CROSSWORDS: Why Do We Solve Puzzles?

Summary | Why Crosswords During a Pandemic? |
Quotes | References: General, Covid

Summary

• Humans find meaning and inspiration in
• being puzzled and curious
• making connections
• finding and solving patterns and problems
• filling in the blanks
• creating order in the world and universe
• They're popular -- "more than 50 million Americans solve crosswords at least occasionally,
  according to a recent survey by Dean Olsher commissioned for his book
  From Square One: A Meditation, With Digressions, on Crosswords"
  ~Talk to The Times: Crossword Editor Will Shortz, NYT, 7/19/2009

Why Crosswords During a Pandemic?

• learn new vocabulary: covid, coronavirus, pandemic, distancing, mask shaming, etc.
• many solve crosswords alone: for fun, distraction
  -- or together: for comfort, companionship; Refs: Covid

Every day, the print edition of The Times is divided into multiple sections.
For some, though, there are really only two parts: the crossword and everything else.

"People feel stressed — we all feel stressed — and puzzles are a great way to relieve that.
They make you feel better. You feel in control of life when you’ve finished a good puzzle.”
~Will Shortz, who has been the crossword editor at The Times since 1993.

“There are very few things in life these days where you can find the answers.”
~Nancy Coughlin

The puzzle page will not even contain the word 'coronavirus'
-- to be uplifting and to divert attention from the pandemic.
This will be the one coronavirus-free part of the newspaper" ~Will Shortz

Even if you don’t end up solving a puzzle, the consistency of receiving a distraction
every day can be reassuring in itself. The puzzle expansion isn't the first time the
newspaper is adding games as a response to somber news. The [NYT] crossword was
introduced in February 1942, months after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
~NYT: More Puzzles to Pass the Time

Quotes

• The solution to the toilet paper shortage is the same as the solution to a crossword puzzle...
  One square at a time.
• "With a crossword, we're challenging ourselves to... create order out of chaos."
  ~Will Shortz, NYT Crossword Editor
• "Puzzle people like to put the world in order... Life's problems generally do not have clear-cut solutions.
  [But, when you fill in that last square of a puzzle there comes] an immense feeling of satisfaction:
  You have put the world in order; conquered something ... elation." ~Will Shortz, NYT Crossword Editor
• "A crossword puzzle.
  Sharpened pencil awaits you.
  Have to stop and try." ~LeAura Alderson; How to Write a Haiku Poem
• "The resilient little puzzle can be whatever... you need it to be. Combatant, interlocutor,
  punching bag, security blanket: the crossword is there for you." ~Adrienne Raphel
• In life as in crosswords,... some days are harder than others,
  and that’s what keeps your brain alive. To keep surviving those tough days
  is to pick yourself up, and stay focused on your life’s purpose.
  For me, that’s imparting the joy of crosswording to all mankind.
  Ahhh -- crosswording the most spectacular fun a person can have
  without passing out. ~Mary in All About Steve
• If life is like a crossword puzzle,...
  then its worth, its greatness should be judged
  in the same way. Is it solvable? Is it entertaining?
  Does it sparkle? ~Mary in All About Steve
• "Solving crosswords eliminates... worries.
  They make you a calmer and more focused person." ~Will Shortz
• "[The NYT puzzle is] like life:...
  you start with the problems you can solve, the answers you know,
  and you move out from there." ~Bill Clinton
• Stephen Sondheim was never interested in jazz because... he doesn't care for improvisation.
  His style in music (show tunes) is all about "making order out of chaos".
  And that's why he likes crossword puzzles.
• "Faites des mots croisés"... advice from psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan
  to his young analysts-in-training -- “Do crossword puzzles"
• "Just finished a crossword by... Googling all the clues. What have you done with your life?"
• "I feel that the most basic feature of consciousness is...
  that of finding something." ~Ludwig Wittgenstein(?)
• "The capacity to be puzzled is... the premise of all creation,
  be it in art or in science." ~Erich Fromm
• "I think crosswords should reflect... everything in life." ~Will Shortz
• "Whatever wisdom I have has been hard-earned... -- each meaning carefully
  culled out of the dictionary of human experiences and emotions and put in its precise place
  in the matrix. Meaning doesn't come easy. The Great Crossword Setter in the Sky is capricious
  and wilful, demanding absolute obedience. You can waste the better part of a lifetime
  arguing about the randomness of the clues, the setting of the squares, why a certain
  square is black and not white as you need it to be, question the whole point of doing
  the crossword -- what, after all, is to be gained by solving it. Only after all the chattering
  is over and you give your complete attention to it, does the perfection of the pattern
  reveal itself. As is, where is, everything fits. And at the end, when it's all done, there is
  no reward to be had -- the joy of doing it right is all the reward there ever is."
  ~Manjul Bajaj, A Deepavali Gift
• "There seem to be two main types of people in the world,... crosswords and sudokus." ~Rebecca McKinsey
• "What ends in a W, has no beginning, and is always in the present?... NOW."
  ~Jarod Kintz, '99 Cents For Some Nonsense'
• "Life is not a problem to be solved,... but a reality to be experienced." ~Soren Kierkegaard
• "Not every puzzle is intended to be solved... Some are in place to test your limits.
  Others are, in fact, not puzzles at all." ~Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration
• "The world's a puzzle;... no need to make sense out of it."
  ~Socrates; Dan Millman, Way of the Peaceful Warrior
• "I don't think there is a hidden purpose... to the universe that you have to puzzle out." ~Robert Fulghum
• "It is one of man's curious idiosyncracies... to create difficulties
  for the pleasure of resolving them." ~Joseph de Maistre
• "This is a puzzling world." ~George Eliot
• "The problems of puzzles are... very near the problems of life,
  our whole life is solving puzzles." ~Erno Rubik
• "Looking at the sky, he suddenly saw that it had become black.
  Then white again,...but with great rippling circles. Then the squares scattered,
  giving way to the grille of a crossword puzzle, and here, too, words flashed, drove each other away,
  clustered, were erased. They were all very long words, like Catalepsy, Thunderbird, Superrequeteriquesimo
  and Anticonstitutionally. The grille faded away, and suddenly the whole sky was covered with linked words,
  long sentences." ~Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, The Book of Flights (longer quote)
• Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle." ~Alice in Wonderland

References

• sections: Covid
• topics: aha moment, civilization, consciousness, finding God, life, meaning
• The Puzzle Personality Quiz NYT; 2/22/2024
• How genetics determine our life choices
  Stefánsson describes how deCODE's scientists have even found one particular
  gene variant which determines whether crossword puzzles will appeal to you.
  "We know that if you have it, you will like to solve crossword puzzles,
  but it has no impact on whether you're good at them or not," he laughs.
  BBC; 5/10/2023
• Crazy for Crosswords: Survey Shows American Crossword Habits 1/4/2023
• Puzzles not only make you smarter -- they help bridge the political divide, new book says CBC; 5/29/2022
• What's Your New Year's Crossword Resolution?
  Maintain a solving streak — including on Sundays! — for the entire year;
  Thank a constructor for their work.; Construct a 6x6 puzzle as a gift for a loved one;
  Get your friends hooked on solving -- or at least on the Spelling Bee;
  Learn the difference between Mauna KEA and Mauna LOA; Try a new mode of solving;
  Solve at least one puzzle from an independent crossword venue every week;
  Solve at least one cryptic crossword puzzle every month; NYT; 12/31/2021
• Life is a lot like a crossword puzzle 7/25/2021
• The benefits of crossword puzzles 10/31/2020
• The Benefits Of Doing The NY Times Daily Crossword 7/17/2020
• We're Living in the Golden Age of Crossword Puzzles Giz; 4/21/2020
• All the Clues That Are Fit to Solve: The New York Times Crossword Puzzle The Journal of Popular and American Culture Association; 6/2019
• The Secrets Hidden in Your Sunday Crossword What if I told you that crossword puzzles have a
  hidden beauty all their own? And that they can help us glean some insights into human nature? 2/3/2019
• Will Shortz: Everything You Wanted to Know About Crossword Puzzles podcast: 24:37; NYT; 2/26/2016
• The Possibility of More: High School Senior Chases the 'Aha!' Moment
  Rachel Abbe's college application essay about the lure of crosswords; NYT; 2/9/2016
• Meet the Solvers: Why Do People Solve Puzzles? 4/15/2015
• Finding God in a Crossword Puzzle sermon [.pdf]; 3/9/2014
• NYT: Science Times: The Puzzle Moment NYT; 12/7/2010
• Crosswords and Consciousness 7/29/2007
• Why cryptic crosswords are civilisation BBC; 1/15/2005
• The Puzzle Instinct: The Meaning of Puzzles in Human Life By Marcel Danesi book; 2002

Covid, Pandemic

• Puzzles divert from life's anxieties -- but lately illness has joined the zeitgeist 8/13/2021
• Crossword creator: People do not want coronavirus in their crosswords 3/1/2021
• Free ‘Celebrity’ Crossword Zoom Events w/ John Halpern e.g., w/ Will Shortz on 2/5/2021
• Billy Crystal Is Spending Quarantine Playing Basketball And Doing The NYT Crossword Puzzle video; Yahoo; 1/28/2021
• Grids for Good raise money for organizations providing coronavirus relief, as well as for groups fighting against institutional racism
• The New Words for Our New Misery doomscrolling, mask-hole, Zoom fatigue, Quarantini, covidiot, travel-shaming,
  You're on mute -- and more from the pandemic lexicon; NYT; 12/24/2020
• Pandemic Diaries: Why I started doing crosswords in quarantine
  Suddenly, crosswords were the most romantic date I’d ever been on
  -- crosswords became the thing I looked forward to most; 10/7/2020
• What I learned while doing crosswords with mom during the pandemic 8/2/2020
• Covid-19 survivor, 104, gets back to crosswords and crochet BBC; 7/11/2020
• Betty White Is Doing Crossword Puzzles and Sipping Martinis During the Pandemic: 'I'm Blessed' 5/26/2020
• From crosswords to sudoku, puzzles of all sorts take their moment in the sun
  during coronavirus pandemic SFC; 4/27/2020
• The bright side, pandemic is helping one Schroon Lake crossword puzzler up his game
  "I'm back to January of 2009, I've done every New York Times crossword puzzle from then to today"; 4/23/2020
• New Yorker Crossword Constructors on the Best Games to Play
  While Social-Distancing Natan Last, Anna Shechtman, Aimee Lucido; NYkr; 4/22/2020
• More Puzzles to Pass the Time NYT; 4/20/2020
• Crossword blog: What is setting like during the coronavirus lockdown? Guardian; 4/10/2020
• Solver Stories: Bringing Order to Chaos
  In Italy, a country ravaged by the effects of coronavirus, a man finds some solace and peace by
  focusing on crossword puzzles; NYT; 4/6/2020
• Crossword roundup: fancy learning cryptic crosswords during coronavirus lockdown? Guardian; 3/30/2020
• Crossword Tournament From Your Couch
  after annual ACPT crossword tournament in March was cancelled due to coronavirus
  -- an online synchronous, live-streamed crossword solving competition; puzzles; 3/20/2020