I traveled frequently in the job I held for 20 years starting in 1984, and when I was on planes, in airports, and in hotel rooms, before I carried a computer with me, I usually had several Dell crossword and pencil puzzle game magazines with me, as well as a deck of cards and a book or two. I was actually quite good at crosswords (here I’m talking about American crossword puzzles, not the British ones, which I never quite got the hang of), and could finish one of the puzzles that was in the in-flight magazine in the period of time between boarding the plane and it taking off. In pen. They weren’t all that difficult, so that was probably why.
One time, I was on a plane, working the crossword while waiting to take off, and all of a sudden I was aware that the woman seated beside me was watching me. "Excuse me," she said, "you’re really good at those." I thanked her, but of course I got really uncomfortable, like I was in a fishbowl all of a sudden. I’m not accustomed to being complimented on something I do just to kill time, and I was kind of worried that she was trying to hit on me. That confused me, because I’m built kind of like a bowling ball with legs, not exactly a babe magnet, and although I don’t wear a wedding ring (I outgrew it and had to have my sister-in-law, who’s a jeweler, cut it off before I lost the finger; she made it bigger, but then I outgrew that), most people can tell I’m married. I chatted with her a little bit, then went back to my puzzle. The next time I looked over, she was asleep. Crossword puzzles are not a spectator sport.
My current favorite puzzle is sudoku, which you see above. It’s a 9×9 grid that’s separated into nine 3×3 squares, and the idea is to fill in the blank squares so that every row, column, and 3×3 square has the numbers 1-9 in it. Gives me something to do while I’m lying in bed having the lymph pumped out of my leg…
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Crossword puzzles and Sudoku are pretty good. My favorite, though, is cryptograms.
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Those are tough, but I’ve done them from time to time.
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My father enjoyed crosswords and Sudoku. My husband too enjoys crosswords. He feels satisfied when he completes one 😊 I like to do Sudokus. Thank you for sharing.
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Thanks!
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I love puzzles and enjoy your post on your thought process when the woman complimented your crossword skills. 😊
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It was strange. I wasn’t used to that…
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I like puzzles too but I prefer word puzzles to number ones 💜
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I like both kinds, which is why I loved the Dell puzzle magazines. They had a good combo of both.
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That’s good I’m not good with numbers 🤣
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I haven’t gotten the hang of those Sudoko puzzles. They are in the LA Times everyday. Funny because I was always good at math. Nice post, John.
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Thing is, it has nothing to do with math and everything to do with logic. I was great in algebra and calculus, but absolutely awful in geometry. I couldn’t prove two triangles were congruent to save my life.
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I did not like Geometry either. Algebra was more satisfying to me because it involved solving math problems. Geometry seemed dryer with theorems and all. Ok, maybe I am illogical. 😀
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Exactly… having to memorize all the theorems about drove me nuts.
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I have always enjoyed crosswords and had several crossword books and even a crossword dictionary. These days, I do them online.
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Since I’ve had trouble writing I do all my puzzling online or on my phone. It’s almost as much fun that way…
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I do all my puzzles online. I like it better that way.
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No having to find a pencil, for one thing…
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My husband did a lot of crossword puzzles when he used to work the night shift. Apparently, the more you do, the better you get at them and there are clues that come around in different puzzles.
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I used to do the crosswords in the newspaper while I was riding home from work on the bus. You’re right, you see a lot of the same words in them, like anil (the plant source of indigo dye), aril (seed covering), epee (fencing sword), and etui (needle case). And there are tricks you learn, like when you get an across word, you work all the down words it’s part of and vice versa. I could usually figure out what a word was by doing that.
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Thanks for the tips. You certainly have a good memory for those unusual words, but I guess you’ve seen them a lot.
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Right. After you see them a hundred times or so, you tend to remember them…
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Flying in the before time – how well I remember.
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Those were the good old days…
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