I like crossword puzzles. I’ve always wondered how, before computers “simplified” everything, people could create such things. The creators are the real geniuses I think, not the people who solve the puzzles.

When I worked at the newspaper, we got the Sunday New York Times. The weekly puzzle in the magazine section was extremely difficult. I don’t think I ever finished one. Will Shortz can be an evil man.

There are lots of other word games, too, acrostics, word searches, etc. I found a word search maker program on a teachers’ site on the internet. I used to do them to share with guys in the jail. The program was cool. You listed the size of the puzzle you wanted, list the words, click on a button and the word search magically appeared. I used words pertaining to mental health and recovery from substance abuse. I learned that if you want to make a REALLY difficult word search, you made it as large as possible and use the shortest words possible. The guys said a couple dozen three letter words In a 60 x 60 letter puzzle is downright evil.

There might be a genetic thing with crossword puzzles. Mom loved them. When going though her things after she died, I found some big books full of crosswords. Some were complete, some were partially complete, and some were blank. I enjoyed completing them and found a few spelling errors that led to stalls in her solutions. Happens to me, too.

I was talking to an acquaintance at the Farmers’ Market one morning and somehow the subject of crossword puzzles came up. I told her I like to do them in a “Scrabble” format. I start with the answer word I know closest to the center of the puzzle and build off of that. A week later, she described the Scrabble approach as “evil.” Hmmmm… never thought of crossword puzzles as evil before? Strange that that description has come up three times already in this column..,.

Anyway, there was a study that suggested that word puzzles help stave off some types of dementia. I think a subsequent study suggested that doing the puzzles at least helped you remain able to do puzzles longer as that condition developed.

This brings me to thoughts of one of my favorite people, my father-in-law. He had some memory issues, but was very pragmatic about it. He loved to read and said: “I’m enjoying all my favorite books again because I can’t remember how the stories turn out.”

Bob taught those fortunate enough to know him all kinds of important life lessons. One involved crossword puzzles. He did the one in the newspaper every day and sometimes had little books full of them and often they would be on a table partially finished. He knew I shared his love for these puzzles and one day he asked: “Do you ever get stuck on a puzzle then pick it up the next day and all the answers come to you?” Well, that happened to me this very morning! There were four or five answers in an area of a puzzle that I couldn’t get last night. This a.m. I checked the spelling. Hey! “Keats and others” is asking for a plural! It’s not “odeist,” it’s “odists”! Then “marshy” fit as the answer for “like a fen”! “Marl” fell into place for “crumbly deposit”! “Apia” fell into place for “Samoa’s capital.” (Had no idea what those two words were, they just appeared when I filled in others….) And the mysterious “monkey’s uncle, maybe” was finally and so obviously “ape”! What a great morning! Memories of Bob AND solving the puzzle!

Yup, there’s an important lesson here. The problems we face today may seem extremely difficult and solutions elude us. But as Bob observed, sometimes, the next day, the solutions become clear. To successfully complete that puzzle this morning, I needed a fresh start. I needed to look back over what I had done yesterday and see what it was that stalled me. Sure enough, the glitch became clear and the rest of the issue became solvable.

Think about this when you’re struggling. In life, like in crossword puzzles, the solutions are there. Sometimes we just need to “sleep on it” either literally or figuratively. And very often, the next day, there they are, the answers that evaded us the day before.