Wordplay

9.Jan.2007

I distinctly remember my first crossword puzzle. A gift from my mother, it was in a book of puzzles meant to pass the hours of boredom riding on the bus to summer camp. A harbinger of things to come? Within seconds of starting the puzzle I’m frustrated realizing that most of the clues can be more than one word. What a stupid puzzle!

Fifteen years later and never having touched a crossword since I’m now sitting in ground school at ACA watching my sim partner rip through one in less than two minutes. My jaw unhinged, his genius intrigues me enough to pick one up and bumble through it myself. I find they help whittle away the endless hours spent floating around at 30,000 feet with a boring captain. Guess my mom wasn’t too far off!

I quickly become addicted to the point that I get pissed if there isn’t a free USA Today in whatever hotel I’m staying at each morning. One of those “bad mornings” I end up scrounging around the seats, post flight, for an abandoned paper, any paper. Aha, The New York Times! That pretentious publication HAS to have a crossword…

And thus began my deep hatred for the evil that is named Will Shortz.

Mr. Shortz is the editor of the New York Times crossword. The zenith of all crosswords. He is loved by many and loathed by exponentially more. The cause of more than one of my gray hairs he is also the focus of a very well filmed documentary, Wordplay.

The film follows the 2005 American Crossword Puzzle Tournament that Shortz founded in 1978 while interviewing fans of the New York Times crossword. It also takes a look at how a crossword is created and several of the authors that aggravate me so. The editing flits around much like one would complete a crossword which causes that knowing smile when you realize it. In the end you have a deeper appreciation for the game recognizing many of the same frustrations and achievements seen through the contestants and fans. But it doesn’t help when you see some of these guys go through a Friday N.Y. Times puzzle (the toughest known to man) in four minutes flat!

I highly recommend this documentary if you’re the type that sees a crossword and immediately have to fill it in, maybe not so much if you’re the type that thinks they’re “those funny looking grids buried at the back of the newspaper.”

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Darn It!

6.Jan.2007

Don’t you just hate it when you get your hair cut and during your very next shower you squirt out the amount of shampoo you were used to squirting out for the amount of hair you used to have but you don’t realize it before you’ve already done it and then you have to deal with all that shampoo oozing down into your eyes and ears not to mention that iota of a wasteful feeling?

What? You don’t?

Buried in Latest Rant | 2 Village Idiots have spoken

Happy New Year

1.Jan.2007

Whether it be with adult beverages, surrounded by your friends, playing games, or God forbid, watching Dick Clark’s Ryan Seacrest’s Rockin’ New Year’s Eve 2007 I hope everyone had a chance to ring in the new year proper. I’m out in Lake Havasu and realized I have a pretty good noisemaker! There’s always just been one downside to firing the cannon at night, you could never see the projectile. Until now…

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Unfortunately, this camera doesn’t do the launch justice in sound or image. The microphone only picks up the “snap” of the cannon’s report. It’s much louder than this video sounds. To add insult to injury, picking up the spud tracer on the camera is impossible so don’t even look for it. Just take my word that the tracer worked very well! All I can offer is the muzzle flash and the usual comical mutterings of my mother.
And to think, all that takes is a little Aqua Net and a spark!

Buried in Odds & Ends | You know you want to say something
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