The New York Times Crossword: An Appreciation

I recently rediscovered an old friend and, the great thing is, even with the passage of time, little has changed between us.

The New York Times crossword puzzle.

Many may scoff at calling an inanimate object -- especially something in an imposing, sometimes stuffy newspaper -- any sort of friend. But, that's how I feel about that little 15 x 15 grid nestled in the back corner of the Old Gray Lady's Arts section...or the 21 x 21 grid situated on the last page of The Times Magazine on Sundays.

Since I was 12, when my Aunt Lloyd first brought my attention to the crossword puzzle in her local paper (she was living in South Carolina at the time), I have gone through crossword-solving spurts at various points in my life. However, I didn't discover The Times version until after I'd graduated college.

There's nothing quite like the feeling you have the day after you graduate from college. There's all this fanfare, joy and excitement on graduation day. But, the next day, reality sets in. I had no plans to attend graduate school nor did I have a job lined up, so I woke up on that Monday in May and thought "now what?"

Once I realized I could lay in bed all day, but that I probably shouldn't, I went out and bought two newspapers -- The New York Daily News and The Times -- and scanned the want ads. I did this everyday for about a month, which is how long it took me to find work. Once I was done looking at the ads, I would do the crosswords. The Daily News had two crosswords (one of which was embedded in the classifieds section), but I quickly became more enthralled with the one in The Times.

You don't have to do many crosswords to realize that several words and phrases pop up over and over again. Many of these words and phrases, while real, are rarely found outside of crosswords. Stuff like oleo, ogee or ess. Then there are names that crossword constructors like to pepper you with, people like Eli Wallach, Ehud Barak and Elie Wiesel, people I may have never heard of if it weren't for crosswords. After a while, such fill becomes trite and boring. It's almost as if the crosswords become too easy because of all the common fill. That's how I started to feel about the crosswords in The Daily News. However, I never felt that way about the ones in The Times.

Sure, The Times has its share of common crossword fill, but not as much as the competition. Also, that common fill is more likely to be clued in creative ways. For example, a run-of-the-mill crossword would clue "oleo" as "Butter substitute" or "Toast spread" whereas The Times might have something like "You should get the knife before you use it?" (question marks in crossword clues signal puns). With cleverly-constructed clues, even the easiest words can be difficult to get. The the biggest criticism of The Times crossword is the obscure and pedantic references. Those don't bother me because I like learning new things. Thanks to crosswords, I've learned more about everything from the islands that compose the state of Hawaii to the stars that make up Ursa Major and Ursa Minor. I'd rather have trouble finishing a crossword that teaches me a thing or two than breeze through a crossword in which I don't learn a thing.

Much of my renewed interest in crosswords can be attributed to Rex Parker. Rex Parker is a pseudonym for one of my girlfriend's graduate school professors who blogs everyday about The Times crossword. When my girlfriend first told me about this blog, I started reading it even without having done the crossword, because I found it insightful and entertaining. After a week, I was jonesing to get back to crosswording. So, about a month and a half ago, I purchased a one-year subscription for The Times crossword and I've been doing them everyday since.

Right now, I can complete Monday-Wednesday puzzles unassisted (the puzzles generally get harder as the week progresses). I usually can fill at least 95% of Thursday's puzzle without having to look anything up. Friday and Saturday are downright hard for me; it usually takes me a while to complete even half of those and I eventually wind up having to look up several items on Wikipedia or in the dictionary before I can finish. I usually do better on Sunday than I do on the rest of the weekend puzzles. What makes Sunday hard has more to do with the puzzle's sheer size than the complexity of the clues.

With each passing week, I find myself improving incrementally. My long-term goal is to get through every puzzle unassisted. I'm still a long way off but, in the meantime, I'm enjoying the education.