There’s nothing cheesy about my crossword quirk

They say that doing mental problems like crossword puzzles can help keep an aging brain from turning to cheese—or at least it can slow down the process and keep the brain gouda-like instead of being completely limburgered before its time.

As if I needed an excuse like that to tackle my morning puzzle.

No, I do the crossword puzzle every morning just because I like it.

My buddy Mike, who is a wizard at Sudoku, tried to get me to make the switch from letters to numbers while we took a long flight to Ireland several years ago. He had clipped and saved several puzzles from the paper over a few weeks, and he was passing the hours by filling the puzzles in with numbers, using ink for the ones he was certain of and pencil for all the maybes. He pulled out an easy one, put it in front of me on my tray-table, then showed me a few tips to get started.

By the time we landed at the Shannon Airport, I was convinced: The numbers never add up because Sudoku is stupid.

Nope, it’s the crossword for me.

I know it may seem like a waste of time to spend a half-hour or so every morning trying to fit letters into boxes, but it feels good to start each day on an activity that won’t flood the bathroom floor or char the kitchen walls if your attention wanders and you go out to the garage because you can’t remember if you put more balls into your golf bag after plunking a half-dozen of them into the lake the last time you went.

Besides, once all of those little crossword boxes are filled with letters that mostly agree with each other, it’s good to know that the cheesy smell in the room isn’t oozing out of your ears.

It used to bother my wife when I did the crossword at the breakfast table, but not for the reason you might think. Other wives might wish that their husbands would converse with them as they ate breakfast, but in my wife’s case that would mean her having to listen to me tell another story that she’d heard before, a story that wasn’t all that interesting or believable the first time around, when the fish I caught was smaller or the home run ball I hit was findable. She would rather read the sports page and leave me to my own scratchings on the puzzle.

No, an uncommunicative husband wasn’t the reason that it bothered her when I did the crossword puzzle while she sat with me at the breakfast table.

It was that I did the whole thing in ink. Right from the start.

“Why would that bother you?” I once asked many years ago, knowing what her answer would be.

“It’s just so…arrogant, or something. I mean, come on! Who is so confident going into a crossword puzzle that he doesn’t think he needs an eraser nearby?”

I affected a sad look on my face. “I’m hurt that you would think it’s arrogance,” I said. “I use a pen for two very good reasons. For one thing, my eyes aren’t what they once were. I can barely read the clues, let alone read what I’ve written in pencil. I can see what I’ve written better in ink. I’m just doing the best I can do with what dimming resources I have left to me.”

And then I went back to my crossword, letting my hurt expression gnaw away at her sympathies. I mean, what kind of monster would berate an aging man for doing his best to get by with what was left of his failing faculties?

A few moments of silence did the trick. “I’m sorry I accused you of arrogance,” she said.

I grunted my acceptance of her apology. It’s important to be mature about things like this.

A few more minutes crawled by. “What’s the other reason?” she asked after she finished the article she had been reading.

“Excuse me?” I said.

“The other reason. When I accused you of arrogance, you said there were two reasons why you use a pen when you do the crossword. One is your failing vision. What’s the other reason?”

I twirled the pen in my fingers and looked up from the puzzle to lock her eyes with mine. “Because I CAN!” I crowed.

She sighed and shook her head as I went back to 24 down, which was asking for a four-letter name of a kingdom ruled by Yul Brynner.

I was pretty sure of the “A” in the middle of the word, and was about to print “Spain” in extra-small letters to get them to fit in four spaces, when it hit me.

Of course! Utah!

I inked in the letters and shot my wife a smug look, but by now she was reading another article with a look on her face as if a foul-smelling Roquefort was somewhere in the room with her.

---