Mind Games – April 23, 2024

3 minutes

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Societal dementia

I suppose, old crank that I am, any puzzle would be good exercise for my brain.  Not talking here about jigsaw puzzles.  Like old-fashioned crossword puzzles.  I’ve always been a fan of crosswords, good crosswords. At risk of honoring MSM concerns, the LA Times and New York Times come immediately to mind. Great challenges and usually well written crosswords. Occasionally overloaded with foreign phrases and obscure personalities. Now and again a clue-writer whose socks are twisted, but as a rule good for two hours’ entertainment and some outside-the box and deep think exercise.

In the last few years new brain puzzle forms have gained public popularity. For quick samples, Sudoku, Wordle. There have always been perimeter “puzzles” rebuses, word-seeks, anagrams, cryptograms, and pardon me if I’ve missed your old-time favorite.

Boss favors number, logic, and Wordle type puzzles.  Give me the old-fashioned word kind, themed or not. Geometric patterns, sparse [symmetric] blackouts and densely packed answers. Not keen on the lattice types; they strike me as lazy efforts to get to press in a hurry.

Of late, even good old-fashioned [my favorite] type crosswords have deteriorated.  Some clues were, I am sure, written by a Mumbai Customer Service representative between “may I have your name and account number” and “please hold while I transfer you to an appropriate [?] agent.” Clue and answer verb tenses and pluralities do not match.  Some clues are so far off-base they surely have been gathering dust in Area 51. Some, sorry, and I realize my temerity issuing the challenge, are simply wrong.

Even some clue-creators or their editors I assume to be native English speakers have papier-mâché or politically cheesecaked brains.  Politics is just fine, an evil we must suffer until we find some new way or succumb to AI and robotics, but politics has no place in a word puzzle. Dunno others, but I sit down with a puzzle to relax, not to be reminded with every other clue that such-and such political bent is morally corrupt, it’s opposing politics righteous, infallible.

For months, I’ve been thinking it’s me. I’m showing signs of mental deterioration.  No, what’s happening is I am rebelling against ignorance and worse, naked bias. I cannot come up with answers because my mind is not in the proper childish, silly, corrupt, or perverted frame of reference.  Thinking back to my early thirties, I had spells where I’d find myself in a room or shop drawer wondering, “why?” So it’s not new. Perhaps it’s more frequent.  The cause for any greater frequency, so far, is not mental lapse but degenerate entertainment. [Including much, much beyond word puzzles, but set that aside for another day.] Major lifestyle changes, swapped-out stressors, medical professionals “trying ‘new’ drugs,” contribute, sure.  I’m not, however, ready to resign myself to onset of dementia.

Certainly not when I believe I can blame something else.

The world is more and more a global place.  That, I must resign myself to.  Residents of other countries do not reason, think, or associate the same ways I do going about daily activities requiring conscious thought. Until we all are all brown-skinned and speak polyglot [including localized hipster, California girl, iconenglish, acronymic] garbage, I allow as I as well as anyone else anywhere else am entitled to my own patch of perceived lingual, logical, social, uniqueness.

If, Dell, PennyBook, EZRead, BigBoy, and WordMaster publishers, you are going to print puzzle booklets in English, have the decency to have an editor fluent in English and western habit proof your offerings.  I personally don’t mind if, when done, they go back to work frustrating English-speaking customers in need of support. That’s a separate injustice.