and Will Shortz (the NY Times crossword puzzle editor) gets umpteen submissions every day, and in order to have a steady-state system, on average only one of these umpteen puzzles can be accepted, so I have pretty thick skin about being rejected. (I have pretty thick skin, in general.) Nevertheless, it does sting a little to get the rejection email. It starts, “I must send my regrets…” and finishes, “… I did enjoy seeing this, though.” But, by the time I get to the last line, my heart – to paraphrase Biz Markie – has already gone down south.

It is interesting how your expectations for something change once you start having a little bit of success with it. I started seriously making puzzles and trying to publish them about five years ago. At that time I had a single goal: get a single puzzle published anywhere. If I were to accomplish this goal, I figured I would consider my foray into constructing a complete success forever. But now, if it is not the case that every puzzle I submit is accepted by a top-notch publisher, then I have prolonged stretches where I feel like a patzer.

The rejections, however, are worth it when a puzzle of mine is actually published. It is a big thrill, especially when it runs in a major publication like the NY Times. Hundreds of thousands, millions maybe, of people do this puzzle. The daily crossword puzzle is something with which a huge percentage of the population can identify. Publishing a puzzle is something I can brag to my friends about, and something my parents can brag to their friends about. It is a universal impresser.

I had a very surreal moment a few months ago when I went to visit my grandmother a few days before she died. She could barely move, barely talk, and her short-term memory was shot. She was not senile, but physically I do not think she could have been any closer to death without being in a coma. When I came in, the first thing she said to me, was not “hello,” it was, “you’re… the… one… who… did… that… crossword… puzzle.” (She was referring to a Sunday puzzle published in the NY Times Magazine a few years back.)
“Yeah grandma, that was me.”
“I… showed… that… to… my… entire… bridge… club… they… were… so…. impressed.”

I stayed with my grandma, with a few other family members, for about a half hour that visit, and every five minutes she would bring up my crossword puzzle again, forgetting that we had just talked about it. It started to make me feel uncomfortable. I got embarrassed. I knew this was almost certainly the last time I, and the other family members I came with, would see my grandma, and it made me feel weird that our last conversation was largely about my crossword puzzle – as if a last conversation should be about a more worthy topic. In retrospect though, I suppose a crossword puzzle is just as worthy as any other topic, if you think about it. Plus, it was a pretty good puzzle.