A cousin, Clement Clarke Moore, wrote “The Night before Christmas.” Not really a cousin, but who knows? Another cousin, Archie Moore, was heavyweight champion of the world. I can still see cousin Mary Tyler Moore tossing her hat into the air when she came in from the cold for Christmas dinner, but maybe not in celebration of that other cousin Stephen, the economist (Google often thinks I’m him). The Moore clan is a diverse one! (More evidence for why I should be writing with a pseudonym?)

The entire Moore clan wishes you happy holidays to everyone, though! Enjoy them, but be safe and stay warm. Like Thanksgiving, they’re a time for family and friends and reflections on the year 2019 that has passed. May you also have a prosperous and enjoyable 2020.

There will be no post tomorrow. Like you, I plan to spend the day with family and friends. And now a word from our sponsor…

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I’m a fan of crosswords…sort of. The best ones test my vocabulary and teach me new words, although I learn more of the latter from reading other authors’ books. The NY Times crosswords have been going downhill in recent years because they have too much pop culture in them (e.g. first names of a pop artist as a clue for the last name) and slang phrases that are popular in only some segments of society (the Times is East Coast centric, of course, so tennis shoes are sneakers).

I suppose we all have our techniques for solving crosswords. I start with the top “across” line and its corresponding “downs”; that seems to get things rolling, if they roll at all. I then try the rest of the “across” lines, leaving blanks when I’m unsure—it’s surprising how many clues lead to several valid options, so I jot down some of them for later. I then work through all the “downs.” (I write like that too—first across then down.) Is that optimal? Who cares?

Unlike some people, I don’t have to finish a puzzle or get frustrated when I can’t. And I don’t pay any attention to advice that attacking these puzzles will keep my mind active and healthy—my reading and writing do that quite well and compensate for the mind-numbing drivel on TV (which includes politics from often mindless politicians—that’s a bipartisan statement, by the way) and from Hollywood (which has nothing to do with reality…just like politics). The puzzles are something fun to do that only require the puzzle and a pen or pencil (I don’t sit down to do one with a thesaurus—I don’t have one anyway).

It might seem strange that I ignore sudokus, kenkens (a Times invention?), and other numerical puzzles. Math was a major part of my previous scientific life, but I’ve never had much patience with arithmetic—although some silly people think otherwise, the two are entirely different, even for number theorists. And doing arithmetic, especially paying bills, is really boring—probably a lot more than solving numerical puzzles, come to think of it—and it still stressful, calling for more stress relief from crosswords.

Mystery writers might benefit from solving crosswords. At the very least, they teach us to reach conclusions as we encounter clues. Each crossword is a mystery to be solved, although there’s no crime nor villain involved. Not a murder or sex scene to be found either. I know of no famous detective in the mystery/crime literature who solves crosswords, but I can certainly imagine how they’d be attracted to them. (Readers of this blog can offer examples in their comments, if they know of them.) My detective Castilblanco solves numerical puzzles. (That should put to rest any conjectures that he’s my fictional alter-ego.) In the time of Sherlock, Father Brown, Miss Marple, and Poirot, either crosswords didn’t exist or were ignored by these characters’ creators. Crosswords were invented by Arthur Wynne of Liverpool, England, an early Beatle, I suppose, and the first published example appeared at the end of 1913 in the New York World, a Sunday newspaper, not the NY Times! That overlaps a wee bit with Christie (the writer, not the ex-NJ governor, emphasis on “ex”), but maybe Dame Agatha considered them to be proletariat—or never read the New York World?

After analyzing my motivations a bit more—i.e. why I do crossword puzzles—I’ve concluded that the fun resides in the fact that it’s a microcosmic experience akin to writing. Writers always search for the bon mot in every phrase, paragraph, and chapter. And more. Writing a novel is a big crossword puzzle. The “across” part is clear: storytelling is linear to a large extent, although you can’t finish a novel without the “down” part—what we write in one place necessarily connects to what comes later in all but the simplest stories. A crossword puzzle represents the simplest aspects of the novel-writing experience.

I’m not suggesting that everyone try to avoid dementia and Alzheimer’s by writing novels as an extension of crossword puzzles. There’s no real evidence that even the latter help for that. I’m just pointing out that both are fun to do…at least for me. And they seem to be related in my strange mind, which seems to work just fine still. Now, where did I put that coffee mug?

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Comments are always welcome.

The Last Humans. LA County Sheriff’s deputy Penny Castro surfaces from a forensics dive and finds the apocalypse—a biological weapons attack on the West Coast has sped around the world on prevailing winds and killed billions. Follow Penny’s adventures as she tries to survive in the aftermath. This story and other stories from Black Opal Books are great cures for readers’ winter blahs. In Penny’s case, they will learn that they don’t have it so bad! Black Opal and its authors offer readers a world of adventure “because some stories just have to be told.” All available from the publisher or anywhere books are sold. A sequel, The Last Humans: A New Dawn, is in the production pipeline.

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

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