Here’s an indelible memory from childhood: my maternal grandmother parked at her white formica kitchen table, ballpoint pen in hand, working the New York Times Sunday crossword.

A few other salient details: the pale teabag from her first cup of watery decaffeinated tea resting in a nearby tablespoon, wrapped in its string like a tiny roast; a glass of milk — mine — with streaks of primary color near the bottom, evidence of the furtive handful of M&M’s I’ve just tossed in; the sharp odor of burnt crumbs radiating from the bottom of her old-fashioned toaster; a deep and respectful silence, broken only by the scratching of the pen — a pen! — as she does battle with the puzzle.

Or rather, as we do battle with the puzzle. Because a ten-year-old boy clearly has a lot to offer in the crossword department.

I scan the clues looking for a word, something — anything — I’ve even heard of. “What about 107 across, four letters for Bothers?” I say. “It could be Hate.”

“Are you sure?” she says, arching her brow in that owlish way of hers. “Look at the clue again. Isn’t it Bothers? With an ‘s’?”

“So?”

“Well, the answer Hate would work for Bother, but for Bothers, it would have to be Hates, wouldn’t it? And that’s too many letters.”

“Oh,” I say, giving my milk a stir. This is how it often goes. The clues are maddeningly specific. I think I’ve got an answer, only to learn that my answer is in the present tense, instead of the past; or singular, instead of plural; or completely wrong, instead of right.

Those kitchen table sessions with my grandmother taught me important lesson about solving crossword puzzles, but also about reading generally. Slow down. Study the words. Subtle differences can mean a lot.

Crossword puzzles have been with me my whole life. I can track a particularly tense stretch of work by a spike in the number of puzzle books on the bedside table. Rare is the day when I fail to dip into one, if only for a few minutes of bathroom solitude.

Yes, they can be maddening, pedantic, unbearably smug, and plain indecipherable. But they’re also a playground for words and meanings; a source of facts rare and obscure; and a quiet salute to the brain’s awesome storage capacity, to the deepest chambers of memory, the ones that spring forth with the cry, “I’ll bet you didn’t know you knew me!”

Best of all, they reward patience. “Come back tomorrow,” a puzzle will seem to say, when you’ve drawn a blank on a five-letter word for Eurasian duck. Sleeping on it won’t help if you’ve never, in all your life, encountered the word “Smews.” Which I personally hadn’t, before I met Barry Silk’s NYT puzzle entitled Across the Board. But at least you know the puzzle will still be there the next time you pick it up. And maybe the fog in your head will have cleared by then. Or, better yet, you will have acquired divine omniscience in your sleep.

In a way, solving a crossword puzzle is the perfect metaphor for writing a novel; the main difference being that novel-writing involves both the solving of a puzzle and its creation at the same time — a process guaranteed to twist the mind into a pretzel.

Word by word, clue by clue, you fill in the blanks. Eventually, a theme will emerge, making the other big clues somewhat easier to solve. Sometimes, you’ll put in a clue that fits, but just isn’t correct. You’ll spend countless frustrating hours before realizing the mistake. Once the error is erased, new avenues will open up, new solutions.

At times, you’ll feel completely stymied. You’ll be erasing as much as you write — sometimes more. You’ll take a step back and look at the gaping holes still to be filled in, the endless list of incomprehensible clues — that may or may not even be numbered correctly!

It’ll feel hopeless. But you’ll wake up the next day, and it’ll still be there, waiting. You’ll pick it up with the goal of finding the answer to a single clue, and that one answer will cascade into other answers.

Then one day, you’ll step back and see that all of the squares are filled in. You’re done. You’ve reached the end of a long, slippery, agonizing road.

So you immediately turn the page and start on the next one.

Why? Because there’s one thing a crossword fiend — or a writer — can’t resist.

¹ A G O O D P U Z Z L E.

This column was published in the Perry Co Times on 01 November 2012

For more information, please contact Mr. Olshan at writing@matthewolshan.com