Get a Clue

Like caffeine and alcohol, crossword puzzles have become the latest “Jekyll and Hyde” of the medical community. One day, they’re enthusiastically prescribed for improving brain function, the next they’re disparaged as nothing more than mindless entertainment.

Okay, so when my brain practically explodes while attempting to solve Saturday’s notoriously sadistic stumper, on which side of the mental spectrum does that fall, other than going mental?

What’s really pathetic is my once-a-week cerebral meltdown isn’t even caused by the gold standard of daily puzzle publications, “The New York Times,” but a lesser daily paper. Back in the 1920’s, when crosswords first became all the rage in the States, it’s ironic that the “Times” not only refused to run them, but was at the forefront of condemning crosswords as a "sinful waste in the utterly futile finding of words the letters of which will fit into a prearranged pattern, more or less complex.” "The Times" finally gave in and published its first puzzle in 1942 and established the following weekly pattern: Monday and Tuesday (easy-peasy), Wednesday, Thursday, Friday (ummm), and Saturday (arrrgghh!). Sunday‘s is a super-sized version of the Thursday crossword.

Non-puzzlers believe all you need to solve a crossword is a large vocabulary or a head full of trivia. Not true. The key to solving crosswords is in the clues, which have several subsets, such as the straight or quick (C: Queen ______ Boleyn, A: Anne), themes (category, quote, pun, rebus, commemorative) and the sometimes head-scratching indirect (C: Pay addition, A: OLA).

But for sheer pencil-breaking frustration, nothing beats the cryptic crosswords published throughout Great Britain, where the clues are puzzles in themselves. These also have different degrees of difficulty, ranging from maddening to mayhem.

An example of cryptic’s easiest clue, also called “straight," would be:

C: To bring worker into the country may prove significant

A: Important

“Why" you ask? Because “import" means to bring in, the worker is an “ant," and “significant" means “important."

Cake walk, right?

Here’s another example, called the “homophone":

C: A few, we hear, add up

A: Sum

Are you ready for this? The definition is “add up." You, the sorry-assed solver, must deduce that “we hear" is a homophone, so a homophone of “a few" (“SOME") is the answer.

I think anyone who does these cryptics in pen is a crackpot and should be committed to C:______Hospital, A: Bellevue.

Sometimes it’s not the clue but how the solver reads it. Asked what was the most difficult clue he ever featured in a crossword, current “New York Times" puzzle editor Will Shortz replied “Tower," which called for a three word answer.

When the puzzle’s answers were published, Shortz received an avalanche of angry letters and e-mails from stricken solvers who read the clue as “tower," as in “leaning _______ of Pisa" instead of “tow-er" (A: AAA).

Cross words indeed!