The Casper Journal :: Casper's Community Newspaper

Now they’ve gone too far.

Really, I hate to criticize the Casper Journal. And I would never do it, if I hadn’t just spent days of my life trying and failing to do last week’s crossword puzzle.

The thing is lying on the bathroom floor with inked letters smeared and crossed out. It looks like a secret document that came across the Atlantic Ocean in a soldier’s boot, or maybe like the list of Christmas gift wishes that I found after it went through the laundry in my daughter’s jeans. It wasn’t pretty, let’s just say that.

Ever since I decided that doing crosswords might keep my brain sharp enough to find the keys on a regular basis, I’ve been buying books that promise easy “coffee break” crossroads.

They started to get a little repetitive.

When “Ossie Davis” (actor) and Midori Ito (Japanese figure skater) came up in three different puzzles, I thought that I had graduated to something more challenging.

The popularity of Ossie and Ito has a lot to do with how hard it is to find enough words with Os and Is in unusual combinations, I think. Wyatt Earp’s name comes up a lot too, with his “y” and extra vowels.

Gulf of Sidra?

So, I cracked my knuckles confidently and reached for the Casper Journal.

In the easy crossword books, I could sometimes whip through a puzzle in five or 10 minutes. So I knew I was in trouble when it took a half-hour to find just one answer that I knew.

It wasn’t only that the information needed was a bit obscure. Do you happen to know a “Sega Genesis competitor, initially” or a capital located west of the Gulf of Sidra?

These puzzles are aimed at the many people who have a Ph.D. in English literature, detailed understanding of Latin, encyclopedic sports knowledge and a love for geography. I don’t have any of those things, but I can at least try.

The problem with last week’s puzzle was that it was too cute.

How about this one: “Polite Chihuahua gesture as Laurel departs.”

Of course, the answer is “Mexicandoff.” You know, like the dog doffed its hat, I guess.

Or “Test for quirkiness with Hackman missing?” The answer is “Ticscreening,” and if you can figure out what that has to do with Gene Hackman, please let me know.

I don’t mind being defeated by serious gaps in my knowledge, but I wasn’t prepared for mind-bending tricks.

So after a little research, I have discovered that some masochists buy books with puzzles that go in a circle. There are puzzles where you have to figure out where one answer ends and another begins and ones where the words make right-handed turns.

These are not in my library.

Three-letter word for milk-producer

But here’s the good news.

There are crosswords for people learning English as a second language, involving what they describe as “very commonly used words.” You can select such topics as farm animals, or two-letter words.

So, if you get a headache from dealing with Chihuahua gestures, you can go back to square one, so to speak. That’s where I’ll be.

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