Controversy, which is the breath of life to any of the arts or
sciences, has reared its head among the ranks of Cross Word solvers.
The air is filled with ’tis and ’tain’t. The clan is divided into
schools, which is well for the vitality of puzzling. It is undoubtedly
true that a house divided against itself cannot stand; but it is also
veritable that an art divided against itself flourisheth exceedingly.
The schism that is causing all the noise, reduced to its simplest
terms, is stated in the question, “Shall the Cross Word Puzzle be made
hard or easy?”
On the one hand stand the pundits, with thesaurus and dictionary armed.
They crave queer words and exotic definitions. They thrill to the
cross-clue unravelling of some strange combination of vowels and
consonants resembling nothing ever uttered by human tongue, but which
their reference-books declare is a genuine word, with meanings and
inflections and everything. They delight in extracting a simple word
from its definition of secondary or tertiary meaning: when “express
generally” is solved as “air” they greet the word so often defined as
“mixture of gases” with cries of delight; “introduce as an antagonist”
is found to be “pit,” and tears of joy are shed over the relief from
the common “hole” or “depression.”
Thus the solvers who revel in the recondite. Opposed to them stand the
serried ranks of those whose pleasure lies in the accomplishment; who
do not wish their onward march to victory delayed by forests of
Javanese shrubs or oceans full of rajidae with enlarged pectoral fins.
Nor do they wish words torn far from their daily, or at least
semi-weekly, use. A Leer by the river’s brim a simple Sly Glance is to
them, and not an Annealing-furnace.
A third element enters the lists at this point—the constructors. When a
man has a superb puzzle almost finished, with complete interlock and no
abbreviations or unkeyed letters, he frequently finds a space left into
which nothing will go except a particularly rare combination of
letters—let us say, for example, TIL. The constructor runs hastily
through his vocabulary and finds no TIL; he has a vague recollection of
such a word somewhere in his poetic remembrances; but the familiar
abbreviation of “until” is “till,” and the constructor has no wish to
add the damning parenthesis-enclosed “poet. contr.” after his
definition. He tries all the combinations possible; none will fit. Torn
between despair and hope he seeks Webster’s Unabridged. Trembling
finger runs down the columns. Ah! Between “tikur” and “tilbury,” in
small type, as though ashamed of existence, he finds what he seeks.
“Til—Sesame.” Into the construction goes the word, and the puzzle is
finished. Observe that the constructor had no desire to introduce this
exotic syllable; he did not even know that there was such a word in any
language. If he could have written “tic,” or “tie,” or “tin,” or “tip,”
or “tis,” or “tit,” he would have done so. But “til” was his sole
refuge, and the Unabridged bore him nobly out. Thus, says the
constructor, why should the solver rage when he discovers “sesame”
among the definitions? Let him try to make one himself, etc., etc.
Returning a moment to the pundits’ side of the argument, observe a
fact. If any solver had been asked, before he took up cross words, to
give offhand the name of Egypt’s sun-god, a three-letter word meaning
island, a four-letter word for handbag, the name of a large Australian
bird, or the sash affected by the ladies of cherry-blossom land, it is
odds but that he would have been reduced to stammering evasions. But
even a tyro at the glorious game can now rattle off by rote the words
Ra, Uit, Etui, Moa, Obi. In running down the definitions of a new
puzzle it is not the household words that set him scribbling
frantically, but such old friends as the above. So, contend the
punditti, a word that may be a nameless horror at the moment becomes
through association a friend in time of trouble.
True enough, answer the believers in the simplicities, but the
introduction of such words is evidence of laziness on the part of the
constructor. Moreover, their constant use tends to eliminate them,
their places to be taken by other literal monstrosities. And there is
much in this contention. Where now are the Emu and the Eel? Time was,
and not so long ago, that every other construction was the combined
aviary and aquarium necessary to harbor these two; today they are one
with Nineveh and Tyre. And so it may well be with Ra and Uit and Etui.
They will march one by one into the shades where lurk the other gallant
words that died of over-work. And the strange combinations that take
their places will also abide their little hour, and go their way.
Once again the constructor beats on the table and demands to be heard.
“Where,” he asks, “do I get off? Am I to be barred from including words
that finish my design because a group of you insist that no word not
included in everyday vocabularies appear in the little white squares?
Or am I to suffer under the lash of scorn because a few of you mock my
brilliant construction wherein no exotic letter-combination rears its
head?—a construction that cost me more time than if I had allowed a few
oddities, I may add. What am I to do?”
“Go as far as you like!” cry the Recondites.
“Stick to the common words!” insist the Champions of the Plain.
Of course, these admonitions do not help the constructor in the least.
He is the ham in the verbal sandwich—necessary, but spread rather thin
and squashed flat. It is in the nature of things that this should be
so. No creator has had a different experience. You can please some of
the people, and the rest of it. It is part of the penalty of the
builder to receive criticism. Scarce have the birth-pangs passed when
the child is the storm-center of a tempest of contradictory comment.
It is, of course, an indeterminable debate. The Simplicities have their
case, as have the Abstrusities. In the meantime, short of erasure and
complete rebirth, the constructor’s pattern remains. For better, for
worse, for easier, for harder, in the pocket edition or the Unabridged,
his words cross and twine all among the blacks and the whites.
In the meantime, the schism remains. What is to come of it, we know
not. Whatever the decision may be, the constructor will not change his
status. Once a constructor, always between the millstones.
Prosper Buranelli
F. Gregory Hartswick
Margaret Petherbridge