WORDLESS

Working the New York Times crossword puzzle, I found myself wordless so I decided to use the Internet to help fill in the blanks. I searched for “Chief Hun, in Scandinavian legend” and “REX PARKER DOES THE NYT CROSSWORD PUZZLE” headed the Goggle list. Rex had this to say about 14 across—"an answer that inveterate solvers likely nailed and everyone else likely gawked at helplessly—Atli."

He then discussed the language of crosswords that I found fascinating. He told how he solved the puzzle and then discussed each word and clue. What great information for crossword neophytes like me. (And what an intellectual embarrassment. I’m certain, for example, that Rex Parker would never use the adjective “great.”)

So, who is this crossword guru, Rex Parker? His Blog describes Rex as the “55th greatest crossword puzzle solver in the Universe.” His intellect is certainly light years beyond mine, like 55 to the 55th power. He is a steeplejack and his interests include comics, crime fiction, gin, crossword puzzles, tennis, and…scansion, dactyls, anaphora…and knuckleballs, brushbacks, etc.

I had to look up:

Scansion = a way to mark the metrical patterns of a line of poetry.

Dactyls = a type of meter in poetry with a long syllable followed by two short syllables.
An example of dactylic meter is the first line of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem Evangeline, which is in dactylic hexameter:
This is the / forest prim- / evil. The / murmuring / pines and the / hemlocks,
The first five feet of the line are dactyls; the sixth a trochee.

Anaphora = emphasizing words by repeating them at the beginnings of neighboring clauses.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair...

I continue to be amazed about how little I know. But that is better than OK, because learning new things is more fun than hitting a knuckleball out of the park and admitting you don’t know something is more honest than a brushback pitch.