Me and My Cruciverbalist

by Susan Matthewson

I’m a crossword puzzle nut, but not just ANY crossword. No, I’m a New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle nut…the crème de la crème, the acme, the zenith, the apex of crossword puzzles.

I first became a Sunday NYT puzzle fan when I was just a sweet young thing and spent most my free time attending parties, recovering from the last party, or anticipating the next party. I had a close friend who was a premier party giver, a real hostess with the mostest, and one of her favorite tricks at her parties was to put the Sunday NYT Crossword on a clipboard with an attached pencil and place it in the bathroom.

At most parties it is a given that everyone gathers in the kitchen. But at Lolo’s parties, as people began to visit the bathroom for a necessary pit stop and discovered THE PUZZLE, the bathroom created a major traffic jam. People who had planned on a quick whiz or a minor make-up adjustment suddenly lost track of time, forgot where they were, and what they’d gone in there for. You’d be standing in a line of three or four outside the door when someone would finally get impatient and tap on the door, saying, “Hey, there are people waiting out here.” “Okay, okay,” would come the response, “but I need a five-letter word for African antelope.”

There was no Internet back then, no smart phones either, so coming up with that five-letter word inevitably occupied the attention of anyone who wanted to go to the bathroom to actually pee and involved scouring every book in Lolo’s house for the answer. (In case you’re wondering, the “eland” is the largest antelope in Africa, standing about 6 feet tall, can run as fast as a horse, has long spiraled horns, and a tufted, cattlelike tail.)

Thus began my fascination as well as frustration with the Sunday NYT puzzle, which is known for its difficulty, quirky themes, and confusing clues. I say frustration because Crossword puzzle creators, known as cruciverbalists, are mean, nasty, despicable people who delight in confusion, frustration, and psychological torture. For instance, cruciverbalists just love to insert clues like “spot for a spare tire.” You, of course, are thinking “trunk” of the car, right? Oh, think again, because your cruciverbalist is messing with your mind and the real answer is “waist,” you know, that spare tire you’re carrying around your middle…five letters, just like “trunk” to make you even crazier.  Or, the clue is “something to be inflated” and you are thinking “tire,” “ball,” “balloon” but the answer is only three letters, so then you scratch around for three-letter words for a ball like “orb,” but that doesn’t work either.  Why? Because the answer is actually “ego.” Only a cruciverbalist, all of whom have OVER-inflated egos, could come up with that clue.

Cruciverbalists, however, are human after all and therefore, over time, you can detect certain fallback answers that they tend to rely on to get out of tough spots in the crossword grid. As an example, let me introduce you to my friends Uma, Eno, Idi, and Yul. While these people are famous for a variety of reasons, they are crossword puzzle legends because of their three-letter names. They appear repeatedly in the Sunday puzzles and you don’t really need to know anything about them. Any clue that mentions “Hollywood actress” or “movie star” and requires a three-letter answer is going to be Uma for Uma Thurman. Bet on it. Sometimes the clue might say “star of Kill Bill” or “her breakout role was in Henry and June,” or “ex-wife of actor Ethan Hawke,” or “co-star in The Avengers.” Forget it. You don’t need to know what movies she’s been in or who she’s been married to…if the clue refers to “actress” in any shape, form, or fashion and the answer is three letters, trust me, it’s going to be Uma. Just write it in.

Same with Eno, who I’d never heard of before. Eno’s full name is, ironically, Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno.  He is a British rocker, singer, producer, and composer, but in crossword puzzle world, we don’t care about his music…but we love his three-letter last name. Again, one need never have heard any of his music or have any idea who the hell he is. If the clue refers in any way to rock music and the answer is three letters, just write in “eno” and nine times out of ten, you’ll be right. Ditto for Idi Amin, a “deposed African dictator,” “Butcher of Uganda,” or “brutal African leader.” Yul, of course, is Yul Brynner, “a bald-headed actor,” “star of The King and I,” “hairless actor” or, in one instance, “dome-headed Russian.” The clue really need say nothing more than “actor” and if the answer is three letters, Yul is undoubtedly your guy. These four pals—Uma, Eno, Idi, and Yul—have saved my bacon any number of times.

One unheralded advantage of doing crossword puzzles is that over time you will learn a vast number of obscure facts and trivia that will undoubtedly make you a more interesting person and engaging conversationalist. I know it’s worked for me. For instance, did you know that the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument is in Oregon? Never heard of John Day? Me either? So after encountering John Day in a Sunday crossword, I looked him up. It seems John Day was a member of an expedition to establish a fur trading post in Oregon in 1810.  Unfortunately, John Day and a buddy got lost from the rest of the group somewhere around the mouth of what was then the Mah-hah River near the Columbia River, had all of their equipment and belongings stolen by the Indians, suffered overexposure and almost died, but were eventually rescued, and ended up settling in Astoria, Oregon, which is nowhere near the aforementioned fossil beds. But ever after that incident, people travelling in the area would point out the mouth of the Mah-hah River and say, “That’s where John Day was robbed.” So, eventually the Mah-hah River became the John Day River, and, you probably don’t know this either, but if you name the mouth of a river, then the whole river upstream of the mouth takes that same name, so the fossil beds, which are not anywhere near the mouth of the river where John Day suffered his mugging, picked up his name because it’s now John Day’s river even though he never was anywhere near the present-day fossil beds and most assuredly never ever even found a fossil.*

If one truly wants to become a crossword puzzle aficionado, at the very least it is helpful to memorize all the international, national and state capitals, major rivers, mountains, continents, seas, oceans and world currencies. It’s also a good idea, while you’re at it, to commit to memory the animal mascots of every university in the United States and all the three-letter monograms of the Presidents and Vice Presidents of the United States. As well, you will benefit from learning a workable number of French, Spanish, and Latin terms…(amo, amas, amat—Latin conjugations are very popular in the Sunday crossword), and the titles of respect for important people from various countries like aga, bey, emir, ranee, shah, sri among others (king and queen are just too, too simplistic for the Sunday crossword).

Did I forget to mention all the Roman and Greek Gods and Goddesses and their divine symbols? You absolutely need to know that Ares, the God of War, wears a crushed helmet and carries a spear, Niobe weeps, and Eos brings the dawn and that’s just for starters. Then there are the Muses and their muse specialties. Thalia is one of the Three Graces and is the muse of comedy and idyllic poetry while her sister Erato is the muse of mimicry. There are a bunch of others, but Thalia and Erato have outclassed their sisters and appear much more often than say, Polyhymnia, the muse of sacred song or Terpsichore, the muse of dance. Let this be a lesson to future Muse parents. Do not name your daughters long, complicated names if you want them to appear in the Sunday NYT crossword puzzle. Keep the name short and simple, no more than five or six letters. In fact, think Uma…think three letters.

Unfortunately, Uma herself, that paragon of crossword immortality, forgot the three-to-six-letter rule and has condemned her youngest child born in July to crossword obscurity by naming her Rosalind Arusha Arkadina Altalune Florence Thurman-Busson. Cruciverbalists everywhere have thrown their hands up in disgust. What was she thinking?

*Information from www.nps.gov/joda/faqs.htm, the website of the National Park Service.