Puzzles

The New York Times today has an article about the slow death of the crossword puzzle. My mother spent a lot of time doing cryptics (craptics, as my father called them), acrostics, and diagramless puzzles. I took a special shine to the "cryptics" (craptics??) and was very proud whenever I could figure out an answer.

I'm not interested in Sudoku. I love the verbal! I want the words, the allusions, the references. I'm not interested in puzzles where a grinning picture of Doogie Hauser or Kelly Ripa beams from the center of the grid.

The Atlantic is giving up the puzzles by Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon. That, to me, is tragedy. How much consolation Cox and Rathven have provided to me when I have been bereft; how often have the filled a lazy hour with a sense of intellectual urgency.

Stephen Sondheim did a brilliant collection of "Cryptics"--
You can get your own copy (used) for $343.48!

It kept me very busy and happy in 1981--my year of Sondheim cryptics!

I guess you expect me to launch into a fulmination about the dumbing down of crossword puzzles and about the privileging of the number over the word...but I am too sad.