One of my ear memories of my father is looking at him on the kitchen table, working on a daily crossword puzzle. It was an everyday life that never changed during the whole time when I grew up and lived at home. Even later visits to the home of mom and dad always included this grim ritual, around which all other schedules revolved around the day.
I am sure that my father learned about this from his father, who worked on his puzzles, perched on his high leg with a stool at the front desk in the pool in which he had run for years.
In fact, crosswords were a new thing in my grandmother. A journalist by the name of Arthur Winn from Liverpool created the first well-known published crossword puzzle, and he is usually credited as the inventor of a popular game game. December 21, 1913 was the date, and it appeared in the Sunday newspaper The World of New York.
One of the last to enter the world of crossword puzzles was the New York Times, in which the Sunday puzzle was first published in 1942 and the daily puzzle in 1950. My father made them both inks. Daily news followed along with the trend, but Times has always been the true standard.
Crosswords are a family addiction. I did daily puzzles in the rest room of the ACME supermarket, where I worked in high school. My sister, Nan, and I prepared a rare, unworked crossword puzzle that we would meet at home, and we often quoted spare parts from discarded newspapers that we found during the day.
Did you know that the answer to the key "ultimate self" is IPSEITY? Or that the “bitter wick” is an ERS? I still can not understand what Ers.
In the past few years, I had a crossword puzzle procedure that included the daily newspaper USA Today, the New York Times and any others I would stumble upon. In my shift, the Airline magazine puzzle was not canceled.
I do not do crosswords. Just puzzles in the newspapers. It would be like not meeting my father’s standards. My DNA also requires all crosswords to be done with ink.
My favorite Cruciverbalist is Merle Ragle. He has a humorous twist to his puzzles, which I have always enjoyed. I actually bought three of his collections, which Merle wrote off for me.
My father lost his sight on Macular Degeneration, and in his later years and before his departure, his mother read him brief tips from the NY Times Crossword, and he gave her the answers to the record, still always in ink.
Before my sister passed away, her own puzzle book and pen at her bedside, we often visited the memorial site of the father and the mother, had lunch and made the puzzle for the father.
Many years ago, when I was pretty smart, I worked at Cape Canaveral as a mathematician who designed and coded the trajectories of an ICBM. This was long before the satellites and GPS.
I worked with a group of like-minded intellectuals. We were legally locked up in the secret demining department, and even our bosses had to go through clearance procedures. In short times we were alone.
Of course, chess was a great filler time, but every day one of the people made copies of the “New York Times Crossword” puzzle, and at various times we went to the races to see who finished the quickest. As I was brilliant, I was always close, but no copper rings.
Then I signed up for the local newspaper, which features the Times Crossword. Every morning I carefully made a puzzle while I had breakfast, with a thick crossword puzzle on my side.
From this first day I quickly missed the puzzle in the office nonstop, and that was how I became Team Crossword Champion and the enemy of many employees. For the smartest guys in town, they no doubt slowly identified my ongoing success.
Recently, I was sitting in a boarding school at PSA, waiting for the flight and working on the USA Today crossword. After landing, the flight attendant handed out copies of the same USA Today.
A little later and already boring, I opened the paper and redid the same riddle that I finished at the boarding school. After I quickly completed the crossword puzzle, the lady sitting next to me commented that I had never seen anyone complete the crossword puzzle at the speed with which I had just finished this one.
I smoked, and then quietly commented. "This is just a special gift that I have."
