Wit and Wisdom
by Beth Broderick
Genius. It is sometimes hard work to earn the designation. The New York Times puzzles are not designed for giver-uppers. A person can stare at the boxes which contain the words one hopes to group together in CONNECTIONS for a good while, trying in vain to see what binds them in a category. The hints are there, hiding in plain sight if one has the fortitude to suss them out. Perhaps they are all a shade of green? Or the names of musicals or hockey teams minus the first or last letter? Maybe they are elements of a larger puzzle or science project, or can they apply to the composition of, say, a robot?
CONNECTIONS is the first game I play every morning, or at least every morning that I do not have some urgent matter at hand, like a dog with a tummy ache or catching an early flight.
“Imma get some coffee.”
I whisper this to Fairness who, upon sensing me stir, will have snuggled next to me with head on my belly hoping I am awake enough to deliver some affection. I caress his face for a while and trace my hand down the back of his neck. Then it is time.
“You go sleep-sleep. Mommy get some coffee.”
That’s about as articulate as I can be at 6 AM. I trundle off to the kitchen and pour a glass of coffee over ice then add Trader Joe’s special nut milk. It comes in a white box and is extracted from a combination of macadamia nuts, almonds and cashews. It is heaven. I pad back to bed and open the Times app and head straight to the Games section. I used to find it impossible to resist the siren call of breaking news, but it is all so horrific now that I find it best to absorb it slowly over the course of a day. I cannot face the trauma and absurdity of our current political state first thing in the morning. I blow right past it and start my day with a different challenge.
First CONNECTIONS, then WORDLE. I cannot move on until these are solved. After that it is LETTER BOXED. Here, one is given between four and six chances to use every letter which is written on the edges of said box by connecting them directly. Each can only be used one time. It is particularly gratifying when I am given six opportunities and manage to solve it in four or less. This is the first instance of the day where there is a chance I could be called a “genius.” If one can find a word which uses a large number of the letters offered, the screen will flash the compliment for you. If it is a ho-hum word that you have entered, it will merely say “awesome,” which is nice, of course, but it isn’t the “g” word. The one I crave.
Next up is SPELLING BEE. There are three more puzzles to go after it, but it is often so difficult that when I am stumped, I have to toggle back and forth to give my brain a chance to reset and try again. The difficulty is determined by the letters in play on any given day. If there are an I and an N and a G, coming up with words will be easier and the puzzle knows to demand more word from you as a result.
“Gumming miming ginning umping pumping”
All of the letters can be repeated for this one and 99 percent of the time it is possible to find at least one word that uses all seven of the letters in the grid. Today was YKPAHEC The H was in the center which means it must be used in each word:
“Ache achy cache check cheek cheeky…”
My fingers were flying across the grid this morning.
”Each, heck hack hake happy peach peachy and then the big one… paycheck!”
That did it. The word Genius appeared along with a little picture of a bee with a graduation cap floating above it. YES! The sight of that sets me buzzing. It is going to be a good day. Well, maybe, but at least we are off to a great start.
Then it is a breeze through STRANDS and MINI CROSSWORD, the latter so simple that it is played for time rather than difficulty. “Congratulations! You solved in 48 seconds!” My mind initially balked at PIPS, the final game of my morning. It is based on Dominoes but has some distinctive features. Blanks squares are free zones, and certain others have to total to a sum or be equal or less than a variety of numbers. It was the numbers that threw me at first, I am a words / letters gal. I kept at it and now can master the easy and medium challenges, but have yet to solve a hard one, because it’s downright, well ... hard.
Someday …
I am largely uneducated. I was accomplished enough in school to be allowed significant advancements which resulted in my being a high school senior at the age of fifteen, so I am no dummy, but I am also not what you would consider a scholar. I earned an A. A. degree at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, which does not remotely compare to the hefty achievements of most of my peers, many of whom have Master’s degrees and lofty PhD’s, and almost all of whom have at minimum a Bachelor’s.
My dear old pal Eric generously edits this column for me so as to spare you all evidence of my grievous grammatical shortcomings. His notes in the margins sometimes reflect his frustration with these.
“How many times have I told you there is no need for a comma in a sentence such as this one?”
He has a tendency when exasperated to clutch his head. I always picture him that way when I read his notes. He is a good egg, bless him for putting up with me.
I feel badly about my ineptitude, but I guess not badly enough to rectify it. I write and write and write and hope that I don’t offend too many of the rules, but I of course continually ignore the cardinal one which is. “You should know the rules before you break them.” Oops. Sorry, Eric.
NO MARVEL THAT.
I recently attended the bi-annual Erma Bombeck Writer’s Conference in Dayton, Ohio. It was a wonderful whirlwind of a weekend. A great chance to see old friends and make new, all of whom are aficionados of the written word, which, Instagram or no Instagram, still holds value for many of us.
The first night, we had a keynote speaker who is a very successful writer / podcaster. She is a Midwest gal with a winning way who relished stories of her sweet and sassy old dad and told anecdotes about her endearing children. She was clearly very pleased with the way her life was going. She was kind and funny and well received, though may have come off as a touch too self-satisfied for some of us in the room.
“We want to tell our stories in an original way to avoid using adverbs and adjectives, don’t we?” She admonished at one point. Folks took it in with a nod. It was clearly not the first time the educated and up-to-speed crowd had heard tell of this new-ish rule.
‘Huh,’ I thought. Adverbs and adjectives are clearly not in vogue these days. I wonder how many I have used in the past. I immediately tried to conjure up some pages of my work in order to mentally scan them for trespass. I was running that over and over through my head and had stopped paying attention, when I suddenly heard a new voice. It was time for Q and A, and someone had stepped up to the mike.
“I would like to press you about your opposition to adjectives.”
I knew the voice. It belonged to my old friend, the wonderful writer Annabelle Gurwitch.
“In my last article for the New York Times,” –she paused slightly to let that sink in–I used more than one and I am not sorry.”
“Well, of course there are exceptions to every rule, but we want to avoid them if we can.”
The speaker had not anticipated confrontation. She smiled, but her eyes shot daggers.
“In the Times I was trying to explain that I no longer have the ability to fall deeply for someone but rather feel only mild emotions in that regard. What I believe I said is that I no longer have a ’marvelous capacitance’ for love.” (It was that word, or maybe even a longer one like it.)
“Well, marvelous is a good word, isn’t it? To marvel is such a nice thing.”
“I used it as an adjective is my point. So, maybe that is acceptable after all. It was, at least, to the TIMES, which I write for frequently.”
“Well, okay then,” said our now-quite-annoyed-but-trying-to-be-pleasant speaker. “But I am the one up here now, so maybe you can talk about that when you are up here.”
“I have been up there twice, and I am just saying that adjectives are not against the law.”
I have no idea if those were her actual words, but to my mind at least Annabelle crushed the argument. I have paraphrased that entire exchange, but that was the gist of it. They are both well educated, far more so than myself, and they actually knew what they were talking about, which I kind of don’t, and also don’t care, so I suppose it is cheeky of me to take a stab at their exchange, but that is the essence of the dust-up.
“Aw, it was just a little scrap.” I said later to the woman who runs the conference. “You gotta love a little scrap!”
She smiled. Teri hadn’t loved it. It had worried her a tad, but she is a writer, a wordsmith and she liked the way “scrap” felt in her mouth.
“A scrap. You are right. It was just a scrap.”
It was a beautiful conference full of wildly talented speakers and lecturers and attendees. Teri runs a tight ship, and she does it with solid leadership and a great deal of heart. She loves writers and writing and that is evident in every aspect of the sold-out event. A wealth of originality and humor and sophistication was on display in all of the teachers, speakers and students alike.
As for me: I learned a lot and it was definitely brought home to me that I will only ever be a genius at around 6:35 AM, and even then, just according to a game on my phone, but I plan to keep writing to you all just the same. I promise to keep a lid on the adverbs and adjectives, because, you know, that’s a thing now, but I’m not shakily making any wonderful promises.
On we go …
We extend our heartfelt gratitude to our valued subscribers whose support makes the publication of Wit and Wisdom possible. Thank you!
