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I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that I need a hobby that sucks less.
I mean, yes, the crossword construction thing gets me published and makes me money and all that, and yes, I think I'm getting pretty decent at it, but this is such a lonely pastime. I'm not talking about the head-down-over-graph-paper-with-three-erasers-and-a-massive-headache part—I do that bit during lulls at work, and besides, very writer reading this is thinking, "Been there, done that" on that count. No, I'm more thinking of the in-between bits, when I really want to talk about this thing that occupies so much of my brainspace, and I suddenly realize that I'm talking about problems that no one can relate to.
Take today, for instance. This evening I polished off an ass-kicking 400-pound gorilla of a puzzle, one that had been giving me trouble for about a year with one unpublishable rough draft followed by a half-dozen failed attempts to fix the bastard. If you'll allow me to pat myself on the back a bit, I rocked the house on this bad boy: good theme, open design, awesome grid fill, not too many questionable entries, and Sunday-sized to boot (i.e. a cool four figures if Will Shortz thinks it's worth printing). I was literally doing fist-pumps in the air as I went. And I so, so want to tell people about this.
But that's where the problem comes in: you have never seen eye-crossing like the kind you get from people when you start talking crossword shop talk at them. It's not that they're not interested; I reckon that a lot of folks are curious just because it's something they normally don't put much thought into all that often. But when I start getting into money letters and minimizing cheaters and stacking theme answers and throwing around names like Reagle and Barry, I know for a fact that I'm standing alone on this boat, and my conversation partner, although interested, is waving from the shore I've been paddling away from ever since I started getting into specifics.
"Holy crow," I'll say, "I worked in AIDANQUINN as a non-theme entry!"
"That's nice," they'll say, thinking that, well, it must be an achievement of some sort since I'm bothering to tell them about it, but it's best not to ask because then he'll explain it, and that would be so much worse.
So here's my confession: I HAVE A LAME HOBBY. There. I feel better having said that.
(The puzzle today, though? Kicks ass. Still needs a few touch-ups, though, and then there's the cluing, which I despise because...hey, wait, where did everybody...helloooooo?)
I mean, yes, the crossword construction thing gets me published and makes me money and all that, and yes, I think I'm getting pretty decent at it, but this is such a lonely pastime. I'm not talking about the head-down-over-graph-paper-with-three-erasers-and-a-massive-headache part—I do that bit during lulls at work, and besides, very writer reading this is thinking, "Been there, done that" on that count. No, I'm more thinking of the in-between bits, when I really want to talk about this thing that occupies so much of my brainspace, and I suddenly realize that I'm talking about problems that no one can relate to.
Take today, for instance. This evening I polished off an ass-kicking 400-pound gorilla of a puzzle, one that had been giving me trouble for about a year with one unpublishable rough draft followed by a half-dozen failed attempts to fix the bastard. If you'll allow me to pat myself on the back a bit, I rocked the house on this bad boy: good theme, open design, awesome grid fill, not too many questionable entries, and Sunday-sized to boot (i.e. a cool four figures if Will Shortz thinks it's worth printing). I was literally doing fist-pumps in the air as I went. And I so, so want to tell people about this.
But that's where the problem comes in: you have never seen eye-crossing like the kind you get from people when you start talking crossword shop talk at them. It's not that they're not interested; I reckon that a lot of folks are curious just because it's something they normally don't put much thought into all that often. But when I start getting into money letters and minimizing cheaters and stacking theme answers and throwing around names like Reagle and Barry, I know for a fact that I'm standing alone on this boat, and my conversation partner, although interested, is waving from the shore I've been paddling away from ever since I started getting into specifics.
"Holy crow," I'll say, "I worked in AIDANQUINN as a non-theme entry!"
"That's nice," they'll say, thinking that, well, it must be an achievement of some sort since I'm bothering to tell them about it, but it's best not to ask because then he'll explain it, and that would be so much worse.
So here's my confession: I HAVE A LAME HOBBY. There. I feel better having said that.
(The puzzle today, though? Kicks ass. Still needs a few touch-ups, though, and then there's the cluing, which I despise because...hey, wait, where did everybody...helloooooo?)
