the crux

crux sounds like a dirty word but it isn't. neither is cruciverbalist, which is what i tried to become this week.

a cruciverbalist is a maker of crossword puzzles. i tried to make a sunday new york times-style puzzle. it came out pretty damn good except that after i had more or less finished i realized that i had broken some minor rules of crossword creation of which i had known nothing. i had too many black spaces, didn't have symmetry in my theme clues, etc.

boo, i say, boo.

one might say something at this point about doing the research first, but to those people i say, "shut up."

i haven't given up. while making a 23x23 puzzle was awfully difficult, i did get a perverse sort of enjoyment out of it. i also learned a bunch in the process and think my next attempt will be less painful.

how cool would that be? to have one of my puzzles in the sunday times?

of course it ain't that easy. still, a boy has to have a goal and being able to list "cruciverbalist" on my resume is currently one of them. to that end i've joined a cruciverbalist society and hope to become cruciverbalier soon.

not that i'm so good at finishing crosswords. just, you know, average good for someone who does them regularly. i think i may be good good at making them with a little effort, perhaps. we shall see.

another reason why this weeks effort took so long is because the hard drive on my brand new laptop died. it conveniently died just after i had gotten the bastard configured the way i wanted it and before i backed it up.

oh, the humanity!

luckily, i'm fairly geeky and managed to find the correct bits and pieces to do my own triage (regardless of the incorrect advice i got consistently from tech support) and have successfully recovered all my data from the bum drive. i just need to get the replacement drive, reinstall everything, and transfer all the data.

next week when i'm temping at the symphony front desk i should have plenty of time for that. no one really calls the symphony in august.

after that i'll move to new zealand for three years, so, uh....

bye.