Every Saturday I look forward to seven o’clock. Seven, EST,
is midnight GMT, which means that the online editions of the Sunday papers
become available. There’s only one thing I’m really interested in, however: the
Observer Everyman cryptic crossword. That’s the one that appears in the weekend
edition of the Guardian, and it’s sufficiently difficult enough to offer a
prize for those who send in completed crosswords.
If you don’t know cryptic crosswords, they will make no
sense to you. The answers aren’t straight-forward the way regular crossword
answers are. That is, the question does not ask a question that produces an
obvious answer. Cryptic crossword questions are a refined code whereby a puzzle
has to be solved in order to produce, fragment by fragment, a word which is the
answer. A good cryptic clue will not only indicate to the experienced solver
what the answer should be, but explain how to get there. A good clue will look
absolutely impossible while doing that.
If you’ve become familiar with a certain crossword over a
certain number of years, you begin to understand the setter’s particular
codewords. With the Everyman, for example, certain letters or combinations of
letters can be indicated by words such as left (L), church (CH), or worker
(ANT). Cryptic crosswords often contain anagrams and parts of clues spelled
backwards and embedded in other words. The punctuation of cryptic clues can be
entirely incidental. A good crossword takes days to complete, if you can
complete it at all. A bad one can be solved in a single sitting.
Most of all, though, a good cryptic clue will provide a
measure of reward when solved; like a drug, knowing you got it right and
conquered what was, for a while seemingly inexplicable, gives you a mental
high.
Before the internet, my parents, long divorced but still
friends, and living on different continents, would engage in fierce competition
to see who could complete the Everyman crossword first. Although my Dad might
seem to have a head start being an early riser and more likely to snag a copy
of the paper in Toronto when he went out for coffee than my mother, lying in in
London — he was actually five hours behind, given the time zone difference. They
would compare clues on the phone, and tease or goad the other into solving
clues which had eluded them.
I too, love the Everyman crossword, and not just because my
parents did it. I love it for the same reason they did, though: apparently it
runs in my family to find the mental stimulation last thing at night soothing. Because
I live in Pittsburgh, where getting hold of a physical copy of the Observer is
next to impossible, my Dad used to scan his in and email it to me. Eventually,
it became available online to download. Then, my parents and I would engage in
a devilish triad of one-upmanship; when speaking to my Mom, she’d prod me to
give up what I knew of my Dad’s progress and vice-versa. It was our bonding
exercise.
My Dad's not with us anymore, but my Mom and I still go at it every week. We may be an ocean apart, but within the world of the crossword, we sit side-by-side.
