Square One

My dad is a man of habit. Every morning he pours a cup of coffee, opens the paper, and after reading the news, works the puzzles. From solving the Dallas Time Herald's crossword of 30 years ago or the Ft. Worth Star Telegram's sudoku of today, he is purportedly in great shape to stave off Alzheimer's. Or so I believed until picking up Dean Olsher's From Square One: A Meditation, with Digressions, on Crosswords.

Olsher doggedly fills in the pages of this book as one might solve the Sunday New York Times puzzle - going across with one topic, down to another, then back to the stumpers. Among the stumpers he tackles are why musical theater lyricists make great puzzle constructors, why more couples aren’t doing crosswords together, and why you should try belly dancing if you are really interested in delaying the onset of dementia (are you taking notes, Dad?).

Like Olsher, I habitually become obsessed with doing crosswords. Three hours into labor with my daughter found me working the Monday New York Times puzzle. Recuperating after the birth of my son, I worked through a Variety collection of word games. Usually the Sunday morning drive to church finds me listening for Will Shortz’ weekly puzzle challenge on NPR. I actually have been intending to see Wordplay, a movie Olsher mentions about competitive crossword tournaments. Now thanks to Olsher, I’ve got a new obsession – the cryptic.

By the end of his book, Olsher's moved away (or across) from crosswords to explaining the rules for solving cryptics. Perhaps Olsher's only trying to jumpstart the publishing industry with a new wave of cryptic books. After all, according to Olsher, Simon & Schuster got its start from the popularity of a series of "Cross Word" books in the 1920s. Farrar, Straus and Giroux received financial backing from Farrar's wife Margaret, who made her living as the NY Times crossword editor in the 1940s. Whatever his motive, Olsher succeeded in getting one reader to try her hand (and even more trying, her brain) at this cryptic. You can find instructions here, reader, if you are so inclined. If not, take it from Square One.