About a month ago, the Sunday New York Time’s crossword puzzle blew the mind of a man named Shane Ryan and he wrote a fantastic article for Paste Magazine explaining why.
The theme of the puzzle was Coriolis force (the inertial effect that causes storms to spin in different directions depending on their hemispheric position) and it is applied with such elegance, you really have to see it to appreciate it.
The theme of the puzzle was Coriolis force (the inertial effect that causes storms to spin in different directions depending on their hemispheric position) and it is applied with such elegance, you really have to see it to appreciate it.
“Look, it’s entirely possible that I’m just a hopeless nerd,” he writes. “Maybe this doesn’t seem as impressive to you as it does to me. But:”
| the amount of pleasure this act of brilliance gives me is difficult to describe. It’s just so perfect, so virtuosic, and yet so playful. It’s the Platonic ideal of a crossword puzzle. And the amount of creativity and brainpower it takes to actually conceive of and create it is astounding to me. |
I recognize that feeling Ryan describes—the feeling of stumbling across something that makes an inner part of you explode with understanding and appreciation, and with a kind of thankful joy. It’s the feeling I got when I first started solving cryptics, and the feeling I still get when I come across a particularly brilliant clue.
Within a week of reading Ryan’s article, I randomly came across two similar descriptions of that same feeling.
Within a week of reading Ryan’s article, I randomly came across two similar descriptions of that same feeling.
The first was from Australian cryptic crossword setter David Astle. Roughly halfway through his book “Cluetopia” he describes the feeling of falling headlong in love with wordplay at the age of four. Discovering that the word “owl” was hidden inside the name of his suburb, Balgowlah, filled him with a sense of wonder that “has never quit my bloodstream,” he writes. One word “was a new door, opening into another way of seeing.”
The late, great neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks described that feeling too, in an interview with the CBC’s brilliant Eleanor Wachtel. The object of his wonderment was the Periodic Table:
| Seeing the table and this wonderful scheme whereby all the elements are shown in relation to one another and having a wonderful pattern of recurrence, so that every eighth element, at least to begin with, seemed to echo the properties of the one before it; this seemed to me the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, the most economical, the most elegant. All of the elements, all of the building blocks of the universe fell into an order |
He found the periodic table so reassuring that he carried a pocket-sized version in his wallet for decades.
Higgs + Crick wall art Sure, these are extreme examples expressed with particular fervour. But don’t we all feel innate satisfaction in taking something chaotic and making it tidy?
Isn’t it why we bend over jigsaw puzzles?
Isn’t it why we find Tetris so addictive?
Don't we sell millions of design magazines and produce dozens of “fixer-upper” home TV shows on this soothing promise of order?
And on Saturday mornings, when the Globe and Mail arrives, isn't this why we disregard the headlines, skip the opinion pieces and make our way straight to the black and white square that brims with irresistible possibility?
Isn’t it why we bend over jigsaw puzzles?
Isn’t it why we find Tetris so addictive?
Don't we sell millions of design magazines and produce dozens of “fixer-upper” home TV shows on this soothing promise of order?
And on Saturday mornings, when the Globe and Mail arrives, isn't this why we disregard the headlines, skip the opinion pieces and make our way straight to the black and white square that brims with irresistible possibility?
RSS Feed
