Train the brain and the words will follow

Dad used to do the crossword puzzle in the daily newspaper when he’d get home from work. I think it was his way to decompress after the day on a job that he truly loved but also had its challenges. I can still see him in the living room working methodically, crossing off clues answered and moving on to the next, filling in the blanks along the way.

I had a chat with him one day about why he loved doing crossword puzzles. They had always frustrated me, as so many of their clues seemed to make no sense. He explained that if you do enough of them you realize they use a lot of standard clues to get the right letters to fill out the spaces. Once you recognized them, they made sense, and then you just needed to figure out the rest.

Mom would tease Dad of his addiction to “those puzzles” but knew that it was a sense of accomplishment for him when it was completed.

I have not shared Dad’s love of crossword puzzles. The only ones I like to do are the ones in entertainment magazines that you can quickly finish while waiting for your medical appointment. Those are generally so painfully easy – promoting a new movie or rising star – that I’m almost embarrassed when I finish them. Don’t get me wrong, I will still brag!

Now that I get The Shawano Leader, I make an attempt to do those puzzles. Until the other day there certainly was nothing for me to brag about. My choice of pen vs. pencil was a constant reminder that I didn’t know what I was doing. Sometimes I’d leave it halfway done and check the next day to find the reason why I struggled so was because the ones I thought I had correct were entirely wrong. Apparently there are no points given for finding random words that fit.

The other night I was dabbling away at the puzzle and it was going a little easier than usual. I recognized some of the clues from previous puzzles and quickly filled those spaces with an air of superiority. Feeling pretty proud of myself, I went to bed confident that I would be able to finish before the answers arrived in the next day’s paper.

I’m not sure if there is “something in the air” or if the “phases of the moon” are affecting me, but I can’t seem to get a full night of sleep because I can’t stop dreaming. Honestly, sometimes I wake up exhausted from having been running around in my dreams all night! I’m not going to complain about my special night.

When I woke from yet another crazy dream, I grabbed the puzzle off my nightstand and magically filled in all the rest of the little squares.

I still don’t remember what any of my dreams were about, but they must have shaken something loose, because every word fit – correctly.

I might not remember birthdays of friends and relatives, but I hearby declare that I shall remember Jan. 23, 2019, as the day I completed a newspaper crossword puzzle. We all know that won’t get remembered either, but at least I have it in print!

Miriam Nelson is the editor of the Wittenberg Enterprise & Birnamwood News.