Crossword Clue In Quotes

....her life would be a giddy crossword, working down from some clues and across from others.

Things didn't feel right; I hadn't been able to relax yesterday, hadn't been able to settle to anything. I just felt on edge, somehow. If my mood was a crossword clue, the answer would be "discombobulated.

Truth slid into my mind like the answer to a crossword clue long after the paper’s been thrown away, and my mouth formed the words I didn’t want to say.

Had she really understood then that those were the best of times? That she was in heaven? She thinks she did understand, yes. Understood she had been given a great gift. Doing the crossword in a train carriage, Stephen with a can of beer ("I will only drink beer on trains, nowhere else, don't ask me why"), glasses halfway down his nose, reading out clues. The real secret was that when they looked at each other, they each thought they had the better deal.

Things didn’t feel right; I hadn’t been able to relax yesterday, hadn’t been able to settle to anything. I just felt on edge, somehow. If my mood was a crossword clue, the answer would be “discombobulated.

Next, he showed the girls a narrow Incan street. Both sides of it had high stone walls and the driver stopped so the visitors could walk down a short distance to see the famous twelve-sided stone which was part of it. Each girl counted the sides and marveled at the way the ancient stonecutters had trimmed this enormous rock to accommodate the ones fitted around it. The young tourists noticed that all the stones were so perfectly fitted that there was not one single opening or crack between them. Not even an earthquake could damage this amazing artisanship!

Whatever wisdom I have has been hard-earned – each meaning carefully culled out of the dictionary of human experiences and emotions and put in its precise place in the matrix. Meaning doesn’t come easy. The Great Crossword Setter in the Sky is capricious and wilful, demanding absolute obedience. You can waste the better part of a lifetime arguing about the randomness of the clues, the setting of the squares, why a certain square is black and not white as you need it to be, question the whole point of doing the crossword – what, after all, is to be gained by solving it. Only after all the chattering is over and you give your complete attention to it, does the perfection of the pattern reveal itself. As is, where is, everything fits. And at the end, when it’s all done, there is no reward to be had – the joy of doing it right is all the reward there ever is. (A Deepavali Gift)

The mind state caused by ambiguity is called uncertainty, and it’s an emotional amplifier. It makes anxiety more agonizing, and pleasure especially enjoyable. The delight of crossword puzzles, for example, comes from pondering and resolving ambiguous clues. Detective stories, among the most successful literary genres of all time, concoct their suspense by sustaining uncertainty about hints and culprits. Mind-bending modern art, the multiplicities of poetry, Lewis Carroll’s riddles, Márquez’s magical realism, Kafka’s existential satire—ambiguity saturates our art forms and masterpieces, suggesting its deeply emotional nature. Goethe once said that “what we agree with leaves us inactive, but contradiction makes us productive.” So it is with ambiguity.

Sacsahuaman

To a British crossword enthusiast, the clue “An important city in Czechoslovakia” instantly suggests Oslo. Why? Look at Czech(OSLO)vakia again. “A seed you put in the garage” is caraway, while “HIJKLMNO” is water because it is H-to-O or H2O

This actually did happen to a real person, and the real person is me. I had gone to catch a train. This was April 1976, in Cambridge, U.K. I was a bit early for the train. I’d gotten the time of the train wrong. I went to get myself a newspaper to do the crossword, and a cup of coffee and a packet of cookies. I went and sat at a table. I want you to picture the scene. It’s very important that you get this very clear in your mind. Here’s the table, newspaper, cup of coffee, packet of cookies. There’s a guy sitting opposite me, perfectly ordinary-looking guy wearing a business suit, carrying a briefcase. It didn’t look like he was going to do anything weird. What he did was this: he suddenly leaned across, picked up the packet of cookies, tore it open, took one out, and ate it. Now this, I have to say, is the sort of thing the British are very bad at dealing with. There’s nothing in our background, upbringing, or education that teaches you how to deal with someone who in broad daylight has just stolen your cookies. You know what would happen if this had been South Central Los Angeles. There would have very quickly been gunfire, helicopters coming in, CNN, you know… But in the end, I did what any red-blooded Englishman would do: I ignored it. And I stared at the newspaper, took a sip of coffee, tried to do a clue in the newspaper, couldn’t do anything, and thought, What am I going to do? In the end I thought Nothing for it, I’ll just have to go for it, and I tried very hard not to notice the fact that the packet was already mysteriously opened. I took out a cookie for myself. I thought, That settled him. But it hadn’t because a moment or two later he did it again. He took another cookie. Having not mentioned it the first time, it was somehow even harder to raise the subject the second time around. “Excuse me, I couldn’t help but notice…” I mean, it doesn’t really work. We went through the whole packet like this. When I say the whole packet, I mean there were only about eight cookies, but it felt like a lifetime. He took one, I took one, he took one, I took one. Finally, when we got to the end, he stood up and walked away. Well, we exchanged meaningful looks, then he walked away, and I breathed a sigh of relief and st back. A moment or two later the train was coming in, so I tossed back the rest of my coffee, stood up, picked up the newspaper, and underneath the newspaper were my cookies. The thing I like particularly about this story is the sensation that somewhere in England there has been wandering around for the last quarter-century a perfectly ordinary guy who’s had the same exact story, only he doesn’t have the punch line.

Laden with all these new possessions, I go and sit at a table. And don't ask me what the table was like because this was some time ago and I can't remember. It was probably round." [...] "So let me give you the layout. Me sitting at the table, on my left, the newspaper, on my right, the cup of coffee, in the middle of the table, the packet of biscuits." "I see it perfectly." "What you don't see," said Arthur, "because I haven't mentioned him yet, is the guy sitting at the table already. He is sitting there opposite me." "What's he like?" "Perfectly ordinary. Briefcase. Business suit. He didn't look," said Arthur, "as if he was about to do anything weird." "Ah. I know the type. What did he do?" "He did this. He leaned across the table, picked up the packet of biscuits, tore it open, took one out, and . . ." "What?" "Ate it." "What?" "He ate it." Fenchurch looked at him in astonishment. "What on earth did you do?" "Well, in the circumstances I did what any red-blooded Englishman would do. I was compelled," said Arthur, "to ignore it." "What? Why?" "Well, it's not the sort of thing you're trained for, is it? I searched my soul, and discovered that there was nothing anywhere in my upbringing, experience, or even primal instincts to tell me how to react to someone who has quite simply, calmly, sitting right there in front of me, stolen one of my biscuits." "Well, you could. . ." Fenchurch thought about it. "I must say I'm not sure what I would have done either. So what happened?" "I stared furiously at the crossword," said Arthur, "couldn't do a single clue, took a sip of coffee, it was too hot to drink, so there was nothing for it. I braced myself. I took a biscuit, trying very hard not to notice," he added, "that the packet was already mysteriously open. . ." "But you're fighting back, taking a tough line." "After my fashion, yes. I ate the biscuit. I ate it very deliberately and visibly, so that he would have no doubt as to what it was I was doing. When I eat a biscuit," said Arthur, "it stays eaten." "So what did he do?" "Took another one. Honestly," insisted Arthur, "this is exactly what happened. He took another biscuit, he ate it. Clear as daylight. Certain as we are sitting on the ground." Fenchurch stirred uncomfortably. "And the problem was," said Arthur, "that having not said anything the first time, it was somehow even more difficult to broach the subject the second time around. What do you say? 'Excuse me... I couldn't help noticing, er . . .' Doesn't work. No, I ignored it with, if anything, even more vigor than previously." "My man..." "Stared at the crossword again, still couldn't budge a bit of it, so showing some of the spirit that Henry V did on St. Crispin's Day . ." "What?" "I went into the breach again. I took," said Arthur, "another biscuit. And for an instant our eyes met." "Like this?" "Yes, well, no, not quite like that. But they met. Just for an instant. And we both looked away. But I am here to tell you," said Arthur, "that there was a little electricity in the air. There was a little tension building up over the table. At about this time." "I can imagine."” "We went through the whole packet like this. Him, me, him, me . . ." "The whole packet?" "Well, it was only eight biscuits, but it seemed like a lifetime of biscuits we were getting through at this point. Gladiators could hardly have had a tougher time." "Gladiators," said Fenchurch, "would have had to do it in the sun. More physically gruelling." "There is that. So. When the empty packet was lying dead between us the man at last got up, having done his worst, and left. I heaved a sigh of relief, of course. "As it happened, my train was announced a moment or two later, so I finished my coffee, stood up, picked up the newspaper, and underneath the newspaper . . ." "Yes?" "Were my biscuits." "What?" said Fenchurch. "What?" "True." "No!

Tell me the story," said Fenchurch firmly. "You arrived at the station." "I was about twenty minutes early. I'd got the time of the train wrong." "Get on with it." Fenchurch laughed. "So I bought a newspaper, to do the crossword, and went to the buffet to get a cup of coffee." "You do the crossword?" "Yes." "Which one?" "The Guardian usually." "I think it tries to be too cute. I prefer The Times. Did you solve it?" "What?" "The crossword in the Guardian." "I haven't had a chance to look at it yet," said Arthur, "I'm still trying to buy the coffee." "All right then. Buy the coffee." "I'm buying it. I am also," said Arthur, "buying some biscuits." "What sort?" "Rich Tea." "Good Choice." "I like them. Laden with all these new possessions, I go and sit at a table. And don't ask me what the table was like because this was some time ago and I can't remember. It was probably round." "All right." "So let me give you the layout. Me sitting at the table. On my left, the newspaper. On my right, the cup of coffee. In the middle of the table, the packet of biscuits." "I see it perfectly." "What you don't see," said Arthur, "because I haven't mentioned him yet, is the guy sitting at the table already. He is sitting there opposite me." "What's he look like?" "Perfectly ordinary. Briefcase. Business suit. He didn't look," said Arthur, "as if he was about to do anything weird." "Ah. I know the type. What did he do?" "He did this. He leaned across the table, picked up the packet of biscuits, tore it open, took one out, and..." "What?" "Ate it." "What?" "He ate it." Fenchurch looked at him in astonishment. "What on earth did you do?" "Well, in the circumstances I did what any red-blooded Englishman would do. I was compelled," said Arthur, "to ignore it." "What? Why?" "Well, it's not the sort of thing you're trained for is it? I searched my soul, and discovered that there was nothing anywhere in my upbringing, experience or even primal instincts to tell me how to react to someone who has quite simply, calmly, sitting right there in front of me, stolen one of my biscuits." "Well, you could..." Fenchurch thought about it. "I must say I'm not sure what I would have done either. So what happened?" "I stared furiously at the crossword," said Arthur. "Couldn't do a single clue, took a sip of coffee, it was too hot to drink, so there was nothing for it. I braced myself. I took a biscuit, trying very hard not to notice," he added, "that the packet was already mysteriously open..." "But you're fighting back, taking a tough line." "After my fashion, yes. I ate a biscuit. I ate it very deliberately and visibly, so that he would have no doubt as to what it was I was doing. When I eat a biscuit," Arthur said, "it stays eaten." "So what did he do?" "Took another one. Honestly," insisted Arthur, "this is exactly what happened. He took another biscuit, he ate it. Clear as daylight. Certain as we are sitting on the ground." Fenchurch stirred uncomfortably. "And the problem was," said Arthur, "that having not said anything the first time, it was somehow even more difficult to broach the subject a second time around. What do you say? "Excuse me...I couldn't help noticing, er..." Doesn't work. No, I ignored it with, if anything, even more vigor than previously." "My man..." "Stared at the crossword, again, still couldn't budge a bit of it, so showing some of the spirit that Henry V did on St. Crispin's Day..." "What?" "I went into the breach again. I took," said Arthur, "another biscuit. And for an instant our eyes met." "Like this?" "Yes, well, no, not quite like that. But they met. Just for an instant. And we both looked away. But I am here to tell you," said Arthur, "that there was a little electricity in the air. There was a little tension building up over the table. At about this time." "I can imagine.

WHEN ASKED “ What do we need to learn this for?” any high-school teacher can confidently answer that, regardless of the subject, the knowledge will come in handy once the student hits middle age and starts working crossword puzzles in order to stave off the terrible loneliness. Because it’s true. Latin, geography, the gods of ancient Greece and Rome: unless you know these things, you’ll be limited to doing the puzzles in People magazine, where the clues read “Movie title, Gone ____ the Wind” and “It holds up your pants.” It’s not such a terrible place to start, but the joy of accomplishment wears off fairly quickly.

I have known a number of actors very well. I have found them good company. Their gift of mimicry, their knack of telling a story, their quick wit, make them often highly entertaining. They are generous, kindly and courageous. But I have never quite been able to look upon them as human beings. I have never succeeded in achieving any intimacy with them. They are like crossword puzzles in which there are no words to fit the clues. The fact is, I suppose, that their personality is made up of the parts they play and that the basis of it is something amorphous. It is a soft, malleable thing that is capable of taking any shape and being painted in any colour.

Everyone in the Village, every grown-up—or rather, every middle-aged person—seemed to do crosswords: my parents, their friends, Joan, Gordon Macleod. Everyone apart from Susan. They did either The Times or The Telegraph; though Joan had those books of hers to fall back on while waiting for the next newspaper. I regarded this traditional British activity with some snootiness. I was keen in those days to find hidden motives—preferably involving hypocrisy—behind the obvious ones. Clearly, this supposedly harmless pastime was about more than solving cryptic clues and filling in the answers. My analysis identified the following elements: 1) the desire to reduce the chaos of the universe to a small, comprehensible grid of black-and-white squares; 2) the underlying belief that everything in life could, in the end, be solved; 3) the confirmation that existence was essentially a ludic activity; and 4) the hope that this activity would keep at bay the existential pain of our brief sublunary transit from birth to death. That seemed to cover it!

He's kind of like a crossword puzzle, in and of himself, a grid of clues leading to the complete theme.

Sometimes what’s exceptional about a sign is not the sign itself, but its timing. Your favorite pick-me-up song plays on the radio just when you’re feeling especially down. The number 100 appears on your Starbucks receipt just when you’re worrying about flunking a test. The answer to a crossword puzzle clue is randomly spoken by someone on TV just when you’re about to give up on it. All of these simple, surprising occurrences can be signs from the Other Side, because their timing makes us feel connected to the world in a way we can’t quite explain—as if all we have to do is release our feelings of fear and doubt into the universe, and the universe will respond with playful, wonderful reassurances.

You, Joelle, are fucking goddamn mind-blowingly beautiful. I have no idea how you don't see it. Those glasses that you think made you look nerdy? If they're nerdy, then nerdy is so incredibly hot. Because when you wear your glasses, you look smart and sexy. Your hair that you think is unruly and messy? It's not. It's wild. And wild is so fucking hot, I can't even begin to tell you." He presses his eyes shut and shakes his head, like he can barely contain the thought. "I can't take my eyes off it. Every time you brush past me and I feel your hair on my skin, I get goose bumps. And your skin is so soft that every time I've touched you, I've almost lost my damn mind. Like when you were on my lap kissing me, I honest to god thought I was going to pass out. I mean, did you not feel my boner against you? You felt so fucking good I could barely take it." My eyes are wide as I soak in every word he says. "When we started working in the same space together, I overheard you mention how big your ass is when you were joking with your mom and aunt. Why? Your ass is a fucking national treasure. Why do you think I spent so much time grabbing it while we were fooling around?" Against his palm, I let out a muffled "oh" sound. It's the sound I make when I've figured out an especially challenging crossword puzzle clue. These are some damn good points he's making. Shaking his head, he looks away for a split second, like he's so frustrated, so hell-bent on getting these words out that he needs a moment to collect himself. His eyes cut back to me. "Do you have any idea the way people look at you? Everywhere you go, people can't take their eyes off you. Nonstop. And you don't even notice it because you're too focused on others. Do you have any clue how sexy it is? Everyone else is so concerned with their image and what people think of them. But you don't give it a second thought. Even if you don't realize it, you come off so sure of yourself. It's the hottest thing ever.

awake that she climbed out of bed and went to the window. She pulled the curtains aside, but the Kanes’ house was in darkness. She went back to bed, switched on her bedside lamp and picked up the crossword she had been trying to finish before she had grown too sleepy. One of down clues was ‘Together, the top and bottom of the world are manic’. The answer was ‘bipolar’. *** Next morning, as she came back with Barney from his early-morning walk, she found David Kane standing in her porch with the collar of his grey raincoat turned up. It was raining hard now and Barney had been stopping every few yards to shake himself. ‘Good morning, Katie,’ said David. ‘That’s the trouble with dogs, isn’it? You have to take them out to do the necessary, whatever the weather.’ Katie lowered her umbrella and shook it. ‘Don’t you have a dog?’ she asked him. ‘No, I couldn’t. If my patients smelled another dog in the house, whether they were dogs themselves or cats or whatever, they’d find it very disturbing.’ He stood close beside her as she unlocked her front door. ‘Talking of disturbing, the reason I’ve come over is to apologize for all the racket we were making last night, Sorcha and me. Sorcha was having one of her episodes.’ Katie stepped into the hallway and Barney followed her. David stayed in the porch as she hung up her raincoat. ‘Has she been back to her doctor?’ she said.

While we were standing by, Clinton was doing the New York Times crossword puzzle, which he reputedly could dispatch in a matter of minutes. He asked me about a clue—a three-letter word starting with some letter or other. I had no idea, so I asked my son Jamie. ¶ 'Who's so stupid they don't know that?' Jamie retorted in a voice that could be heard at the other end of the phone. ¶ 'The President of the United States,' I said.

CROSSWORD INSTRUCTIONS 1.Read the Clues: Start by carefully reading through all the clues, both across and down. Each clue corresponds to a word or phrase you must fill in the grid. 2.Scan for Easy Answers: Look for clues that seem easy to solve based on your initial understanding of the clue or if you immediately know the answer. Fill in these answers first. 3.Work from Known Letters: As you fill in words, use the letters you've already entered to help solve other clues that intersect with them. 4.Think of Synonyms: Clues often contain synonyms or indirect references to the answer. If you're stuck, think of alternative words to fit the clue. 5.Consider Word Length: Pay attention to the number of letters in each answer. This can help you eliminate possibilities and narrow down potential answers. 6.Don't Get Stuck: If you're completely stuck on a clue, don't dwell on it for too long. Move on to other clues and come back to it later with fresh eyes. 7.Check for Mistakes: Once you've completed the puzzle or filled in as much as you can, go back and double-check your answers. Look for any mistakes or inconsistencies, especially where intersecting words meet. 8.Enjoy the Process: Solving a crossword puzzle is meant to be fun and challenging. Don't get discouraged if you find it difficult at times. Take

There are two ways to begin a puzzle: themed, with the major answers constellating around a mini-riddle; or themeless, usually with longer clues, and no help from a little internal narrative. If I were going to create a themeless puzzle, I’d start with what constructors call a “seed patch.” Seeds are the two or three ne-plus-ultra answers of the themeless, the ones that inspired the whole thing, and without which the puzzle would have no reason to exist. A seed might be a triple or quadruple stack of fifteen-letter words. Or a seed patch might be a few somewhat unrelated but buzzy bits of a recent news cycle. Prolific constructor Brendan Emmett Quigley publishes a new themeless puzzle on his website every Monday, mostly aimed at crossword junkies for whom the easy Times Mondays don’t cut it. Quigley’s themelesses often serve as something of a digest of the latest memes.

Grid art has only gotten better over time. In a Times crossword from 2009 by Elizabeth Gorski, the black squares at the grid’s center formed a spiral, with THE SOLOMON R GUGGENHEIM / MUSEUM as answers spanning the top of the spiral, and—for the geometrically impaired—SPIRAL SHAPE across the bottom. Eight artworks hanging in the spiral-shaped Guggenheim museum appeared as clues, with each artist hung as an answer in the puzzle.

I enlisted a couple of sherpas to guide me through the world of word combinations. One was OneLook, a combination reverse dictionary and thesaurus site. When I typed a string of letters, OneLook found words that began with, contained, or ended with that string. I could also give OneLook gap-toothed strings, that is, combinations of letters and blanks, and OneLook would find possible combinations: all seven-letter words, say, that have A as their second letter and end with C. But my primary helper was XWord Info, which mines data from the entire New York Times crossword archives. XWord Info provides helpful options like bite-sized fragments of common speech that wouldn’t necessarily appear in a dictionary list (ARE TOO, AM SO, OR NOT). XWord Info also knows every clue that has been used for every answer to every past Times puzzle ever published, save a handful that were lost to posterity after newspaper strikes in the 1940s.

Very convenient, the way people can only speak in crossword clues from the afterlife.

The mind state caused by ambiguity is called uncertainty, and it’s an emotional amplifier. It makes anxiety more agonizing, and pleasure especially enjoyable. The delight of crossword puzzles, for example, comes from pondering and resolving ambiguous clues.