The Crossword Puzzle Moment

I call myself a crossword addict. There’s a deep sense in which that’s true. As the joke goes, I can quit any time I want; I just don’t want. But what’s the hook? What do I get out of an activity that looks suspiciously like homework? The answer is what I call the Crossword Puzzle Moment.

Remember the knock against American-style crosswords is that, far more than their cryptic foreign counterparts, they rely on factual knowledge. You either know the name of some TV character or river or politico, or you don’t. So what’s the point?

The point is that you know more than you think, and dredging musty facts out of the far corners of your brain is satisfying. Making synaptic connections that have lain dormant for years causes something deep in the pleasure center to squeeze out a juicy shot of chemical goodness. How many times has this happened to you? You read a clue and know immediately that there’s no way you can know the answer. Then while you stare at the boxes the answer letters slowly dissolve into place before your eyes.

I separate these experiences into two categories — facts you knew you once knew and facts you know you never knew. "Reagan Attorney General" is an example of the first. If you’re old enough to have read newspapers or watched TV during the 1980s then this is a name that you heard every few days but, unless you’re a puzzle regular, haven’t thought of in decades. You notice the answer is five letters and all of a sudden something clicks. EDWIN, right? No, that was the first name. The last name is stored somewhere in a nearby folder in the same general disk location. It’s on the tip of your cranium, just out of reach. You finally give up and concentrate on the next clue and just when you divert your brainpower to another topic the word MEESE floats up into your consciousness. Who knows how or from where, but it feels good. Maybe you never forget anything in your life and just need the right trigger to pull it out. That would be depressing if true.

The second category is even more amazing; those facts you know for sure you don’t know, have no way of knowing, couldn’t possibly have ever known. Here’s an example that happened to me a while ago. The clue is "Seinfeld role", 6 letters. I’ve never seen that show, I have no clue what it’s about (despite friends trying to explain it to me) and consequently I skip immediately to the next clue. With the cross clues I get an E as the final letter, and I know immediately that the answer is ELAINE. How? I have no idea. I must have read something about the show or heard people talking about it. Who knows? The point is, it’s not just an aha moment. It’s not just that I figured out some logic puzzle and can be smug about how clever I am. It’s more like magic. I concentrated. I relaxed. The answer came to me.

Maybe this is what religious experience is like for some people, like the universe is speaking to them, providing them with answers. Maybe it’s all just Crossword Puzzle Moments. Or maybe God likes crosswords too.

As usual, recent solutions are in the Answers module in the right-hand column. Happy puzzling.

Comments

[crosswording]

check out http://www.crosswording.com/ it's a new free crossword site with many crosswords to solve.

[Robin Troy]

Nice. A blog entry about a topic we’ve talked about countless times that still leaves me thinking.

Indeed we perceive much more than we realize. Our brains tuck facts away, categorize and hide them from use to keep us from being overwhelmed. Stuff that we think we that we have forgotten or don’t know is just a fired synapse away. Personally I find crossword puzzle moments incredibly satisfying because I have a terrible memory – or perhaps I should reframe that and say that I have a very deep, complex mental filing system!

The piece that has me thinking is the question you posed at the end. Are crossword puzzle moments like religious experiences? Are they like aha moments and epiphanies? By golly, I think they are. I believe that all people are innately good. We move through the world with every intention of being selfless, charitable, hopeful and kind but at times these qualities are tucked away for self protection. Present but not accessible – masked by fear, anger and sadness. Those moments of clarity, when light shines through the armor, that’s when life hands us a clue and clear, undeniable answers present themselves. It’s a great feeling - I would have never connected this type of experience with crossword puzzles!

Thanks for the moment of Zen.