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A puzzle will take you down many roads. You never know which one.
Most crosswords make you think outside the box. In this way, you use
both the logical side of your brain and the creative side.
Very often, my mom and I will collaborate on a puzzle: a kind of
friendly competition that takes us to a mutually satisfying result.
My husband is not one to hold a lot of useless information in his
head for the purpose of completing a puzzle. In fact, he is
sometimes baffled when my mom and I come to the same bizarre
conclusion at the same time.
He'd say, "The clue was decks. I was thinking boats and patios.
How did you both come up with KOs... at the same time?"
He may not know the answers to many of the clues, but he knows
how to find them. As soon as we would utter a clue, he would access
his iPad and try to beat us to the answer. However, spelling is not
his forte, so he uses the voice command application.
Mom always insists that I do the writing, but she is always
miffed when I fill in only the ones I agree with.
"Laura, the 1998 Winter Olympics was in Japan."
"What number?" I asked.
"One down," she answered.
"Not enough letters," I said, refusing to fill it in.
I heard my husband speaking to his iPad: "1998 Winter Olympics."
I took a stab at it. "Is there a city called Nagano in Japan?" I
asked nobody in particular.
"It's got to be Japan," my mom said. "It has two A's and
an N."
"Nope," I said, subconsciously trying to beat the iPad.
"What's an A&W drink?" I asked, looking at 3 across.
"Root beer."
"Nagano," my husband interrupted, confirming my guess. I was
pleased.
"Root beer doesn't fit," Mom said. "It has to be something
creamy."
"Creamy beer?" I asked.
"How about a latte topping, 6 down," Mom tried.
"Foam," my husband said, being a connoisseur of all things
coffee-related.
"Doesn't fit," Mom said.
"They made a mistake. The cream goes with the coffee, not the
beer," I suggested.
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"A&W products," my husband said to his iPad. He was hoping for a
chance for him and his technological gizmo to smoke us.
Then his iPad died. Low battery. He was annoyed.
As he went to retrieve his power cord, I asked him to name a song
on the Beatles' '65 album. He used to own a bunch of them. Over his
shoulder, he informed me that he didn't own that one.
Minutes later, while my mom and I were calculating the northern
terminus of Interstate 79, cream soda popped into my head.
"No, Laura, I think they're looking for a town."
"It's the A&W product!"
You could see my mom switching gears. Then she locked onto
another clue. "Nuts," she said.
"Don't worry, Mom, you'll get the next one," I said
patronizingly. She hates it when I do that.
"No, the clue is nuts," she explained.
My husband suddenly yelled from the other room, "I'm a loser!"
Mom and I looked at each other in shock. I reassured her, "He's
not that bad."
"No," my husband said, witheringly, coming back into the room
with his iPad and its cord. "It's the Beatles song."
"Oh, great!" I filled in the spaces. "See, you're not such a
loser after all."
"You set me up," he accused.
He prepared his iPad to accept his voice command for a map of
I-79. Just as he was about to speak, my mother beat him to it.
She yelled, "SCREW!" I gaped at her like a largemouth bass. Had
she lost her mind?
My husband, appalled, frantically tried to close down any
questionable sites that were instantly called to his iPad with that
word.
"Nut?... Screw? Right? Does it fit?" she looked at us hopefully.
I stared, my husband glared.
"Um... yeah... I think we're done here."
[By LAURA SNYDER]
Laura Snyder is a nationally syndicated columnist,
author and speaker. You can reach her at
lsnyder@lauraonlife.com
or visit www.lauraonlife.com
for more info.
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