It all started with Wordle. Remember in late 2021 and early 2022 when Wordle was taking the U.S. by storm? I remember doing my first Wordling on a plane flying to Texas in January 2022 (masked, because pandemic). Shortly after its explosion in popularity, the game was bought by the New York Times for over a million dollars (that’s what they mean when they say “seven figures,” kids.) We all wailed. They would put it behind a paywall! They would sell ads! They would shut down knockoffs! They would sully the “just for the fun of it” vibe!
A year and a half later, the game is not behind a paywall, it doesn’t have ads (with one important caveat we’ll get to in a moment), they didn’t shut down Byrdle and Trekle and Phoodle and Swiftle and Le Mot and Absurdle and the like though they did shut down a couple of nerdy Wordle archives, and although they changed the font to the default NYT font, it’s still fun. So why did the NYT pay a million dollars for something they’re giving away for free? Well, in part because of what just happened to me, and I imagine millions of other people.
The one exception to the lack of ads on Wordle is that the NYT advertises its own games and its own games app. Which I downloaded. And then I realized that, although Wordle itself is free, many of the other NYT games, not to mention the app navigation itself, are best enjoyed if you have a subscription. And then I bought an NYT Games subscription.
Which is how I became a crossword puzzle addict.
When I was growing up, and we did crossword puzzles on paper, I always assumed I was not smart enough to do the NYT crossword puzzle (which, even in my youth, had a fearsome reputation.) As of a couple weeks ago when I downloaded the Games app, I still didn’t think I was smart enough to do the NYT crossword puzzle. But then I tried a couple of the free ones available in the app, and I enjoyed them, and I realized a subscription would give me access to the puzzle archives. All the way back to November 21, 1993, which is when Will Shortz became puzzle editor. (I always thought that was his pseudonym when I ran into it on Sudoku books and the like. It’s not. It’s his real name.) Why that point in particular? Shortz’s tenure has transformed the NYT puzzle in ways that are significant enough that at least one masters’ thesis has been written about it. It’s also, honestly, probably about when the NYT began keeping such things digitally. Anyway, there they all were – thirty years of puzzles. I thought I’d try that 11/21/93 puzzle (which is a doozy. It’s a beautiful, difficult work of art. It’s amazing.)
Which is how I (remember, #actuallyautistic) began playing through thirty years of NYT crossword puzzles in order.
Put yourself back in 1993 (if you are, in fact, old enough to do that). For me, I had just graduated from college. I had two masters’ degrees, a Ph.D., 20 years of marriage (and counting) and two kids, three ordinations (one Methodist and two Episcopalian), a slew of jobs, and three books (and counting) in front of me.
The world had a lot of things in front of it, too. The clues are full of 1980s movies probably on the tip of the tongue of those early-90’s solvers. Many of the actors and sports figures and politicians that populate the puzzles, alive when they were clued, are gone now. And then there are the news items and bits of daily life. “Joe of the Senate?” BIDEN. “Senator Gingrich?” NEWT. “Phrase on a catalog card?” ILLUS. “Office connector?” MODEM. “City in Ukraine?” LVOV (the Russian spelling). “Popular psychologist?” DRJOYCE BROTHERS (remember her?). “CompuServ patron?” USER. “Spreading quickly?” PANDEMIC (ouch). (Also, I swear I’ve seen AOL, even though all the databases say it first appeared in 1996 or 1997 and I’m only in December 1993.)
Which is what leads me to this clue from the December 20, 1993 puzzle: “It fugits.” The answer, of course, is TEMPUS, which I screwed up the puzzle with for the longest time thinking it was spelled TEMPIS. Tempus fugit – time flies. It’s from Virgil originally, who long predates the modern crossword puzzle. The slightly humorous cluing and assumption of a well-read audience make it a fitting NYT clue. But it hit me like anything when I got to it, thinking of 21-year-old me, applying to graduate school and temping at GTE (that’s General Telephone – landlines, people, landlines) and reading catalog cards and only vaguely aware of Joe and Newt of the Senate. The gulf between that girl and 51-year-old me seems more immense than the gulf between 1993 and Virgil.
I’m not sure what any of this has to do with vocation, except that we live it out in time, and time only moves in one direction. The amount of rabbit holes I’ve gone down writing this post shall not be mentioned, but if you follow the Tempus fugit rabbit hole link above, you’ll run into this English version of the adage:
Time goes, you say? Ah, no! alas, time stays, we go. – H. Austin Dobson
Indeed we do. Far, and fast, and away.
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