From Square One
A Meditation, with Digressions, on Crosswords
Magnificent Obsession
There is no other word for it. I get defensive when people dismiss the crossword as a mere pastime or, worse, a form of escapism. To my mind, they just don't get it.
Alfred Hitchcock didn't get it. He told François Truffaut, "I don't really approve of whodunits because they're rather like a jigsaw or a crossword puzzle. No emotion. You simply wait to find out who committed the murder."
Here, Hitchcock fell prey to a false dichotomy, and it's a common one: that thinking and feeling are an either/or proposition. In fact they are inextricable. Encountering a powerful idea can be a deeply moving experience. Anyone who believes that cerebral and emotional satisfaction are at odds with each other need only open any book by Vladimir Nabokov, who, as it happens, created the world's first known Russian-language crossword puzzles while exiled in Berlin during the 1920s.
Perhaps Hitchcock saw only suspense, terror, and imminent jeopardy as emotions. It is true that you will find none of these states of being in the crossword, unless you cou ... read full excerpt from: From Square One: 'A Meditation, with Digressions, on Crosswords ebook
