When I was first made unwilling Cross Word Puzzle Editor some two years
ago, the procedure in deciding what puzzle would be run was limited to
picking out a good-looking one from among the bunch and sending it
upstairs to be set. I saw no reason to change this splendid system. At
that time, I had never taken the trouble to do a puzzle and the letters
of anathema and condemnation that came in by the dozens had small
effect on my conscience. They were evidently from cranks and couldn’t
be avoided.
I must admit that the dawning of conscience began with the arrival of
F.P.A., who came to work in the next room. When he discovered that I
was responsible for the cross words, he formed the atrocious habit of
stalking in every Monday morning bright and early (about eleven
o’clock) to point out to me in sarcastic tones just what was wrong with
yesterday’s. Well, to make a long story short, in order to avoid the
moronish feeling that usually followed such a lecture, I decided to
reform and find out what a really decent puzzle was like.
I began by trying to do one the next Sunday, and thus experienced the
throes of acute agony that come to all solvers of puzzles on
discovering definitions left out, numbers wrong, hideously warped
definitions, words not to be found inside of any known dictionary,
foreign words—very foreign—and words that had no right to be dragged
out of their native obscurity. Then and there, with my left hand
reposing on a dictionary and my right raised in air, I took an oath to
edit the cross words to the essence of perfection. From then on, I
instituted the procedure of doing the puzzles myself on the page
proof—sort of trying it on the dog—applying the principle,
“If it be not fair to me,
What care I how fair it be!”
Since that momentous day, F.P.A.’s visits have grown less frequent—in
fact, he has to make up excuses to come in and converse on other
matters—and the cross words even came in for an occasional bouquet in
Sam Pepys’s diary. So now you all know whom to thank for the perfection
(more or less) of the cross word puzzle found each Sunday on the World
Magazine’s Ingenuities Page.