Apparently, I Do Crossword Puzzles Now.

brain-teasers as a metaphor for life

Once you reach a certain stage of midlife, you start seeing lots of content with ominous clickbaity titles like, The Three Exercises You Should Do Every Day to Keep Your Body From Deteriorating or How to Keep Brain Atrophy at Bay. If you are a woman, you also are treated to articles telling you what not to wear, which hairstyles will age you, and why gray is the new hair power color.

I do my share of planks (though I avoid burpees whenever possible), appreciate that “coastal grandma” is a desirable aesthetic, and jumped on the Wordle bandwagon along with everyone else during the pandemic. One thing I’ve never consistently gotten into is crossword puzzles. Until now.

What a contrast to go from living my best life in Portugal to being housebound in Seattle with COVID during a heat wave. Too sick to cook, too tired and dizzy to exercise, with only so much content I could stand to consume and FOMO from everyone else’s summer fun, I turned to the thing that gives me validation and control — the New York Times app Games section.

It started innocently enough. I’d long since abandoned Wordle, which I used to do each morning in bed, time-constrained by the demands of early morning boot camp and work. In my fevered COVID state, bored and lying around with no obligations, Wordle became interesting again and I appreciated this small sense of accomplishment during the long days of nothingness.

But Wordle was just a gateway.

On Monday, when I needed a break from the (SPOILER ALERT) harrowing and inevitable descent into addiction that Demon Copperhead was leading me towards, I opened NYT Games to try my hand at guessing a few crossword clues. The puzzle was shockingly easy. Of course it was just a Monday puzzle. Still, I felt a small surge of pride. I was on a roll and I wanted to keep on going.

Did you know that if you live on the West Coast, the next day’s puzzles will appear sometime around 9 pm Pacific Time? That was coincidentally around the same time that my fever would kick in with a vengeance. A new puzzle was a welcome distraction. Tuesday’s puzzle was in the bag before I went to bed on Monday night.

My trusty puzzle companion.

I zipped through the Wednesday and Thursday puzzles, though maybe I google-checked one or two of my answers and used the puzzle’s auto check function a time or two to identify and remove mistakes, even though the app made me feel guilty for doing so. I blame the fever. While impatiently waiting for the next crossword to become available, I discovered the “mini” to feed my growing habit. Sometimes I dabbled in Spelling Bee, but it felt too open-ended. I like solving problems with concrete and finite solutions.

Friday puzzle - done. Then came Saturday, notoriously the hardest puzzle of the week. Was it a fluke that I completed most of the Saturday puzzle so quickly?

Or was this the new me?

My attempt to get into the holiday spirit with Alison Roman’s Simple Fruit Tart from her new book, Sweet Enough. Recipe is here: https://www.alisoneroman.com/recipes/simple-fruit-tart.

Full disclosure: I used to do the Sunday NY Times crossword puzzles with J, each of us taking a turn answering clues until we reached an impasse that the other person would clear. But he got too good for me and I became frustrated and impatient. Though I’ve always thought of myself as smart and worldly, I worried that “mom brain” was turning me into someone I didn’t want to be. Someone with a very narrow window on the world, whose only essential contribution was a French phrase or two and the ability to remember who starred in Get Christie Love.

Lately I’ve been on something of a personal odyssey, making peace with aging, figuring out what I want my next chapter to be, and developing a road map to get to my desired destination. This involves implementing some new habits — decluttering, working through a series of unsexy tasks with discipline, confronting messy bureaucratic hurdles.

The crossword puzzles felt like a metaphor for working through challenges. I especially appreciated the triumphant music that the app would play whenever I completed one. It’s apparently called the San Jose Strut and I’m not the only one who appreciates it.

We were well into the July 4 holiday weekend, one that I wouldn’t be able to enjoy, and I was feeling sorry for myself and increasingly debilitated with dizziness. I wish it had taken me longer to do the Sunday puzzle, but it was a cakewalk. J had gone off on a day trip in pursuit of windsurfing. Miserably left to my own devices, with a splitting headache, I combed the house looking for a Sunday NY Times magazine with an empty puzzle.

I don’t know John Westwig, the software engineer from Seattle whose friends complain that his puzzles are too hard, but I’d like to give him a piece of the part of my mind that wasn’t destroyed trying to figure out his impenetrable creation.

I found the answers to that puzzle online, thinking I just needed a little boost to get my mojo back. I futilely checked answer after answer, before giving up in disgust and succumbing to my growing fears.

What if my success had merely be fever-fueled? What if I am so dependent on devices that I can only successfully complete a crossword puzzle online?

After more than a week housebound, I emerged from my prison to mask up and enjoy an extreme minus tide with a trip to our neighborhood beach. It was a welcome relief and I looked forward to re-entering the world.

I paid the price over the next few days, too tired to move. In desperation, I once again turned to crossword puzzles. I sailed through Monday through Friday, John Westwig be damned. This gave me the fortitude to tackle some of the items on my future-focused to-do list and even cook something healthy.

Wild Rice Salad with Beet, Cucumbers and Dill from Joshua McFadden’s Grains for Every Season. Recipe is here: https://sheerluxe.com/life/wild-rice-salad-roasted-beets-cucumbers-and-dill

It’s Day 13 of COVID and though I am still testing positive, I can feel the dementor-like virus that has overwhelmed me slowly evaporating. Soon I’ll be back to real life and I may no longer have the time or the inclination to focus on crossword puzzles.

Given my big plans for the future, this worries me.

Absent this daily test of fortitude, this elixir, if you will, how will I stay focused and tapped into the version of me I’m hoping to be — someone who takes risks, does not shy away from a challenge, has staying power, stays well-read and well-informed, and isn’t afraid to judiciously use resources without feeling guilty?

Back to you, Wordle.

Slice of Midlife got its start as a food blog, in the days when there was far less food content than there is now. When I go back and look at my old blog, I’m impressed with the extensive recipe section.

I belong to several online cookbook groups and am an avid user of Eat Your Books. While I was in Portugal, the Food 52 cookbook club was cooking from Seattle chef Renee Erickson’s delightful book, Getaway: Food and Drink to Transport You, which makes you feel like you are on vacation, even in your own backyard. When I got home, the last thing I enjoyed before getting hit hard with COVID was her delicious Melon and Mint Mojito.

I highly recommend you give it a try, maybe with your favorite summer bounty, and a crossword puzzle of course.