It’s getting warm in Arizona and news of a quicker vaccine rollout is making me hopeful.

My practice has continued to be focused on figure drawing. I had a really interesting session with a model whose specialty was movement and he was constantly moving during the short poses. It activated something totally new in my brain and I loved it.

If you know me, you know I love podcasts and a couple of weeks ago I got hooked on this podcast Hey Riddle Riddle and like the title suggests it’s a puzzle and riddle podcast done by improvisers. Since then, I’ve written my own puzzles for a game night with friends, started solving the crossword daily, and altogether my noggin has sharpened a bit. What’s the thrill of it? Let’s dig in.

love note 05: the delight of reaching and puzzles

Riddles are as old as language. Just ask the sphinx.

What goes on four feet in the morning, two feet at noon, and three feet in the evening?

The crossword, by comparison, is youthful, the first one (pictured above) being printed in 1913 in New York World. I find it funny that in 1924, The New York Times complained of the "sinful waste in the utterly futile finding of words the letters of which will fit into a prearranged pattern, more or less complex. This is not a game at all, and it hardly can be called a sport... [solvers] get nothing out of it except a primitive form of mental exercise, and success or failure in any given attempt is equally irrelevant to mental development." At the beginning of the craze, librarians were mad that crossword fanatics were hogging dictionaries and thesauri from “legitimate” readers and students. Funny how the status of crossword enthusiasts changed. Now it’s thought to be pretty snobbish, right? Well, eventually The New York Times got over their disdain for crosswords and printed their first puzzle in 1942.

Crosswords took a different role during World War II. A memo from The New York Times’ Sunday editor said they “ought to continue with the puzzle,” recognizing that the puzzle could be a distraction to fill the bleak blackout hours. Nowadays, as we are again going through a fairly bleak time (I don’t even need to say it), there are plenty of other forms of distraction and ways to fill the hours but I personally hit a point where I got sick of binging TV and I’m sure my newfound obsession is filling that type of void in this time where all I have is time to myself.

I’m still very much a novice at crosswords but it’s interesting to learn all the little rules and tricks. I didn’t realize until researching this newsletter that you can flip any crossword upside down and the black boxes will be in the same spot. Rebuses in crosswords I realized when I was so sure of an answer but it wouldn’t fit in the grid and I had to look up that, apparently, you can have more than one letter in a square.

(I’m sure if any of you readers are longtime crossword solvers, you just want to pat me on my head and say ah young one, you have so much to learn and it’s true. Please teach me.)

I started reading the column in The New York Times about the crossword for the weekend puzzles that gives answers to extra-tough clues and gives some information about the puzzle maker. It’s been interesting to read about how the topic of representation has even hit the crossword. There’s a long way to go, I’m sure, but it seems as though The Times is starting to ensure the clues aren’t quite so old, white, and male, as well as the puzzle makers.

Why are puzzles so alluring? Why did the crossword, which was constantly declared to be a passing fad when it first came out, endure?

Anne Carson, in exploring desire and why love is frequently described as “bittersweet,” compares lovers and thinkers in their delight of reaching out and falling short in her book, Eros the Bittersweet. Desire is only desire when it is unfulfilled and so the lover is enraptured when reaching out to their beloved. So too is the thinker reaching past the blind spot in which they stand trying to grasp what they do not yet understand. “There would seem to be some resemblance between the way Eros acts in the mind of a lover and the way knowing acts in the mind of a thinker […] I would like to grasp why it is that these two activities, falling in love and coming to know, make me feel genuinely alive. There is something like electrification in them.”

And truly I think that’s the thrill of puzzles, crosswords, riddles and the like. The rush that comes when the answer finally comes to you after eluding you hidden in the seemingly cryptic, sometimes downright frustrating clues is euphoric. There’s a snap of synapses, everything clicks into place, and just for a second, it feels like everything makes sense in the world.

Quizta Ray’s Riddle-Me-This

Here’s a puzzle I wrote. Let’s see if you can get it. Here’s how it works: Each clue has a separate answer. All of those answers have a connection and you need to figure out the connection.

For example:

• A group of dolphins is known as a __

• A young and eligible man might take his date back to his bachelor ___

• Which useful device did Alexander Graham Bell invent

• The five senses are smell, taste, sight, hearing and ___

ANSWER: add i and all apple products (pod, pad, phone, touch)

Here’s one for you to solve. I’ll put the answer way at the bottom.

• Before today

• First name of 10 Things I Hate About You and Silver Linings Playbook actress

• Main Band-Aid in Almost Famous

• “Aloha” means both

Readings

poetry nook

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain, (340) by Emily Dickinson

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
And Mourners to and fro
Kept treading - treading - till it seemed
That Sense was breaking through -

And when they all were seated,
A Service, like a Drum -
Kept beating - beating - till I thought
My Mind was going numb -

And then I heard them lift a Box
And creak across my Soul
With those same Boots of Lead, again,
Then Space - began to toll,

As all the Heavens were a Bell,
And Being, but an Ear,
And I, and Silence, some strange Race,
Wrecked, solitary, here -

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down -
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing - then -

Currently reading:

Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters

It was so nice to read such a queer novel that didn’t feel the need to justify itself or try to tell a coming-out story. It’s a fascinating look at three women, cisgender and transgender, as an unexpected pregnancy makes them attempt a non-traditional parenting setup. I had a few issues with it but overall was excited to see a novel like this published.

I’ve returned to Instagram so you can find me on there now. If anyone else is obsessed with how to have social media and not let it control, shoot me a message. I am testing a method I think will work this time, which involved unfollowing a lot of people so my feed was something I wouldn’t get sucked into (leaving basically just artists) and putting boundaries on what I share.

Until next time,

Krista

Answer to the puzzle: Beatles songs (Yesterday, Julia, Penny Lane, Hello Goodbye!)

p.s. send me your favorite riddles or puzzles

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