Monday, 25 February 2013

Easy Isn't Better


 
 
I like mental puzzles.  I take great pride in my ability to do things like Sudoku, or logic puzzles, or codewords, or crosswords.  I do them at home, on lunch breaks, and even in the bus on the way to and from work.  This takes a bit more skill because sometimes the bumps on the road come exactly when I am writing down a crucial word or number.  This doesn't really bother me though.  It isn't the greatest frustration that I have.  The greatest frustration comes when crossword puzzles are too easy, too predictable, or seemingly rather lazy.

A couple of years ago at my work, several people used to do the crossword puzzle as a group.  They enjoyed doing it...but after a while they had to mix things up.  I came upon them one day and witnessed a strange scene.  The person holding the puzzle said the answers and they had to guess the clues.  They were quite proficient at it.  I guess the puzzles had gotten rather predictable.

As of late, the puzzles that I am doing (featured in the "free" newspaper) have been full of lazy clues.  So many of them are suffixes and prefixes, or words that wouldn't normally need an s--but do in this case only.  One TV show (How I Met Your Mother) has the main character saying they always use the same clue because they need the vowels--I didn't realize how true that was.

For the next week, I won't be doing the crossword puzzle, because it has become too predictable.  I could blame it on myself.  I am the one who chose to do the "free" puzzles.  If I were smarter, I would go to the bookstore and get a book of tough crosswords.  Then, at least, I wouldn't complain about easy and lazy crosswords. 

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