PREFACE
Controversy, which is the breath of life to any of the arts or sciences, has reared its head among the ranks of Cross Word solvers. The air is filled with ’tis and ’tain’t. The clan is divided into schools, which is well for the vitality of puzzling. It is undoubtedly true that a house divided against itself cannot stand; but it is also veritable that an art divided against itself flourisheth exceedingly.
The schism that is causing all the noise, reduced to its simplest terms, is stated in the question, “Shall the Cross Word Puzzle be made hard or easy?”
On the one hand stand the pundits, with thesaurus and dictionary armed. They crave queer words and exotic definitions. They thrill to the cross-clue unravelling of some strange combination of vowels and consonants resembling nothing ever uttered by human tongue, but which their reference-books declare is a genuine word, with meanings and inflections and everything. They delight in extracting a simple word from its definition of secondary or tertiary meaning: when “express generally” is solved as “air” they greet the word so often defined as “mixture of gases” with cries of delight; “introduce as an antagonist” is found to be “pit,” and tears of joy are shed over the relief from the common “hole” or “depression.”
Thus the solvers who revel in the recondite. Opposed to them stand the serried ranks of those whose pleasure lies in the accomplishment; who do not wish their onward march to [[2]]victory delayed by forests of Javanese shrubs or oceans full of rajidae with enlarged pectoral fins. Nor do they wish words torn far from their daily, or at least semi-weekly, use. A Leer by the river’s brim a simple Sly Glance is to them, and not an Annealing-furnace.
A third element enters the lists at this point—the constructors. When a man has a superb puzzle almost finished, with complete interlock and no abbreviations or unkeyed letters, he frequently finds a space left into which nothing will go except a particularly rare combination of letters—let us say, for example, TIL. The constructor runs hastily through his vocabulary and finds no TIL; he has a vague recollection of such a word somewhere in his poetic remembrances; but the familiar abbreviation of “until” is “till,” and the constructor has no wish to add the damning parenthesis-enclosed “poet. contr.” after his definition. He tries all the combinations possible; none will fit. Torn between despair and hope he seeks Webster’s Unabridged. Trembling finger runs down the columns. Ah! Between “tikur” and “tilbury,” in small type, as though ashamed of existence, he finds what he seeks. “Til—Sesame.” Into the construction goes the word, and the puzzle is finished. Observe that the constructor had no desire to introduce this exotic syllable; he did not even know that there was such a word in any language. If he could have written “tic,” or “tie,” or “tin,” or “tip,” or “tis,” or “tit,” he would have done so. But “til” was his sole refuge, and the Unabridged bore him nobly out. Thus, says the constructor, why should the solver rage when he discovers “sesame” among the definitions? Let him try to make one himself, etc., etc.
Returning a moment to the pundits’ side of the argument, observe a fact. If any solver had been asked, before he took [[3]]up cross words, to give offhand the name of Egypt’s sun-god, a three-letter word meaning island, a four-letter word for handbag, the name of a large Australian bird, or the sash affected by the ladies of cherry-blossom land, it is odds but that he would have been reduced to stammering evasions. But even a tyro at the glorious game can now rattle off by rote the words Ra, Uit, Etui, Moa, Obi. In running down the definitions of a new puzzle it is not the household words that set him scribbling frantically, but such old friends as the above. So, contend the punditti, a word that may be a nameless horror at the moment becomes through association a friend in time of trouble.
True enough, answer the believers in the simplicities, but the introduction of such words is evidence of laziness on the part of the constructor. Moreover, their constant use tends to eliminate them, their places to be taken by other literal monstrosities. And there is much in this contention. Where now are the Emu and the Eel? Time was, and not so long ago, that every other construction was the combined aviary and aquarium necessary to harbor these two; today they are one with Nineveh and Tyre. And so it may well be with Ra and Uit and Etui. They will march one by one into the shades where lurk the other gallant words that died of over-work. And the strange combinations that take their places will also abide their little hour, and go their way.
Once again the constructor beats on the table and demands to be heard. “Where,” he asks, “do I get off? Am I to be barred from including words that finish my design because a group of you insist that no word not included in everyday vocabularies appear in the little white squares? Or am I to suffer under the lash of scorn because a few of you mock my brilliant construction wherein no exotic letter-combination [[4]]rears its head?—a construction that cost me more time than if I had allowed a few oddities, I may add. What am I to do?”
“Go as far as you like!” cry the Recondites.