Sometimes (very rarely, I’m happy to say) the crossword puzzle is missing from the newspaper. I get a little cranky when that happens; the puzzles, comics, columns, editorials and letters to the editor were the first things that I read in our daily paper when I was growing up. Even then, most of the news was already old by the time the paper arrived each day — we having heard everything of importance on the four daily radio newscasts that my dad listened to at mealtimes and 10 p.m. before going to bed.
Over the years, I enjoyed the writings of Herb Owens, Elizabeth Clarkson Zwart, Ann Landers, Dear Abby, Harlan Miller, Donald Kaul, Heloise, Erma Bombeck and others. I wasn’t aware of it at the time, but my enjoyment of their columns may have something to do with why I’ve been writing this column for all these years.
The daily black and white comic strips, and the four pages of glorious color comics in the hefty Des Moines Sunday Register, may have also had something to do with why I’m writing this column. For a long time, I considered myself an artist only — the notion of being a writer never occurred to me until I offered Brian Fleck some of my original cartoons for this paper way back in the early 1970’s. He used several of the cartoons that were based on young children and small-town life, but that was before versatile computer programs that could easily convert my drawings into a size to fit the page space. Eventually, I answered his request for someone to write a food column, and that gradually evolved into my writing about whatever popped into my mind every week.
I have to blame Cyberspace for the lack of all those wonderful columns I enjoyed so much. People can find all sorts of advice, opinions and humor on the Internet, and those of us who are not connected just have to put up with the loss. So, I’ve come to count on that weekly crossword and the Sudoku puzzle every week. I feel betrayed when they are missing, though I try to be tolerant and understand that maybe there wasn’t room for them when the paper was formatted.
Several years ago, when I was suffering from back problems and forced to spend most of my time in idleness — at least physical idleness — I passed much of the time with books of crossword puzzles and other mental challenges. Eventually I began making my own crosswords and versions of Jumbles and several types of coded puzzles. One that I particularly enjoyed designing was a sort of word algebra that used synonyms as clue words to solve “equations.” I tried it out on a few of my friends but it was only the writers, who loved working with words, who approved of it and thought it had potential for publication. I suppose it’s fortunate for other puzzle-lovers that my back got better and I abandoned the idea of peddling my invention to the highest bidder.
More recently, physical idleness found me again alternating between books, daytime television and puzzles. Last summer, I had a temporary problem finding words after being on morphine for surgery. Thanks to such puzzles and a speech therapist, I seem to have fully recovered the forgotten vocabulary, but found myself with a half-finished book of Word-Find puzzles. One day recently, I came across a puzzle that consisted of words made up of the letters in “Elvis Presley.” The challenge given in the book amounted to 33 words, but I kept thinking of more and more words using just those letters. Curious, I started writing them down and was amazed at how many more words I could make. I didn’t use any one letter more times than it appears in the name, and I eliminated all two-letter words and all plurals of three-letter words. I found a number of anagrams (Vile, live and evil, for instance; elver and lever; viler and liver.) My list was up to 75 words and counting before I abandoned it. I may never know how many words are possible. I might try the same challenge with other celebrity names — or maybe those of friends and relatives. Well, it’s something to do the next time the crossword is missing from the paper.
A former volunteer and substitute teacher in the Solon schools, Milli is an artist and poet who lives near Morse where she also creates unique greeting cards and handmade books.