CHAPTER ONE
Just between you and me, I've always found crossword puzzles condescending.
And yes, I know. Crossword puzzles are inanimate objects. They can't be condescending or judgmental or smug.
But they totally are.
All those infuriating white boxes and pretentious clues, just laughing at you while you stare at them stupidly. Like, oh, you don't know who Deborah of The Innocents (1961) is? And you don't know a five-letter word for "simply be"? You poor, sad human. Do you even have a working brain?
I read somewhere that doing a crossword puzzle every day improves cognitive function and reduces brain shrinkage (which sounds like a bad thing any way you look at it) so about a year ago, I downloaded the New York Times crossword app and decided to try it out. I got up at seven a.m., sat myself down by a sunny window (also proven to be good for cognitive function) and I was determined to make a go of it.
But...I couldn't do it. I literally could not get a single answer. I kept clicking to the next clue, then the next, just waiting for that "Aha!" moment where I'd finally get one.
Industrious animal in a classic fable. No idea.
Steppenwolf author. Nope.
Something that might be put on plastic bags. Immune system components. Unit in a duel.
No, nope, absolutely no sweet clue.
I called my father for advice, since I know he does the crossword every Sunday, and he said not to get frustrated and that it gets easier the more you do it.
Which...how?
It's not like math. It's not like you learn what two plus two is and then the next day you can still remember that it's four. It's like learning that a brandy glass is called a snifter and then being asked the next day to fill in the last word of a Benjamin Franklin quote.
Surely one does not inform the other?
But it must, somehow, because millions of people do these things every day. Millions of people are strolling along knowing a nine-letter word for "abruptly resign" and who the president of Finland is.
Honestly, it's no wonder I can't get a better job.
Anyway. I kept trying for about two weeks, waiting to get the hang of it (or for easier clues to show up) and for my morning routine to transform into a blissful, fulfilling experience that improved my cognition and stopped my brain from shrinking. But it never did. If anything, it felt like my brain was shrinking more, like it was contracting from stupidity or something.
I was just about to give up and revert to my old morning routine—scroll through cute animal videos on Instagram, realize I'm wasting my life on my phone, frantically look up job postings, change the font on my résumé for the fortieth time as though that might be the secret to getting an interview ("Helvetica? Let's call her!")—when I stumbled upon Wordle. The instructions were simple enough for even my shrunken brain to grasp. You get six tries to guess a five-letter word. When you make a guess, the letters will turn gray, yellow, or green. Gray means that the letter isn't in the word at all. Yellow means the letter is in the word, but you have it in the wrong place. Green means that it's in the word and you have it in the right place.
It sounded doable, so I thought, what the hell, I'll just give it a try. Surely it can't be any harder than trying to figure out a seven-letter word for "Off-the-books business, perhaps."
So, I tried.
And I could do it.
It was easy enough that I didn't want to smash my phone against my skull, but hard enough that I had to work at it a little. There were a few hiccups, like the first time I didn't get a word and IDIOT popped up on my screen (I genuinely thought the app was insulting me until I realized IDIOT was the five-letter answer), but after a while I got the hang of it. And it was thrilling! That little surge of satisfaction when I figured it out quickly, the adrenaline rush when I got it right on the last guess. I got a ten-day streak before KAYAK stumped me, then I made it twenty-nine days before I lost out to SQUAT. Then suddenly, somehow, I had a forty-nine day streak, and when I made it to fifty—BOWLS—I genuinely jumped up and down.
