True Grid

Solutions can be found on page two.

It’s amazing that such an innocuous little crossword puzzle can be so noteworthy. Yet the crossword that accompanies this story marks the return to the art form by an acknowledged high priest of the obscure craft of crossword construction. The man in question is an Indianapolis resident named Jeremiah Farrell. This acclaimed master mysteriously absented himself from the crossword scene after a tour de force in The New York Times back in 1996, when his internationally famous Election Day crossword puzzle set the world on its ear. The puzzle contained an ambiguous clue for 39 across that read “lead story in tomorrow’s newspaper.” Astoundingly, the puzzle was constructed so it worked with either of the two possible answers: “ClintonElected” or “BobDole Elected.” For instance, the clue for 39 down was “black Halloween animal.” The answer could be “cat,” which would provide the “c” for “Clinton” in 39 across. But it also could have been “bat,” which would provide the first “b” in BobDole. The celebrated puzzle proved to be a high-water mark in Farrell’s career. Talk about going out on top.

Indiana is known as the Crossroads of America, but we could also be dubbed the crosswords of America, given the famous—and not-so-famous—names in cruciverbalism that have hailed from our state. Favorite sons include two towering figures in the crossword pantheon: Farrell, of course, who was born in Nebraska but has called the Hoosier state home for more than 40 years, as well as majordomo Will Shortz, the Crawfordsville native who has served for 16 years as the highly esteemed editor of the New York Times crossword. Shortz has described Farrell’s Clinton/Dole showpiece as his favorite crossword of all time.

Actually, the Hoosier state is well-represented on the Times’ crossword roster. Constructors from Elkhart, Bloomington, Carmel, and Fort Wayne have all been Shortz-vetted as Times contributors, and six additional Hoosiers have competed in Shortz’s annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. This month, the nation’s top crossworders convene in New York to take part in that tournament, often referred to as a geek-fest to rival the geekiest. Shortz, who founded the tournament in 1978, is the acknowledged rock star of the crossword world. His homemaker mother gave young Will a sheet of paper marked with squares before her bridge-club meeting and instructed her son to create a crossword puzzle. Shortz sold his first puzzle at 14. Later, he designed his own major at Indiana University: enigmatology, the study of puzzles, the only such degree granted by any university anywhere, ever. As a thank-you of sorts, Shortz plans to bequeath his massive collection of 20,000 puzzle books and magazines—the oldest of which dates back to 1543—to the Lilly Library.

At the Times, he receives more than 75 puzzles a week to evaluate, selecting 365 of them to print each year. He’s looking for lighthearted literacy and devilish originality, but never at the expense of well-engineered integrity. He modifies about half the clues contributors supply, blue-penciling those that aren’t clever enough or are too clever. But Shortz’s most nuanced skill has been scaling the puzzles by difficulty, with the week’s easiest appearing on Monday and its hardest on Saturday. (The famous Sunday offering is distinguished by its size more than its difficulty.) His ability to calibrate a puzzle’s level of difficulty is uncanny. Data shows that solvers require more time to complete the puzzle as each day of the week unspools, a testament to how well Shortz knows his stuff. For example, a Monday clue for “Ali” would be “sting-like-a-bee boxer.” A Wednesday clue might be “2001 Will Smith role.” Saturday’s clue: “Clay, eventually.” Shortz has evolved the Times puzzle to an unsurpassed levelof technical virtuosity, wordplay, and pop-culture awareness (like references to rap star Diddy).

In short, Shortz has popularized, modernized, and even glamorizedpuzzle-solving. He’s featured in the successful 2006 documentary Wordplay, which chronicles the drama of one year’s tournament and features celebrity sol-vers such as Bill Clinton and the Indigo Girls singing his praises, while crossword aficionado Jon Stewart sounds off, stoically threatening “don’t get cute with me, Will!” “Cute” might constitute a seven-letter word that begins and ends with an A, the clue reading “neighbor of Georgia.” Who wouldn’t guess Alabama? Well, you fell into the trap. The right answer in this case is Armenia. The dastardly constructor knew exactly what you’d do, and you did it.

According to the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament Web site, crosswords are among the most popular and widespread word games in the world. In 1913, a Liverpool journalist published a “word-cross” puzzle in the New York World that featured most of the elements of today’s genre. The diamond-shaped puzzle was devised as filler, running for three weeks before a printing goof transposed “word-cross” into the name we recognize today. Initially, many expected crosswords would be a short-lived fad, a “sinful waste in the utterly futile finding of words the letters of which will fit into a prearranged pattern ... [solvers] get nothing out of it except a primitive form of mental exercise.” These days, The Indianapolis Star runs a syndica-ted crossword, the likes of which have been described as “the Budweiser of crosswords: not the top of the line, butreliable ... unpretentious and pretty good, and sometimes just the thing.”

I’ve always turned a blind eye tothe Star’s puzzle, though, preferring to tangle with the Times, the crossword of record. Crosswords, being a lighter-weight amusement than books, are my favored accompaniment on the road and are sometimes my only link to my mother tongue. I’ve been ferociously stumped while sitting in airports from Taiwan to Tokyo. For instance, a clue like “fine skipper” might send you in the direction of “admirable admiral,” but what is needed is “flat rock.” But wait, it ends up being “scofflaw.” Such are the constructor’s black arts.

As I’ve struggled to move beyondlow-level Monday solving, I’ve puzzled over the enigmatic Jerry Farrell, a man accessible only via his wife’s e-mail. What could have led him to step away from the limelight at the peak of his powers? I was fascinated by him, wondering how the notoriety had affected him. But first, I needed to learn a little more about the backstage world of crosswords, so, by way of preparation for my rendezvous with Farrell, I visited with one other local cruciverbalist, as crossworders call themselves.