Before work, Cindy liked to solve a crossword. But one morning the usual puzzle in her shoulder bag had been replaced with a sheet of paper. What was going on?
Richard, her English boyfriend, had made a puzzle of his own. Quirky and gentle Richard was always springing small surprises like this. The two twenty-somethings had met in London—the Australian working in events, the boy studying to be a planetary scientist. The couple clicked, their planets aligning as they explored London together. They could chat for hours about everything and nothing. But it was a mutual love of crosswords that lent their meeting a feel of destiny.
Cindy was more at home with quicks—a proficient solver with a wealth of synonyms and a far-ranging vocabulary. Richard, on the other hand, was a cryptic nut. He knew each setters’ styles, the standard abbreviations that clues might summon, from hearts (H) to love (O). As a team, their solving powers were multiplied. For that’s the SHAZAM factor of crosswording: two brains are better than one. Outsiders assume solving is a solo activity, yet soon we’ll visit a few groups who explode that myth, as well as uncover the benefits to your brain of collective solving. But let’s return to Cindy and Richard, since crosswords can also lead to lifelong friendship.
Over time, over clues, the romance flourished. They moved to Sydney, and continued to solve crosswords as a mutual hobby. Now and then, just for a cackle, Richard made his own clues for Cindy to solve. Like now as, fifteen minutes before work, Cindy found a strange piece of paper in her bag.
Doubly strange, since most of the clues were missing, while others were breezy by Richard’s standards. Like this one:
A lenient anagram—fun but hardly twisted. So what was the catch? The morning turned weirder when a Christmas card arrived at work—in January—from an anonymous sender. Inside the card were more clues, tougher this time.
An hour later, a girlfriend sent Cindy a text. Somehow, in the middle of her chat, her friend mentioned Ovid, the Roman poet. Bingo: OVID was another answer in the crossword.
When Cindy met Richard after work, she begged to know what was happening. By way of explanation, Richard dug in his satchel, fishing out more clues.
Cindy was warming to the game, whatever the game was. The grid was coming together, as they solved clues over wine and ravioli, like these:
Heard sweet rapper? = EMINEM
I sound like an Indian one but noisier? = MINER
Finally two answers remained, but there were no more clues in sight. As the mystery deepened, they drove to a mate’s house after dinner. Cindy saw a sci-fi novel in the hall—Eon by Greg Bear—which she hated, as Richard knew. Far too galactic, she reckoned—all reincarnation and genetic engineering.
‘It’s worth a read,’ said Richard, handing her the book.
Cindy passed it back, underwhelmed.
‘Seriously, take a look,’ he said.
Inside was a bookmark with both sides scribbled with code, strings of letters and numbers. Cindy guessed the garble belonged to some sucker hoping to fathom the novel, but then she noticed the pattern:
P63L12W5L4
P104L9W3L5
Page, line, word, letter. Page, line, word, letter. Cindy kept her nerve and calculated the final message to read: LOVE YOU.
Sorry, not final, but penultimate, since I was Richard’s accomplice in providing the last piece in this romantic escapade. Cindy, invited to check her email, found my message in the inbox:
Fever seizes ring by Richard initially, ad infinitum (7)
The recipe, she twigged, was a container clue, with ring (O) by Richard initially (R) sit inside FEVER, helping to spell the grid’s last entry: FOREVER. By then the boy was on one knee, a piece of bling in his hands. He asked her the day’s easiest question apparently, sweetly and un-cryptically, and Cindy said yes.
Room 1, Level 1
Isabelle is 85, a scientist born in New Zealand. Her husband John is only slightly younger, an Aussie engineer and amateur magician. (The man once performed the Chinese rings trick in Melbourne’s Savoy Hotel, unlinking and relinking a series of metallic hoops before a rapt audience.) He and Isabelle met back in 1959, in their early 20s, a-la Cindy and Richard—but this time John was the cryptic newbie. ‘Isabelle’s dad was keen on puzzles in The Dominion, I remember, as well as The New Zealand Listener. I met Isabelle when I was on a six-month placement in Christchurch and she slowly taught me how to read the clues.’
Isabelle would sit down on weekends with her father, a teapot and crossword between them. ‘Dad and I would discuss clues and their solutions and naturally I became interested as well.’ Isabelle’s eyes light up. ‘One clue I recall went something like: “Chips for one, usually done in oil, and much appreciated.” The answer was OLD MASTER, after the film Mr Chips, and of course the oil paintings of old masters.’
Fittingly, that’s what John and Isabelle have become—masters of cryptic language, though don’t call them old. In fact, they don’t seem old, two Melburnians prompt with a smile and a wry remark, both deeply affectionate towards each other.
Every two weeks, the pair climbs the stairs of Ross House on Flinders Lane, Isabelle’s sciatica permitting, armed with the Friday puzzle. With my puzzle, in fact, which is how I came to meet them. First on the page, and then in person while visiting the U3A Cryptic Crossword (Advanced) class one morning.
SOLVING AS RESOLVING
Deirdre W. and her dad had a major falling out. Umbrage became a summer-long stand-off, and then, while seldom chatty at the best of times, father and daughter fell into a wordless rift lasting many years, long after the first infraction was forgotten.
Salvation arrived in a box, 15 by 15 squares. Through a puzzle, the two had an excuse to make a call, to get back in touch and reignite the conversation. Thanks to a sly reversal, a sneaky definition, the two could whine in harmony, compare notes and share solutions.
‘My dad doesn’t find it easy to show affection,’ wrote Deirdre, ‘although I know how strongly it’s there. We share a language and an interest, and now we have the reason to spend time together. We can express our love by throwing the page in the other’s lap and saying “Have a look at twelve down”.’
U3A stands for University of the Third Age. To quote the campus charter, ‘The term “University” is used in the original and mediaeval sense of a community of teachers and scholars, united in the pursuit of knowledge.’ This communal sense is evident the minute you crest the stairs. I walk into a room of engaged minds and busy pencils. The class has a floating population of two dozen. People come when they can. Today there is a circle of fourteen solvers, a copy of the day’s puzzle like a placemat in front of each student. Epiphanies are shared, and thereby deepened.
‘Prune!’ hollers Felicity, a meteorologist in her late 60s. The room is hers. ‘Twenty-one down: “Shorten jog in gym.”’
‘How does it work?’ asks Angela, an urban planner in her early 70s. She came to puzzles ‘partly as a finite and fun task to enable me to procrastinate from my PhD’.
Felicity unpacks the ruse. ‘Shorten is the definition. Another word for jog is run. Put that in PE, which is short for gym … ’
‘Physical education,’ adds Joan, 92. She learnt how to solve cryptics when staying on Magnetic Island in 1956.
‘The whole thing gives you PRUNE.’
‘Prune,’ the room murmurs in agreement, elated by the progress, as pencils inscribe the letters, the crossword steadily yielding to the tribal will. As the hour passes, and more clues are tackled, I mentally jog through a checklist of recommendations for all-round brain health. This is the kind that Dementia Australia issued, back in the chapter on memory, where stimuli such as reading, learning, music and puzzle-play were ranked as highly as a healthy diet and regular exercise.
Look at the crossword collective in this light: twice a month they walk upstairs to stretch their brains over 32 clues, give or take, but also to meet with friends, exchange news and share photos of grandchildren. Indeed, socialising is no less a part of the therapy this crew calls a hobby. In 2011, the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center in Chicago released its findings from a longitudinal study, a health survey conducted over ten years. During that time, some 1138 people with an average age of 79 were canvassed on their lifestyles, and gauged on their cognitive wellbeing.
Points were afforded for each social marker, be that restaurant-going, church services, classes, clubs or even the local bingo. As lead author on the project, Bryan James, explains, ‘We were able to look at not just changes in cognition, but changes in social activity. That way we were able to see which preceded the other.’
The results were compelling. According to the data, the greater a subject’s social engagement, the stronger their defences against cognitive deterioration. For every one-point increase on the social scorecard, there was a 47 per cent drop in that person’s rate of cognitive decline. The more gregarious outliers in the study enjoyed a 70 per cent reduction in the rate of decline.
James concludes, ‘Socialising relieves stress, and there’s a huge connection between stress and problems with the brain as we get older.’ The clue for this is there in our brains. Primates in general, compared to all other orders, own a bigger neocortex. Among the non-humans in that order, the more social members such as baboons and bonobos possess larger cortices. Topping the list, boasting the largest cortex of all, is the human animal. According to James, speaking to Time magazine, ‘Our brains may be evolved for knowing about 150 people. If you only interact with one or two people, it may not be what we evolved to do.’
So meeting up with friends every few weeks to interact, and swap stories, and decode a cryptic crossword, is a very positive step. Kelvin Edwards, 84, was guiding the group that first day I came, a former teacher in ‘real life’ and a gifted musician in his own right. Handy as well; the bloke once built a harpsichord from scratch, a shed project he pursued somewhere between his PhD on literacy and developing a love for calligraphy.
At my elbow as I write this book is Kelvin’s clue-primer, sealed in plastic, every page presenting a different list of cryptic recipes, from anagrams to charades to ‘Additions, Omissions, Etc.’ While it was handwritten, Kelvin has rendered each list in a different script: container clues, say, are arrayed in Gothic. Double meanings, Corinthian. And so-called Head Scratchers are full-blown Spencerian.
It’s a cryptic book of love, all the dearer for the mentor’s death in 2016. The news landed heavily in my inbox. At the memorial service off Grieve Parade (seriously, Kelvin would have loved that), I found myself surrounded by familiar faces. The U3A classroom had migrated to the Chapel of Repose in Altona. Eulogies were marbled with stories of ‘Dad’s’ or ‘Poppa’s’ wordplay, his boundless sense of fun, how the man loved making kites and corny jokes.
Next door in the tearoom, a battered Oxford Dictionary sat among the lamingtons, plus a pre-loved thesaurus, a dog-eared cyclopaedia. The cryptic solvers (Advanced) gravitated towards these sacraments, and remembered.
Two weeks later, they again climbed the stairs of Ross House—John and Isabelle, Joan and Felicity, Robert and Angela, Ian and Cathy, each pilgrim armed with another thorny puzzle to unpick—and they socialised. And they co-solved. In Room 1, Level 1, they kept the flame alive, the memories and epiphanies, the groans and minced oaths, together.
Esprit de core
Other clans assemble in other corners, the magnet of a puzzle exerting its pull. Over the years I’ve met anaesthetists who animate operations with cryptic grabs: their recipe for staying alert. Professional actors likewise depend on solving clues during rehearsals, the crossword a tonic compared to the distraction of a novel, where a competing narrative stands to blur your focus on the script.
And every Friday a certain software company in Sydney seems deserted as its programmers gather for a makeshift workshop at the café downstairs. ‘Back in 2008,’ recalls Neo, using his codename in case his boss ever realises how many hours are sacrificed to cryptic lore, ‘we had rival solving groups. At lunchtime, there’d be two tables set up for a crossword showdown. Yet we’ve grown closer over time and just have one group these days.’
Group solving is an act of alchemy—working as a team can elicit the best in everybody, with one person’s idle remark levering loose another’s idea, which leads to a third’s sudden insight. So many minds focused on one grid will ferment a rare blend of competition and cooperation. As a team player you’re out to shine as much as support, proving yourself a valued member of the coterie, someone who’s both savvy and simpatico.
The scientific term for this is pro-social behaviour. Locked in this dynamic, a weird mojo can descend on any clue. I know this first-hand: facing a stumper you’ll be getting nowhere as a solo solver, yet the minute you share the clue with a friend—vocalise it, theorise it—the subterfuge fractures and the light spills in.
Parallels between solving and coding are not lost on Neo. ‘We see some aspects of our programming culture appearing in our crossword group. We have a “driver” who reads the clues and wields the pen. There’s a lot of time spent by individuals thinking about the clues and taking it apart themselves, suggesting ideas and seeing what people latch on to. So there is a similarity there in that group work can help a bit, but individuals ultimately solve the problems.’
TWO’S COMPANY—U3A’S A CLASS
The University of the Third Age (aka U3A) began life in Toulouse back in 1973, ensuring elder minds didn’t get rusty in retirement. Since then the movement has blossomed across some forty nations.
Melbourne was home to the first Australian campus in 1984, with each state swiftly following suit. At last count, enrolments hovered at around 85,000 students coast to coast, in courses including languages, computing, philosophy, current affairs, yoga, bridge and the ever-popular wine appreciation. To learn more about learning, or where your nearest U3A campus can be found, visit <www.u3aonline.org.au/find-a-u3a?combine=Australia>.
Or do they? That’s the ongoing debate in some pockets of psychology. Journalist James Surowiecki, in his 2004 book The Wisdom of Crowds, argues a crowd holds ‘a nearly complete picture of the world in its collective brain’. But the more diverse the crowd the greater the chances of success. When a team comprises like experts—solely IT programmers, say—the group can be prone to exploiting a single vein of knowledge. With a wider sampling of intelligent people, like the Ross House brigade, or the complementary strengths of Cindy and Richard, there’s greater potential for exploration.
Rather than choose puzzles to underscore his point, Surowiecki opted for a nuclear submarine. In 1968, the USS Scorpion vanished in the Atlantic between Spain and Rhode Island. Locating the vessel felt as improbable as winning the lottery until John Craven, a scientist attached to the US Navy, assembled a group of thinkers—from oceanographers to mathematicians—and set them a real-life puzzle. If you had to draw an X in the sea, the likely place to find the sub, then where would it be?
Importantly, all the elements of an effective group dynamic were in place:
Diversity—no member of the group shared the same string of letters after their name, and therefore carried a healthy store of ‘private information’.
Decentralisation—no wild-eyed admiral ruled the meeting with that top-down tyranny of some workplaces we might know.
Independence—everyone’s thoughts mattered as much as the next sub-hunter’s.
Aggregation—some means existed for everyone’s smart guess to be melded into a smarter one.
The submarine hunt ran more in line with a guessing game than a brainstorm seeking a prescribed answer.
Neo calls it hypothesis-forming, a skill integral to programming and crosswording. Working in isolation, in the office or the grid, you need to process the invisible algebra alone—test option A, only to dismiss A, and move on to option B, or J, or Q , whichever might satisfy the equation. This is healthy exercise for the brain, but add a colleague, a lover, a dozen classmates, and the puzzle sparks an open laboratory of tested speculations, trialled and trashed in record time.
It sounds ruthless, but I saw no such thing in Room 1, Level 1—and can’t imagine knives being hurled in the café of a certain IT giant. To the contrary, every solver I quizzed for this book talked of love and enjoyment when describing the practice of puzzling.
And let’s not forget Christine Hooker’s revelations, back in 2010. Hooker was the assistant professor of psychology at Harvard, the researcher to link puzzle-solving with rapprochement among disgruntled couples. If we use the prefrontal cortex more often—whether that’s to wrestle sudokus or moderate anger—we gain a greater ability to overcome ill feelings, and preserve an esprit de corps.
The evidence is in, both the anecdotal and academic: crosswords can bring people closer together, whether that entails falling in love or keeping the brain limber into your third age. They can inspire wedding proposals or noontide cabals. They can expedite forgiveness or see two groups coalesce.
But wait there’s more: even if you solve a crossword in isolation, away from the crowd, set apart from your partner, the same activity will exercise your latent carpal rotor reflex, which regular bouts of brain-bending will tell you is an anagram of lateral prefrontal cortex, the very chamber that accommodates good relations.
As for that submarine, I won’t leave you in limbo. Craven combined his team’s individual guesses into one collective estimate. In the end, while no member of the group pinpointed the stricken vessel, the derived X was only 200 metres from where the actual wreck was eventually found—a mere 200 metres in an open sea of 106,460,000 square metres. That’s some guesswork.
So no matter the puzzle—a shipwreck, a sequence of matches, a memory-bender, a cryptic clue—enigmas help us think. And keep thinking.
