Areas of Unrest

17 September 2000 - Puzzlingly Hot

QOTD: "The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time." - Bertrand Russell

Reading: Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, Nothing Sacred

Listening to: Snakefarm, Songs From My Funeral

I had grand plans for the weekend. I was going to mediate our local transit strike, cure world hunger, bring peace to the Middle East. There was just one little problem. It was too bloody hot to do anything.

I did get out and run a few errands, grateful that the air conditioning in my car is reasonably effective. And I went to the storytelling get-together at Otherworld Cottage, even giving a lift to a friend who's moved nearby since I had last seen her. (This was mostly socializing and some informal telling, rather than a real story swap.) But mostly I cowered in the coolth of my living room, watching bits and pieces of the Olympics and trying to persuade myself that doing puzzles counts as cleaning my desk. (If they're done they get thrown out and are no longer on the desk, so it must be cleaning, right?)

I did finish putting photos in albums, which called for rewarding myself with time for a logic puzzle. I filled in a survey I need to stick in the mail, which called for rewarding myself with a diagramless. Doing the dishes - cryptogram. Washing my nylons - anacrostic. For every ten minute chore, I can justify an hour or so with a puzzle book.

I first got addicted to these puzzle books when I had braces as a kid. After appointments at the orthodontist, we went to the stationery store at the corner for treats. Candy wasn't a suitable reward for dentistry, but puzzle books were, and we worked to make the entertainment last until the next month's visit. Was it better to have a whole book of skeleton puzzles or all word searches or to get the variety puzzles instead? Did you go straight to the cross sums (still one of my favorites) or start with the logic problems, pondering whether Laura wore green and ordered the butterscotch pudding, which meant that Denise was Miss Jones, the English teacher? How hard did you have to try at the word games in which 100 was a very good score and 110 excellent, but their expert had achieved 118?

I don't buy puzzle books all that often, but every now and then I succumb - usually at an airport newsstand. Most often I buy books of just math and logic puzzles. Sometimes, though, like the last time I bought one, I'll select a book of general variety puzzles. I do the crosswords and anacrostics when I don't have scrap paper handy for scribbled computations or attempts at unscrambling anagrams. Dealing with scrap paper is too awkward on airplanes and in hotel rooms. But there are better things to do at home than puzzles. The books end up, unfinished, replaced by newer ones, in a stack on my desk.

Doing puzzles counts as cleaning my desk. Especially on a hot Olympian day.