Wednesday, June 16, 2004
Black and white
As a school student the grid was an excuse every morning to postpone the inevitable by a few more minutes. Pencil in hand the mind would wander through the distant pages of the mental dictionary before the rude clock would tick its way back to the foreground and eject me out of the house school on my bicycle. The memory is fresh in my mind.
The crossword was invented in 1913 by Alfred Wynne in Liverpool. It got popular very quickly and in 1922 the first cryptic crossword puzzle was published in UK. Ever since any newspaper worth its salt has devoted atleast a 4x10 inch column to this addictive pasttime. I hear now from word on the Internet that research graduates actually spend time thinking about how the human brain devises this piece of black and white. For instance, Sik Cambon Jensen, has a thesis titled "Design and implementation of Crossword Compilation Programmes using serial approaches". From an art and a hobby, there is science in the making.
Here is why I like crosswords :
1. They mock your limited lingual capability and so they challenge.
2. They respect your privacy. Your limitations, your triumphs and victories can remain your own deep dark secrets. Inscrutability.
3. You can survive on a lonely desert road with no civilisation in sight on a bare crossword (not recommended on an empty stomach though!). Nothing is as companionable as solitude or crosswords (apologies to Thoreau).
4. Its pure word play. And no amount of sleight can win it for you. The rules of the game are the game itself.
To continue...
As a school student the grid was an excuse every morning to postpone the inevitable by a few more minutes. Pencil in hand the mind would wander through the distant pages of the mental dictionary before the rude clock would tick its way back to the foreground and eject me out of the house school on my bicycle. The memory is fresh in my mind.
The crossword was invented in 1913 by Alfred Wynne in Liverpool. It got popular very quickly and in 1922 the first cryptic crossword puzzle was published in UK. Ever since any newspaper worth its salt has devoted atleast a 4x10 inch column to this addictive pasttime. I hear now from word on the Internet that research graduates actually spend time thinking about how the human brain devises this piece of black and white. For instance, Sik Cambon Jensen, has a thesis titled "Design and implementation of Crossword Compilation Programmes using serial approaches". From an art and a hobby, there is science in the making.
Here is why I like crosswords :
1. They mock your limited lingual capability and so they challenge.
2. They respect your privacy. Your limitations, your triumphs and victories can remain your own deep dark secrets. Inscrutability.
3. You can survive on a lonely desert road with no civilisation in sight on a bare crossword (not recommended on an empty stomach though!). Nothing is as companionable as solitude or crosswords (apologies to Thoreau).
4. Its pure word play. And no amount of sleight can win it for you. The rules of the game are the game itself.
To continue...
# posted by S @ 3:52 PM 
