It’s Mind-Bending
They say that as you grow older, you grow smarter. Hog wash! Take it from me, as I creep along into my nineties, I feel dumber and dumber. It is not simply a matter of memory loss, which can be expected at my age, it is a matter of realizing more and more that there are serious gaps in my knowledge. Though I try to persuade myself that travel, reading and what they call life experience will make up for the fact that I never finished high school when I was the proper age and ended up as a 77-year-old GE student at Greenwich High School, I am being constantly reminded how scanty is my education. Of course, having many extremely well-educated friends, makes matters even worse. My range of ignorance grows with every year. Fortunately, I am still fairly adept at convincing others by glib speech and an alert expression, that I am smarter than I really am.
Until some years ago, doing the Sunday Times crossword puzzle was a pleasant way to spend an hour or so in the morning. Alas, those times are gone forever. Now I know how Rip Van Winkle must have felt when he awoke to a new world. How could I have grown so out of touch with modern life? I must have been living under a rock. In the old days I could have looked up some of the more obscure words with the help of my large crossword puzzle dictionary. That does not help me now. Today the younger, fiendish creators of today’s puzzles will throw the most ridiculous questions at you. How could I possibly know – or care – who played in Super Bowl XVI? Or where Britney Something or Other made her biggest hit? The names of Rock stars and second-string movie actors are not in my memory now, nor were they at any time.
With my trusty dictionary at hand, it used to be fun tackling such questions as Idaho’s state flower, or the name of a Japanese Aborigine (Ainu) or the name of a “poisonous plant.” Who cares about cowbane or mandrake or nightshade these days? Only readers of yesterday’s murder mysteries could pencil in those clues.
The New York Times Crossword Puzzle Dictionary sits dusty and neglected on my bookshelf. For old time’s sake, I sometimes let my fingers walk through its yellowing pages. What treasures I find! Did you know if Hillary Clinton were elected President, we would be governed by a Gynocracy? No kidding. Look it up in the dictionary. It sounds rather clinical, doesn’t it?
Coming up with a word like that would make me seem very educated. If only I could remember all those fancy words and spring them on my smarter friends.
Cryptograms are not as popular as their cousins, the crosswords, and require a different type of skills. I used to turn to them in moments of frustration with the crosswords – when those puzzles literally made me cross. I even created my own cryptograms, 60 of them, and tried to sell them. It’s not as difficult as it sounds. Just dream up something witty or wise, then work out a coding system. Believe me, it’s far simpler than trying to solve others’ cryptos. King Features Syndicate apparently had its own stable of cryptogram creators, but I wanted them to know, that in case of emergency, I was ready and willing to fill the gap. Older, yes, but optimistic!
Recently I discovered another mind game, Sudoku, that has had great appeal to refugees from those word puzzles. It’s now so popular that there are special books filled with them. I tried one of them. These are touted as great medicine for the mind. As far as I’m concerned, I’ll take castor oil. Even in my finest hours, I never was any good at numbers.
The New Yorker Magazine, which I have enjoyed for more than 70 years, now has cartoon captions that might just as well be written in Chinese. Is it that my point of reference has altered drastically, or is it simply my aging brain?
P.S. I wrote this piece a few months ago and discovered it recently in my computer’s collection of folders. Goodness knows how it got there. Frankly, I have no recollection of writing it. Makes you think, doesn’t it?