Cross-Words and Their Consequences

A Dire Warning of What May Happen if You Fall for the Latest Fad

GEORGE S. CHAPPELL

I AM not a particularly bookish person. In any really literary conversation I find myself hopelessly out of it. By the time I get round to a best seller it is old stuff so that I read it quietly and do not boast about it.

My library has a distinctly retrospective look. Its modest shelves support a number of portly "sets" which seem to say plainly, "We arc never read; we were never intended to be read. We are here for space-filling and decorative reasons. We were, purchased years ago when our owner was young and foolish and the easy prey of a skilful salesman". In this class arc the twenty volumes containing the Messages of the Presidents. I used to dip into them occasionally with an honest desire to improve my mind but the passages by Presidents Garfield and Fillmore were too much for me. In like case is my set of Memoirs of the Freiich Court. These were an even greater disappointment to me; for I bought them with a distinct understanding that they were racy affairs, full of intrigue and six-cylinder love. They turned out to be as dull as ditch water, abounding in such passages as, "It was at this point that the Assembly, through its ministers, MM. LaTouche, Heniard, Bratouillc and Labadoure, informed the King that the grain imposts, owing to the increasing obstinacy of the peasants, had been reduced by half. His majesty sent a special commission into Normandy, who reported as follows", etc., etc.

THIS was not at all the sort of thing to keep me up nights and the Memoirs soon began to gather dust with the Messages. About these literary rocks an accretion of books has slowly gathered, books borrowed and never returned, books left at the house by mistake, books presented at Xmas . . . yes, a few people are so benighted as to do that sort of thing . . . books which eventually form a miscellaneous assortment of once popular novels to which we give house room until my wife says in desperation, "I wish to goodness you would go over those shelves and throw out what you do not want." It is at this point that the Salvation Army comes in for another donation. Blessed old Army, I don't know what we would do without it.

But Now! . . . All this is the way it used to be. But you ought to see my library now. You'd never believe it was the same place. It hasn't a particularly gay look, to be sure. The books that are in it arc not the brightly jacketed affairs that smite you in the eye nor are they labelled with arresting titles like A Scarlet Soul or Deeps of Desire. No, there is very little red blood and purple passion on my shelves. What I have suddenly found myself building up is a tremendous reference library. It all started with these cross-word puzzle books that have suddenly smitten society.

In some ways they are the most devilishly ingenious contrivances that have ever been put upon the market. It was never my intention to buy one. I have always looked upon people who worked out puzzles, anagrams, acrostics, rebuses, and so on, as self-confessed failures. I felt that, if they had enough interest to bother with such truck and time enough to devote to it they must be dim-wits.

The first cross-word book I saw was displayed in the window of an ultra sort of book shop which specializes in the most modern and arty literature. I have made it a practice to look in its window from time to time so that when the latest publication is mentioned I may at least be able to say, "No, I haven't read it; but I have seen it." Also, so much of the extremely modern literature that I glance at is so revolting that I gain that feeling of pleasure which comes from righteous disgust. As I go on my way I seem to myself to be a more solid and superior citizen.

The puzzle book was open at the first puzzle, opposite which was a brief explanation of how the things were done. I read it contemptuously. It was absurdly simple. It seemed perfectly easy to see what words were intended to fit in the spaces. Number 1, horizontal, for instance was a three letter word meaning "canine quadriped" while Number 1, vertical, was "diurnal space of time". I mentally jotted down "dog" and "day" and saw at once that they fitted exactly.

"WHAT piffle!" I thought. "Imagine so-called intelligent people attending conventions to discuss this sort of thing." Then it occurred to me that they might possibly be useful in teaching children how to spell. I have a small daughter who has been impervious to any knowledge of orthography by any known method of teaching. Here was something that might at least amuse her for an hour. I went into the shop and bought one of the books. I did this rather shame-facedly, pretending to be looking for something else and finally saying languidly, "What is this thing?" The young woman who sold me the volume maintained the same attitude and the transaction was completed with a tacit understanding that it was quite between ourselves and not to be mentioned under any circumstances, as we both realized that such publications were entirely beneath our notice.

Then I made the mistake of opening my parcel and looking at the book in the train which bears me homeward every evening. I did not realize that the little "dog" which I had so contemptuously noted in my first glance had, at that very moment, bitten me without my knowledge. As the train rolled on I found myself, pencil in hand, jotting down the more obvious words in the checkered design. One or two gave me a few moments pause but ere I reached my home station I had completed the page which I surveyed with triumphant disdain.

Nor did I realize that my feelings were exactly those which the diabolical publishers wished to inspire, that my reactions had all been planned and counted upon and that they had very successfully hooked me to their line without my even suspecting it.

After the evening meal I called my innocent and illiterate daughter to my side to show her the puzzle Papa had done. "You see, my darling, how simple it is," I said. But she saw nothing of the sort and I found myself absorbed in the task of showing her, patiently explaining the meaning of various words and the proper way to spell them. The density of the child was unbelievable and it was not long before I thrust her away. I had begun to find that the second puzzle was by no means as simple as the first. Indeed there were a number of words which were really troublesome but my spirit was roused and I vowed to finish the blooming thing before going to bed.

I did so, but I am even now ashamed to give the exact hour. When I awoke in the morning it was to the realization that I had fallen a prey to the puzzle mania. I hated to admit this, even to myself, but the knowledge was there, when I first opened my eyes, that my waking thought was one of curiosity. What would the next puzzle contain? What further verbal battles and conquests lay waiting for me? With difficulty I concentrated on the paper at breakfast, thinking with satisfaction of the secret puzzlesession I should have on the train. To my disgust I discovered that my daughter had taken the book with her in her school-bag. It was very annoying and I swore roundly; nor were unfed ings calmed in the least by my wife's logical comments.

"I don't see why you should be so peevish over what you, yourself, said was such a silly pastime," she said. "Besides, you brought the book to Emily and she naturally thought it was hers."

There was no answer to this and I departed in high dudgeon.

FROM time to time during the day I thought of the checkered designs which had so ensnared me; but I was able to keep them at a reasonable distance from my attention. But when I reached home again I knew, as I mounted the veranda steps with a quicker pace than usual, that what I most desired was to get hold of that puzzle book. I knew tint my daughter was home; for I saw her coat lying on one part of the hall floor, her tarn on another and her school-books on a third.

In my most dulcet tones I called her. Receiving no answer I tried mv wife. Again no reply. This was queer for I could hear both their voices on the second floor. I walked quietly upstairs and found them huddled together at the desk. My wife rested a distrait glance upon me and said, in answer to my greeting, "What is a marine anthropoid?" I knew then that I had lost her.

We had a rather bitter discussion after dinner as to who should have the book for the evening. We let Emily try her hand at it until her bedtime but she had an annoying way of skipping from one page to another jotting down words that seemed to fit, so that I had a hard half hour with an eraser after she had retired. Emily used a hard pencil, which she wet frequently, and several of the most alluring designs were thoroughly ruined. The next day I bought books for all hands. It was the only way to bring peace into the house.

(Continued on page 106)

(Continued from page 69)

AS I look about our living-room now and see the tremendous array of reference books which I have gathered together I am filled with dismay. It was not long after our first fall that I realized that one dictionary would never do. It was constantly in demand. In self defense I was forced to buy a special one for myself. But this was only the beginning.

Several years ago a friend had given my daughter an extensive set of volumes called The Book of Knowledge. This had always appeared to me to have everything in it but an index. The idea seemed to be that a child should read it through from beginning to end and thus learn everything there was to know. My daughter found this mine of information quite sufficient for her inaccurate puzzle solutions but my wife and I soon felt the need of what we had never had, namely an up-to-date encyclopedia. It was delivered shortly and the installment payments are now numbered among our fixed charges.

Alas, the fiendish demands of the puzzle makers know no bounds. A dictionary, an encyclopedia, what are these in view of the outrageous words which the experts ask us to producer What can we do when we are asked to discover the name of "a substance yielding chrysphanic acid" and find that there is no such word as "chrysphanic" in our dictionary? The answer, obviously, is to buy a larger dictionary. I have tried that. I have an unabridged affair that looks as if it were the mother superior of all the dictionaries in the world. It is so fat as to be disgusting. A stalwart table groans beneath its weight. But if you think that it contained enough information you are mistaken.

A little experience taught me that many words might be in this revolting tome without my being able to locate them. A brother addict, with the wild puzzle-look in his eyes, advised me to get a good thesaurus. "Beats the 'dick' hollow," he said, "has all the synonyms together where you want them." You see how it is with these fellows; they even call the dictionary pet names.

By this time I too had become a hopeless word-hound. One by one and in bunches the light literature in my library gave shelf room to special dictionaries of biblical names, atlases and geographies, guides to mineralogy, books on botany and birds, Outlines of everything, studies in astronomy, ancient myths, foreign languages, Celtic fairy-tales, the coinage system of Bengal . . . my brain reels at the staggering amount of information by which I have been engulfed.

How it will all end I can not tell. Every inch of wall space in my home gapes with information. My brain feels like a tightly-packed trunk, ready to burst at any moment. Some day, I know, I shall explode and cover the landscape for miles around with assorted equivalents and recondite words. It is with the greatest difficulty that I have written this article. For every word that I have used a score of others have stood before me crying, "Use me, use me! I mean the same thing!"

Quite naturally I have become so confused that I begin to doubt whether anything I have said means anything at all. And I must confess that a re-reading of the pages before me is far from reassuring. A small, a limited vocabulary has its advantages. It has also its comforts. For those who have not already fallen victims of this newest national disease, let my case be a warning. Before they first pick up a puzzle let them be sure that they can take it or leave it alone.