21 Down
WHEN ASKED “ What do we need to learn this for?” any high-school teacher can confidently answer that, regardless of the subject, the knowledge will come in handy once the student hits middle age and starts working crossword puzzles in order to stave off the terrible loneliness. Because it’s true. Latin, geography, the gods of ancient Greece and Rome: unless you know these things, you’ll be limited to doing the puzzles in People magazine, where the clues read “Movie title, Gone ____ the Wind” and “It holds up your pants.” It’s not such a terrible place to start, but the joy of accomplishment wears off fairly quickly.
I’ve been told that crosswords puzzles help fight the advance of Alzheimer’s Disease, but that had nothing to do with my initiation. I started working them a few years ago, after dropping by to visit a former boyfriend. The man was and still is exceedingly — almost painfully — handsome. In Eugene Maleska crossword terminology, he’s braw and pulchritudinous, while Will Shortz, current puzzle editor for The New York Times, might define him as a “wower,” the clue being “Turns heads, in a way.”
Because my former boyfriend was so good-looking, I had always insisted that he must also be stupid, the reason being that it was simply unfair for someone to be blessed with both chiseled features and basic conversational skills. He was, of course, much smarter than I gave him credit for, and he eventually proved his intelligence by breaking up with me. We both wound up moving to New York, where over time we developed what currently passes for a casual friendship. I stopped by his office one afternoon, hoping that maybe he’d lost a few teeth, and there he was, leaning back in his chair and finishing the Friday New York Times puzzle with a ballpoint pen. The capital city of Tuvalu, a long-forgotten Olympic weight lifter, a fifteen-letter word for dervish: “Oh, that,” he said. “It’s just something I do with my hands while I’m on the phone.”
I was devastated.
The New York Times puzzles grow progressively harder as the week advances, with Monday being the easiest and Saturday requiring the sort of mind that can bend spoons. It took me several days to complete my first Monday puzzle, and after I’d finished, I carried it around in my wallet, hoping that someone might stop me on the street and ask to see it. “No!” I imagined the speaker saying, “You mean to say you’re only forty years old and you completed this puzzle all by yourself? Why, that’s practically unheard-of!”
It’s taken me two years to advance to the level of a Thursday, but still my seven hours of work can be undone by a single question pertaining to sports or opera. Since moving to France my hobby has gotten considerably more expensive. The time difference isn’t winning me any friends, either. “Jesus Christ,” my father will say. “It’s four o’clock in the morning. Who cares who won the ’sixty-four U.S. Open?” The overseas calls were killing me, so I invested in an atlas and a shelfful of almanacs and reference books. I don’t always find what I’m looking for, but in searching for an answer, I’ll often come across bits of information I can use in some later puzzle. The Indian emperors of the Kanva dynasty, Ted Bundy’s assumed name, the winners of the 1974 Tony Awards: these things are bound to come in handy eventually.
The New York Times puzzle is printed in the International Herald Tribune, a paper sold at just about any Paris newsstand. I was recently attempting to finish a Wednesday and, stumped over 21 down, “A friend of Job,” I turned to something called The Order of Things. It’s a reference book given to me by my sister Amy, and it’s full of useful information. While thumbing toward the Bible section, I came across a list of phobias arranged into various classifications. I found myself delighted by genuphobia (the fear of knees), pogonophobia (fear of beards), and keraunothnetophobia (the nineteen-letter word used to identify those who fear the fall of man-made satellites). Reading over the lists, I found myself trying to imagine the support groups for those struggling to overcome their fears of rust or teeth, heredity or string. There would definitely be daytime meetings for the achluophobics (who fear nightfall), and evening get-togethers for the daylight-fearing phengophobics. Those who fear crowds would have to meet one-on-one, and those who fear psychiatry would be forced to find comfort in untrained friends and family members.
The long list of situational phobias includes the fears of being bound, beaten, locked into an enclosed area, and smeared with human waste. Their inclusion mystifies me, as it suggests that these fears might be considered in any way unreasonable. I asked myself, Who wants to be handcuffed and covered in human feces? And then, without even opening my address book, I thought of three people right off the bat. This frightened me, but apparently it’s my own private phobia. I found no listing for those who fear they know too many masochists. Neither did I find an entry for those who fear the terrible truth that their self-worth is based entirely on the completion of a daily crossword puzzle. Because I can’t seem to find it anywhere, I’m guaranteed that such a word actually exists. It will undoubtedly pop up in some future puzzle, the clue being “You, honestly.”