Use Crossword Puzzles in These 3 Ways to Strengthen Family Ties
Take a look at my history with them to learn how!
My dad’s armchair was like his throne.
I can remember him sitting there, feet up on the ottoman, working through the New York Times crossword puzzle. We only got the “Times,” as we referred to it, on Sunday, with our standard bagels and lox, and sometimes coffee cake or bakery cookies as well. Sundays back then were for celebrating. He worked a hard week. This was his reward.
What I don’t remember is directly sharing the crossword puzzle experience with my father. He passed away when I was in my last year of high school, so maybe there just wasn’t enough time. We would sit together, yet somewhat apart in the living room, he in his chair, me on the rug, and I would just watch him, or read a book.
That was before I grew out of spending Sunday mornings on the rug together, yet apart from him.
For a time, we were bonded together in that activity, even more so in my memory of it.
Everyone has their intellectual rite of passage.
I guess mine was doing the crossword puzzle.
When I got my first studio apartment on the Upper West Side, I started buying the Sunday Times for myself. And working on the crossword puzzle. It kept me connected to my father for a while. It kept me thinking “How the hell did he do this? It’s hard!”
My father went to high school but didn’t finish. He lied about his age and joined the Navy, and right now was proving to have been better than me at doing the crossword puzzle! I not only finished high school, I went to college, was currently getting a Master’s Degree, and spoke 1.5 foreign languages. Yes, 1 fairly full Mandarin and about .5 French at the time.
I am discovering his crossword solving secret now that I am doing the puzzle with my two adult girls.
It’s about having lived life!
When you live life, you accumulate knowledge and skills. You end up knowing how to create a third bedroom out of a dining room in a two-bedroom apartment, for example.
My dad was the OG solopreneur. He was smart. He figured out life and business. And he figured out many of the secrets to the damned New York Times crossword puzzle.
But back to me!
So, I did start doing the puzzle on my own, but first I started buying the Sunday New York Times on my own, and that was the first step. I could walk down the five flights of my walk-up, over to Zabar’s to pick up a bagel and lox, then get a copy of my very own copy of the Times to explore on my own. (For those purists who want to lecture me about the culture of getting the paper the night before, feel free. I am now and have always been a morning person. Thank you!)
My kids had a gentle initiation into the world of the New York Times.
My kids came along before the advent of digital, so they were able to have their moment with me and the hardcopy New York Times magazine.
Rather than repeat history, and have them observe me sit in an armchair in my bathrobe and boxers (left that detail out before) doing the puzzle, we did something different.
Completely different.
We didn’t start with the puzzle at all. We started with real estate.
The girls happened to love those floor plans of the luxury apartment buildings on Park, Madison, or Fifth Avenue. We’d sit on the living room or bedroom floor together and pour through the Magazine until they found the luxury building of their choice. Then we’d decide which room was whose, gently debating why one deserved the larger one or the one with the view.
They did see me with the Magazine, and that did spur their interest, and they did want my attention. They got it.
They were five and eight at the time.
The crossword comes to a new generation and our shared pursuit is a gift to a (not) older one.
Fast forward a few years (okay, quite a few years), and I had long since gone digital with my New York Times subscription as well as the digital Games add-on.
One daughter is in Manhattan, the other in Brooklyn; and Brooklyn makes a suggestion.
“Let’s do the puzzle together!”
Interestingly enough, for one reason or another, I had been dormant.
Oh, you’re not going to leave that line alone, are you?
I was going through a particularly unmotivated, depressed, not interested in hardly anything period having very successfully divorced my husband of 30 years.
Adrenaline deflation, I’d call it. I’d used up so much of the energy I had to accomplish that one goal. I’d crashed; I’d burned. I was exhausted.
But here was a great opportunity to arise anew. Arise anew? Like a Phoenix, I’m thinking. Out of the freaking crossword puzzle!
So, my daughters and I started doing the puzzle together live, in person on one of our computers or phones.
But then we got fancy!
How we have evolved and how you can use the crossword to strengthen personal relationships.
We now do the crossword puzzle together and apart. One of us (usually Brooklyn) starts the puzzle when it comes out the night night “before” (usually 10 pm EST) or the three of us, if co-located, work on it together, with the puzzle mirrored onto the TV monitor in my living room. This is good for lots of laughs as we bumble our way through some of the more challenging or obscure clues.
We laugh a lot as we work our way through all the potential answers. But we finish all of the puzzles.
We are good at it, and we make a good team!
They have lived a bit of life, and they have some knowledge and skills to figure things out.
Here are 3 ways to use the crossword or similar activity to get (or maintain) a close relationship with your adult children:
- Let them suggest the activity. For some reason, from the time they enter middle school, your kids’ acceptance of anything depends on this one factor. In my case, my girls knew I had been doing the crossword puzzle, so maybe, perhaps that played into their suggesting it. I don’t know.
- Monitor how competitive you are. The less judgemental you are, the better. Your kids most probably respect you and your intelligence, so playful celebrating is fine, but don’t lord it over them. Don’t demand better performance from them.
- Keep it regular but don’t stress about missing a day now and then. Remember, this is meant to bring you together, not to enforce any restrictive schedule on you and your family. If someone is traveling on business or is ill, account for that. Send a text “Miss you on 22 down, haha.” Well, maybe not that.
Working on the crossword puzzle does require a good amount of concentration, You can’t think of much else while you are doing it, even if you are joking around with two twenty-somethings. As this 2017 article summing up 75 years of crosswords reported, the New York Times finally gave in to running the crossword puzzle after years of resistance only after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
I don’t think I have to sell you on the increased demand for this type of pastime in an increasingly worried world. You can’t think of your troubles while solving a crossword …
Given the challenges of the world we live in today, I’d say give the crossword puzzle a chance and bring a couple of your kids, your best friends, or a lover along. It’s a great way to escape to a world of hidden meaning and increased togetherness.
Sheri Handel lives and solves puzzles in New York City.