“Stick to the common words!” insist the Champions of the Plain.
Of course, these admonitions do not help the constructor in the least. He is the ham in the verbal sandwich—necessary, but spread rather thin and squashed flat. It is in the nature of things that this should be so. No creator has had a different experience. You can please some of the people, and the rest of it. It is part of the penalty of the builder to receive criticism. Scarce have the birth-pangs passed when the child is the storm-center of a tempest of contradictory comment.
It is, of course, an indeterminable debate. The Simplicities have their case, as have the Abstrusities. In the meantime, short of erasure and complete rebirth, the constructor’s pattern remains. For better, for worse, for easier, for harder, in the pocket edition or the Unabridged, his words cross and twine all among the blacks and the whites.
In the meantime, the schism remains. What is to come of it, we know not. Whatever the decision may be, the constructor will not change his status. Once a constructor, always between the millstones.
Prosper Buranelli
F. Gregory Hartswick
Margaret Petherbridge [[5]]
BALLADE OF CROSS WORDS
By
Ruth Franc von Phul
(Cross Word Puzzle Champion of the World)[1]