[HN Gopher] Beastly Clues: T. S. Eliot, Torquemada, and the Mode...
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       Beastly Clues: T. S. Eliot, Torquemada, and the Modernist Crossword
        
       Author : benbreen
       Score  : 16 points
       Date   : 2022-01-12 18:39 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (publicdomainreview.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (publicdomainreview.org)
        
       | hprotagonist wrote:
       | https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/09/books/review/anglo-saxon-...
       | 
       |  _The first puzzle appeared on Dec. 21, 1913, born out of
       | desperation when Arthur Wynne, the editor of The New York World,
       | needed to fill space in a holiday fun supplement. Yet as THE OLD
       | ENGLISH AND ANGLO-LATIN RIDDLE TRADITION (Harvard University,
       | $35), a comprehensive new collection beautifully edited by the
       | Oxford professor Andy Orchard, demonstrates, everything you need
       | to know about crosswords you can learn from Anglo-Saxon riddles:
       | Riddles are the ur-crossword puzzles.
       | 
       | Riddles are at the heart of language. The Old English verb raedan
       | lies at the root of "to read" and "to riddle": To read is to
       | riddle, to riddle is to read. What makes the riddle so special
       | and weird as a form -- and so like the crossword -- is its
       | ability to be at once highbrow and lowbrow. Riddles represent the
       | whole of Anglo-Saxon life._
       | 
       | "crossword brain" is part and parcel of the oldest parts of the
       | language we have. Modernists exploited this, but they sure didn't
       | think it up. TS Eliot brought more back from the dead (Dame
       | Julian, as one very important example) than anything else, and
       | we're fortunate he did.
        
       | Tycho wrote:
       | That's funny, I actually mentioned to someone recently that
       | reading poetry to relax is a bit like doing a (cryptic) crossword
       | - it's playing with language.
        
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