Uni High Gargoyle Staff Blog

I’m a person who, on occasion, likes to complain.

The only thing is, I usually have to go out of my way to find some obscure, usually inconsequential topic to complain about. Today, on the other hand, the job was done for me.

Even before I got to school, I was sick of crossword puzzles. The one I had attempted in the News Gazette the night before was still sitting on the counter, unfinished except for one or two obvious answers. When I got to school, I largely forgot about it, and everything was fine until second period.

While sitting in the lounge, I saw two people working on a pair of crossword puzzles, and they were doing pretty well. That’s when I hit the roof.

How is it possible that I can be so much worse at those puzzles than almost everybody else I talk to? Within my family, my sister is better than I am, my dad is better than I am, and even my grandmother is better than I am! And people at Uni? Forget about it!

But that realization got me thinking; why do people even bother working on these things? When you think about it, the idea of filling a bunch of unrelated trivia into a small boxlike region is pretty strange, and completely unnecessary.

Would it be so hard for the New York Times to make a crossword puzzle that I would be able to figure out? How am I supposed to figure out a four-letter word for “tear down, in England?” Honestly.

Wouldn’t we all be happier if we spent our time doing something more meaningful than filling letters into small boxes? You could take a walk. Or write a letter. Or work on a Sudoku puzzle.

A four-letter first name of someone who is sick of crossword puzzles? Take a guess.

—Carl Zielinski