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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