To the Editor:
I have just completed the crossword puzzle entitled “Where the Wild Things Are,” by Ed Sessa (The Chronicle Review, September 2). I embarked on this mission as a simple diversion during a midday lunch break, only to find that I had come upon a monster of a crossword puzzle that quickly began to resemble the spawn of Satan and tortured me at every turn. Take, for example, the clue for 62 Down: “In ____ of (rather than).” Now, of course, the answer is “lieu.”
With a great deal of pride in my answer, I scanned the puzzle, pen in hand, only to discover that there were not four open boxes, but a mere three! I wracked my brain, stared furiously at the blank wall opposite my desk in a frantic search for an alternative (despite knowing there was none). I verbally abused my coworkers and began to go into a dissociative fugue as a result of the mental trauma this puzzle thrust upon me.
I chose to overlook this effrontery to the universal expectation of crossword-puzzle decency by filling in the Across clues to find that I was indeed correct. But where did the “u” go? Was it lost in some crossword-clue limbo, relegated to some deficient form of Heaven where only the unbaptized go? What had the “u” done to deserve such a fate? Had it committed such a grievous error that not only was it ousted from its usual position after the letter “q” in the word “qat,” but couldn’t even find a sympathetic shoulder to cry on, despite being allowed in the answer to the clue for 35 Across: “Egg-laying mammal”? (Answer: “Platypus.”)
Surely this could not be purposeful. My coworker suggested a misprint. I continued working, only to find that other Down answers could not fit the spaces they were allotted. I stepped away, fuming, and paced the hallways, only to come back to the puzzle a few minutes later with no solution. In a last-ditch attempt to save my sanity, I wrote the extra letters out and found they spelled the word “Australia.”
Now, I could give Mr. Sessa credit for being crafty and “breaking the mold,” “thinking outside the box,” “coloring outside the lines,” and other such trite phrases meant to encourage creativity. That creative allowance has gone terribly awry. It has clearly led to the moral degeneration of all that is right and good in the long-standing tradition of straightforward crossword puzzles throughout the ages.
Sir, I ask you: If I cannot trust a simple crossword, what can I trust?
Holland Tabb Phillips
Graduate Student in English
Tulane University
New Orleans
Ed Sessa responds:
I am truly sorry that my puzzle introduces some doubt into your mind about the value of crossword puzzles. I can only hope to make amends by quoting/paraphrasing comments made in writing to a young soul whose beliefs were similarly challenged years ago:
Holland, you are wrong in your shaken faith. You have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. You do not believe except what you see. You think that nothing can be which is not confined within a small 15x15 box of squares. All minds are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere “Aardvark’s morsel, army member, or kitchen pest” in his intellect, as compared with the diagramless world about him, as measured by the intelligence of a crossword editor.
Yes, Holland, you can trust in the simple truth of a crossword puzzle. It exists as certainly as LOVE (score before 15), generosity, and devotion exist, and you know that crosswords abound (in print and online) and give your life its highest BEAUTY (“___and the beast”) and JOY (“___to the World”). How dreary would the world be if there were no crosswords. It would be as dreary as if there were no Santa Claus or a four-letter word for “bread spread.” There would be no childlike faith then, no puns, no wordplay to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in KenKen and Sudoku. The eternal light with which cruciverbalists fill the world would be extinguished.
Not believe in crosswords! You might as well not believe in Santa Claus! You might get out your Random House Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, or go to Google, Wikipedia, or Amy Reynaldo to catch the answer to 62 Down, but even if those sources did not define 62 Down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no answer to 62 Down. The most real things in the world are those that neither solvers nor editors can see. Have you ever been to Australia? Probably not, but that’s no proof that it is not there, at the bottom of the puzzle. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the bad puns, crosses, and themes that are yet to be seen or unseen in the world.
You can tear apart any puzzle to see what makes the sense inside, but there is often a veil covering the unfilled crosses and downs which not the smartest man, nor even the united strength of 200 solvers in a crowded room, all the smartest solvers that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fortitude, and Google can push aside that curtain and view the supernatural beauty and glory beyond.
No truth and simplicity in crossword puzzles! Thank God! They live, and they live forever. A thousand puzzles from now, nay, 10 times 10 thousand puzzles from now, your next solve will make glad your heart.
♦ ♦ ♦
Alan Wolfe, in Evan R. Goldstein’s article about him (“Breaking Ranks,” The Chronicle Review, September 16), accuses me of not being “a mensch.” It is a grave charge, not least for being delivered in Yiddish. Before I develop a reputation for viciousness, I wish to clarify exactly what happened between me and Wolfe.
What happened was that I sent him an e-mail. That’s it. I read his book in galleys, I did not like it, I told him so. I understand that he was wounded by what I wrote: There is nothing like a controversialist with thin skin. But I have not said or written a public word about his book. When Goldstein called me to talk about Wolfe, I told him that I preferred not to gossip meanly to a reporter about a friend, and that any substantive criticism I wish to make of Wolfe’s book would require the fuller treatment of a review. But here is Wolfe airing private correspondence to a journalist, and attacking me for something I wrote that none of your readers can have read, and giving little lessons in Menschlichkeit.
I should take the opportunity of Goldstein’s piece to clarify also another matter. Tony Judt did not “disappear,” like the victim of an Argentinian caudillo, from the masthead of The New Republic after I denounced his essay on Israel in 2003. Nor was he fired. After my piece appeared, Judt wrote to say that he wished to be removed from the masthead, and I complied with his request, which seemed entirely appropriate. Later we recovered our old friendship, which was founded on affinities more profound than political agreement. We liked to say—each at the other’s expense, of course, but with affection—that there are worse things in life than being wrong.
Leon Wieseltier
Literary Editor
The New Republic
Washington
♦ ♦ ♦
On “Evildoers and Us,” (The Chronicle Review, September 16) by Alan Wolfe, from chronicle.com:
Alan Wolfe writes: “It may not appear particularly sensitive to those Israelis victimized by the terror unleashed by Hamas and Hezbollah to point out that each group has its own reason for existence, or even to raise the question of whether the actions of Israel’s leaders in the past and present have contributed to the terror facing its citizens, but those are questions that must be asked if Israel is ever to live without terror.”
It is not merely insensitive, it’s monstrous. Quite as monstrous as asking the rape victim whether she was wearing a short skirt. Unfortunately, such common-sense conclusions tend to go out the window when Jews are involved. Needless to say, the only way Israel is going to live without terror is not by asking absurd and racist “questions,” but rather by pressuring the Arab world into unilaterally ending its unjust and racist war against it.
Benjamin Kerstein
It requires very careful writing to take up the subject of evil and not add to the muddle. Rather than belabor this point, I will note that Wolfe’s focus seems to be on what we, or more precisely our government, can or should do to combat the evils of others sensibly and realistically, rather than romantically and ineffectually. The focus does not seem to be so much on our own evil.
In passing, Wolfe does mention that “Western governments"—they are not further identified—may err when, “determined to take the hardest possible line against evildoers, they engage in evil acts themselves, whether by relying on torture, suspending basic legal procedures, or turning a blind eye as others torture for them.” This, we infer, is a bad way of responding to political evil. Is it bad because it does not work? Or because it is intrinsically immoral?
I’d like to suggest a follow-up article on how to combat political evil. It will leave other countries entirely out of the equation and tell us how to combat our own political evils, which not only include the above laundry list of bad behaviors by “Western governments,” but also our noxiously evil penal system, our grotesque “war on drugs,” and our determined redistribution of the national wealth from the poor to the rich. I especially hope that Wolfe will instruct us in how to recognize individuals who manifestly espouse principles of evil as they seek and attain high office.
Our important task is not to sort out the convoluted politics of the Middle East as we decide how and where to wield the power of our incredibly destructive military. Our important task is to see Dick Cheney for what he is when, to his credit, he never has bothered to pretend to be anything else. If we can figure out how to do that, then maybe we can bottle it and sell it abroad.
apothegms
What is really being discussed here is not so much how to define or identify evil as to respond to it. The Christian teaching is to respond to evil with good. How does one do that when the evil has no face, or is part of forces or movements so much larger than ourselves that it is not clear what, much less whom, we are responding to?
I confess that I do not know the answer to my own question. This issue has troubled me for years, and as I approach the end of my own years, I have to admit that I seem to be no closer to finding the answer than I was when I started.
Landrum Kelly
About political evil, Wolfe says that the United States and Israel “have been especially woeful at understanding its political causes and have therefore been unable to successfully combat it.” I don’t understand this. We have not had a major terrorist attack in 10 years. Israel has developed a system that makes their airlines extremely safe. If that is not successful, what is?
andreology