Enigmatologic Demystification
[Note 03/25/07: Last night I stumbled upon a movie I hadn't heard of before called WORDPLAY, directed by Patrick Creadon, which covers a lot of what this WZ covers, including mention by the Indigo Girls of a relationship between crossword puzzles and songwriting. If you like crosswords, check it out. Fascinating and funny.]
Here is the solution to last month's music-themed crossword puzzle. Special thanks to crossword aficionado Tom Gross who gently pointed out one outright mistake and one very weird clue. The mistake was my clue for 46 down, for the word "isle." I said "Emerald or produce" and, duh, the latter "aisle" is spelled with an "a". On the website I have changed the clue to "Emerald or Presque." Now, for the weird clue: For the word "Swirled," my clue was -- get this -- "Swirled!" I had meant to type "Twirled," which may not be such a great clue, but at least it's not the same word! I could try to convince myself that I was being ironic here, but I wasn't. Another duh.
It was great fun putting this thing together. Maybe I'm at that stage of my life where everything reminds me of everything else, and I'm not sure if that's because I'm getting wiser or because my brain is turning to cabbage, but working on this puzzle reminded me to a surprising degree of writing lyrics. Making the words fit in the layout was much like finding words to fit a particular meter and rhyme scheme.
Coming up with the definitions -- making them not too direct but not too obscure (I hope) -- reminded me of Emily Dickinson's "Tell all the truth, but tell it slant." For me, that is one of the most exciting challenges of lyric writing; the "slanting" of a subject so that in its indirect treatment, it acquires a new perspective, but not so much that it becomes completely obscure. Bob Dylan is a great example of one who slants his lyrics with such sly skill that even when he breaks the conventional rules by rendering the song's exact meaning unclear -- even in his simpler songs like "Blowin' in the wind" -- the imagery saves the day. Something saves the day. I'm not sure exactly WHAT saves the day with Dylan's writing. But I do know that I have heard songwriters who seem to have come to the conclusion that since Dylan's great songs are often unclear and obscure, writing unclear and obscure lyrics automatically makes a song great. (I make that mistake with my own lyrics more frequently than I'd like to admit.)
It's all more complicated than that, of course, but at least part of the secret is the skill with which the degree of slant is manipulated, which is what makes a good crossword puzzle successful, too, I think. A bad puzzle is often one in which, instead of skillful "slant" manipulation in the clues, the author substitutes arcane knowledge, with clues like "The cilia follicle of the Scroicha" or "The second fastest grocery bagger in Spain's dog" or "The inventor of perforation."
In another similarity with songwriting, it was also interesting for me to learn that there are crossword-puzzle-writing teams, just like there are composer-lyricist teams in music. From what I have read, often one wrangles the words into the squares, and the other writes the clues. I would guess that the equivalent of the composer prefers to arrange the words and the equivalent of the lyricist writes the definitions, though I'm sure there are other ways the labors are divided; I wonder if any teams break up their jurisdictions into Across and Down.
Anyway, for any songwriters out there trying to get the ol' brain in a lyric-writing mood, I suggest putting together a crossword puzzle of your own. As templates, I take crossword puzzles from newspapers or wherever, and fill them in with my own intersecting words, merrily ignoring the clues provided. (I'm sure people who come upon my completed puzzles in those airline mags nestled in with the barf bags think I'm a complete idiot.) Another interesting thought experiment is to write new and different clues for a puzzle that has been solved. I wonder if anyone has ever put up a completed crossword puzzle but without the clues, and invited readers to submit their own?
One more thought: There's something oddly satisfying about the Across words flowing left to right and the Down words flowing up to down, not colliding into each other but serenely blending and passing through each other unscathed, like those descriptions and pictures of two galaxies in passage through each other, with none of the stars of either galaxy being bothered.
This weft-and-warp of the Across and the Down seems songlike to me, in so many ways, like the harmony of two voices, or like melody and lyrics intertwining without destroying each other. It's not surprising that a glance at a crossword puzzle is like a glance at sheet music, with the black blobs arranged more or less mathematically amidst words and horizontal and vertical lines.
According to my cabbage, anyway.
Crossword Puzzle tidbits:
Webliography:
Word Spy: www.wordspy.com/
American Crossword Puzzle Tourny: www.crosswordtournament.com/
Thinks.com: thinks.com/
Infoplease: www.infoplease.com/
Etc...