I'm a
cruciverbalist. Well, at least
partly. The word means crossword puzzle
fan, but it also means someone who designs them. I've never gotten into creating my own
crosswords--but I sure solve a lot of them.
Or at least try to. Sometimes, in
the hardest ones, I'm only able to figure out some, but not all, of the words. But most of the time I do fine.
I'd never
considered attempting to figure out the origin of crosswords until recently,
when I read that the 100th birthday of crosswords is about to occur. The person credited with originating
them--even though there were word games preceding his--is Arthur Wynne, who was
a journalist in Liverpool , England
The thing
is, I've loved words for as long as I can remember. And grammar and punctuation, but vocabulary
wins over them. That's probably part of
why I became a writer. I get to work
with words all the time! To choose them
and manipulate them until they say just what I want them to, and to build
characters and plots and descriptions until they're all wrapped up in what
hopefully will be a good story.
I also like
to do other related kinds of word games, like acrostics. That way I can both figure out words from
their definitions, and then insert their letters into a grid and figure out a
mini-essay there, usually a quotation from a source disclosed by the first
letters of the definition words.
I've done
crosswords for so long that I really admire those who create them, who define the
words in offbeat ways at times, or even use puns.
I used to do
them only in books, or sometimes in newspapers.
These days I do that, too, but it's a lot of fun to do them online. In fact, I slipped away to work on yesterday's
L.A. Times puzzle on its website as I wrote this post!
Can't wait
till I start on my next puzzle--even though my pups are telling me it's time to
take care of their cravings, first. So,
here I go...
How about
you--are you a cruciverbalist? What
kinds of crossword puzzles or words games are your favorites?
2 comments:
I always do the crossword puzzle in Peaople magazine when I fly. It is easy enough that I can do it without any help.
I can't imagine how people create them.
I once tried to come up with some crosswords for a promotion, Betty, and decided not to try again after that!
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