The joy of crosswords

Many years ago, due to technical gremlins, the daily crossword did not appear in this newspaper.

The next day the phones in the newsroom went crazy as hordes of apoplectic crossworders rang in with plenty of cross words for whatever hapless reporter happened to answer the phone. Staff tried their best to mollify the miffed, but it was no easy task.

Readers look forward to their newspaper crossword puzzle and feel bereft when, for whatever reason, it doesn’t appear.

An outside agency supplies the crossword puzzles to the News Letter, but try telling that to Disgusted-of-Dromore, etc, when a setter has made a mistake with 16 across and our reader has spent hours wracking their brain, trying to solve the unsolvable.

Crossworders are ardent in their affection for the puzzle, which first took the US by storm in 1913 when it appeared in a Sunday newspaper, the New York World.

Since they enthusiasts have been touting the benefits of crossword puzzles for mental acuity and just good old-fashioned innocent entertainment.

There are also numerous health benefits of crossword puzzles since they keep your brain sharp and engaged, something many older people are aware of.

A major study published in 2017 suggests people who do a daily crossword have sharper brains as they grow older.

Experts said completing the tricky word puzzles often found in the middle of newspapers helps boost attention, reasoning and memory.

They estimate by taking part in the challenging quizzes adults can stop their brains ageing by 10 years.

Despite not going as far as saying crosswords could prevent dementia, significant links between keeping the brain healthy in old age and a reduced risk of the devastating disease have been uncovered in recent years.

The ‘very exciting’ findings, led by Exeter University and Kings College London, were based on data from more than 17,000 participants.

Professor Keith Wesnes, from the University of Exeter, said further research is needed to back-up their initial results.

He added: ‘We found direct relationships between the frequency of word puzzle use and the speed and accuracy of performance on nine cognitive tasks assessing a range of aspects of function including attention, reasoning and memory.

‘‘Performance was consistently better in those who reported engaging in puzzles, and generally improved incrementally with the frequency of puzzle use.’’

Isabel Rea, 89, regularly attends Age NI’s Day Centre at the Skainos Centre in east Belfast, and has been passionate about crossword puzzles since she was a child.

‘‘I would do them in a crossword book. I’m not very brainy, but I do my best at them.

‘‘I’ve done crosswords my whole life, even as a kid. My mother or my father did them and I must have got it from watching them.’’

Isabel, who worked in her father’s grocery shop, admits she steers clear of those fiendishly difficult cryptic crosswords, but believes doing even the ‘easier’ ones helps to keep her mind active.

‘‘It helps me with my spelling and I learn new words.

‘‘If there’s a word I don’t understand I’ll look it up in my dictionary.’’

Isabel’s friend, Emily Campbell, also loves doing crosswords.

The 85-year-old former weaver said: ‘‘When I’m not knitting, I would look at the papers to see if there is a crossword in it and I would try and do it.

‘‘I think it helps to keep my mind sharp and I learn new words, although some of them I can’t spell.’’

Emily said she loves the sense of achievement she gets from finishing a crossword.

‘‘I enjoy them, especially when you come to the end and you’ve no more clues to do.’’

Like Isabel, Emily doesn’t do cryptic crosswords, but said her husband ‘‘was great at them’’.

‘‘He won £20 one time for finishing one. We used the money to go out for our dinner one night.’’

Denise Molloy, 64, a volunteer with Age NI, also enjoys the mental gymnastics of a good crossword.

‘‘I wouldn’t be doing The Times or anything like that, I usually do the ones in the Women’s Weekly.

‘‘I haven’t done them in the papers for a long time. My father was great at crosswords.’’

Like the other ladies, Denise said she enjoys ‘‘the challenge’’.

‘‘ It makes you think. I was quite good at English at school. I like words.

‘‘ You feel a sense of achievement when you finish a crossword.

‘‘The odd time if I can’t get a word, I’ve cheated and looked it up in the dictionary.

‘‘And then again, sometimes if I can’t get it I would go into the cryptic clues and sometimes get the answer from that.’’

Crosswording is often perceived as a solo pursuit, but in reality it is as likely to be a group activity, in the workplace, with parents or as a couple.

There is a group of keen crossworders at Milesian Manor in Co Londonderry.

One of those is Lita Muldoon.

She said: ‘‘When you don’t keep your mind active it can get foggy, crosswords are a great way of clearing your head.

‘‘ I like to complete them both alone and sometimes do one with a friend, it’s good to help each other and together we usually manage to finish.’’

Fellow resident Linden Mc Kinley added: ‘‘I love word searches and crosswords.

‘‘I like to finish first it makes me feel good about myself.’’

Moira O’Neill does a crossword every single day.

She said: ‘‘I just love the feeling of filling in every box, it makes me feel really good about myself and keeps the mind going a bit longer.’’

And Annie Diamond, who is also a dab hand at crosswords, added: ‘‘I like completing them, but don’t like it when the questions are too hard, I am 100 years old after all!

‘‘The ones I really enjoy have questions about the farming community or baking, I’m really good at those ones.’’

Crossword puzzles, whether you are good at them or not, offer a retreat from an increasingly chaotic world.

Then, of course, there’s that satisfyingly smug feeling when you fill in the last word.

Colin Dexter, creator of the crossword addict Inspector Morse, summed it up so well: ‘The hobby and the habit of solving crosswords is the most serene and civilised way of wasting time that I have yet discovered.’’