Leap of Faith, Three Letters... Answer? Pen

I've written here in the past about my love of Scrabble (actually, two posts, both almost verbatim... my blog-memory for topics isn't as sharp as it should be).

As noted (twice), I inherited my talent with tiles and two-letter words from my Mom.

From Dad, however, I inherited a different word skill: tackling each Sunday's big-sized New York Times crossword puzzle.

This arrangement is the exact opposite of the Scrabble tradition:

Whereas Scrabble was driven by Mom and shunned by Dad, the NYT puzzle was a Dad-favorite that Mom had little patience for.

Actually, she would attempt it. But she somehow couldn't wrap her head around the themes. And the wordplay -- rather than intriguing her -- seemed to annoy her.

She also had a nasty habit of working the puzzle in pen, which was against Dad's 11th Commandment:

Thou shalt never work the NYT crossword in pen!

Side note: I actually did this -- worked a puzzle in ink -- for the first time about three weeks ago. We were on a long flight, and I had packed the puzzle in my carry-on but neglected to pack a pencil. I borrowed a pen from Eileen (airports apparently don't sell pencils), held my breath and dug in.

Actually, things turned out pretty well.

The tips I've learned in tackling crosswords all came from Dad. He taught me, for example, that if a clue is plural, so is the answer. So, for example, a clue of "Alleyway Felines" would be CATS; whereas a clue reading "Alleyway Feline" would be CAT.

And that if the clue contains an abbreviation, so does the answer.

And that the overall theme of a puzzle is usually a play on words or a series of truly groan-worthy puns.

And that there is value in putting a puzzle down for a while and coming back later. Sometimes, he would say, a fresh perspective brings a couple more answers.

... and that's a truism that applies to life itself, as well as crossword puzzles.

Dad and I would work these puzzles together throughout the week. The folded paper would rest on the kitchen table or in the living room, and when one of us felt up to the task, we'd pick it up and pore over the open spaces.

When Dad would dig in for a while and then realize he had hit a series of dead ends, he would hand the page to me and always say the same thing:

"I finished all the hard ones; you can finish the easy ones."

Yeah, right.

Although I've done other crosswords -- those in our daily newspaper, for example, or the enterainment-oriented ones that used to show up in our published television listings -- the only one that I've stuck with is NYT. A lot of the others are stupidly easy, which erases all the fun. A puzzle that can be completed accurately in 20 minutes is a puzzle that's not worth doing.

My collaborations with Dad on the NYT crossword faded over time. When I moved out and got married, sharing the puzzle became too difficult. But we would often discuss our progress when talking on the phone.

His passing in 2006 put an end to our tag-team solving.

But I'm still at it.

And every now and then, when I get stumped, I imagine him looking over my shoulder and offering a hint or two.

Or suggesting a different read on a clue.

Or pointing out an error.

Which makes it a good thing that I work in pencil.