February 20, 2024
If you know who Eugene T. Maleska is, give yourself a pat on the back for being an aging puzzler. Eugene Thomas Maleska was an American crossword puzzle constructor and editor. He edited The New York Times Crossword Puzzle from 1977 to 1993. He was to crossword puzzles what Ukrainian Charles Goren was to bridge. If for no other reason, we should fund Ukraine as a thank you for what Goren provided to our American culture. Maleska, who earned a Ph.D. in Education from Harvard, was succeeded by Will Shortz. Shortz has a degree from Indiana University in the invented field of enigmatolgy, and continues as the puzzle editor to this day.
I was struck recently by an article talking about how a professional sports team used the solving of various New York Times puzzles as a bonding experience. One of the players acts as the commissioner as he oversees the solving of the Mini Crossword, Wordle, and Connections, which are among the seven puzzles the Times offers in its Puzzle Pack. It is difficult to go to any social gatherings these days, and not overhear people talking about the day’s puzzles. I overheard one person bragging at Treehouse Brewery one day about how he had solved Wordle in one attempt twice.
The queen of all of the games is the New York Times Crossword. The New York Times initially regarded crosswords as frivolous, calling them “a primitive form of mental exercise.” The first puzzle ran on Sunday, February 15, 1942. The motivating impulse for the paper to run its first puzzle over the objections of its publisher appears to have been the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The thinking was that the American people needed something to occupy themselves during blackouts.
One of the most prolific crossword constructors off all time was Jules Arensberg, whose daughter, Lyn Silverstein, lives in East Longmeadow. Arensberg never graduated from college and worked at the post office. However, at a time before the internet and without readily available resource material, he constructed crossword puzzles for the New York Times for over thirty years. One of his Sunday puzzles was recognized by the newspaper in its 50th anniversary issue dedicated to the crossword puzzle. “He was among the first to employ compound words, phrases, and imaginative definitions designed to lift puzzle solving from its humdrum literalness that stressed memory instead of brainwork.”
I started doing the daily crossword puzzle in the 70’s as I commuted home every evening on Metro North. It was a great way to unwind. Serious puzzlers solved the puzzle in pen. Pencils and erasers were for amateurs. The puzzles get more difficult every day with Monday being the easiest, and Saturday being the hardest. Sunday is just a larger version of a Thursday puzzle. On Sundays, my very young daughter would crawl into my lap as I was doing the puzzle, and then scribble all over it, shrieking with laughter. She is now a regular solver. One of the great puzzles of all time was constructed in 1996. It came out on the day of the Presidential election. The clue essentially asked, “Who won the election?” The puzzle could have been solved by answering either “Clinton” or “Bob Dole.” This puzzle was noted in the Will Shortz 2006 documentary about competitive puzzle solving titled, “Wordplay.”
Solving the New York Times crossword puzzle has become a magnificent obsession for me. It justifies the five years of Latin that I took in junior and senior high school. Much to my chagrin, solving crossword puzzles is not going to stave off Alzheimer’s according to Lisa Genova in her book, “Remember.” According to her, “There is no compelling evidence that doing puzzles or brain-training exercises does anything to decrease your risk of Alzheimer’s. You’ll improve at doing crosswords, but you’re not building a bigger, Alzheimer’s-resistant brain. You don’t want to simply retrieve information you’ve already learned because this type of “mental exercise is like traveling down old, familiar streets, cruising neighborhoods you already know.” Bah, humbug.
On the other hand, puzzles are great for dealing with insomnia. People of my vintage often suffer from not being able to sleep soundly through the night. There are many reasons, which I don’t need to go into here. Sleep-challenged puzzlers know that the next day’s crossword puzzle becomes available online at 10:00PM (6:00PM on Saturday’s and Sunday’s). It’s a great way to exhaust the brain so you can go back to sleep. After all, how else would you know that “Isere,” besides being a “river in France” and a “department in France,” is also the name of the ship that brought the Statue of Liberty to the United States.
Paul Chiampa
The Spin Doctor 