Puzzled

Powerless. I am powerless against the New York Times. Not the whole thing. I can walk away from the front page, especially if the news is bad. Sports Page? No problem, I check the MLB standings, and skim the stats. Done.  On a vulnerable day, the Weather Page may suck me in for a while. Why, you ask? Who knows? Something about checking the temperature in Oslo and the humidity in Managua makes me happy. (I think I mostly love it because it makes me feel a little better about my outrageous California mortgage payment to realize that while I hop in the pool on an April morning, they’re still wearing thermal long-johns in Sniezka or sweltering in Ahmedabad.) 

My helplessness starts and ends on The Puzzle Page. For a capable (somewhat), productive (sometimes), and intelligent (debatable) adult I have a stunning lack of discipline when it comes to The Crossword and KenKen.  (Eight Across: “Period between Shaban and Shawwal”; seven letters; starting with an ‘R’.  RAMADAN. Writing the bold block letters in pen makes me disproportionately happy. And why can I not resist KenKen? I don’t even like math, but show me the freebie “3” in the corner and I’m a goner. ) Pen flying, I cannot stop until every square on every grid has a letter or a number in it. Don’t even think about pulling me away to brush my hair or scramble eggs (warm breakfast at my house means I leave the milk out.) Nope. Not until I figure out the “region conquered by Phillip II of Macedon” that ends in a ‘Y.’ Aaah, Thessaly.

Most days my benign, if slightly geeky, addiction to the puzzle page doesn’t cost me much, maybe twenty minutes. But I don’t really have time for it. Maybe that’s what makes it so irresistible–that and the chance of actually completing something, anything, in a single morning.  As a writer, I start many things and finish few. Multiple projects simmer in my mental kitchen at any given time.  Juicy words and free-floating sentences and brilliant half-thoughts twine and dance in my head by the thousands. Some converge and take shape.  Others splinter into endless variations on a theme that never quite settles down and becomes something.  Even the ones I seize and hold captive on the page take on a life of their own and often defy closure.  Contrast that with The Crossword—that lovely masterpiece of symmetry and order. Each clue has an answer. One answer. Words and letters are tightly contained in tidy boxes on a carefully constructed grid. Nothing slops over or slips away or slumps into nonsense. Twenty minutes seems a small price to pay for the empowering illusion of mastery over words, that fleeting third of an hour when everything falls into place. It’s the least puzzling part of my day.

What benign addiction helps you get through the day? Is your writing an orderly process or a literary free-for-all? What’s your best “writer’s tip”?

photo by trs 125
This post originally appeared on The Peanut Gallery Speaks http://www.peanutgalleryspeaks.com/2011/04/puzzled/