Gasconade County Republican

The writers who create crossword puzzles make words up. Especially those who write the New York Times crossword puzzles. Then they bribe the publishers of dictionaries to include those words in their latest editions. A good example of this travesty is the above headline: Give the orts to the dog. Exactly what are we giving the poor dog? Table scraps, that’s what. Table scraps are orts, according to the diabolical and devious crossword puzzle creators who den up somewhere in New York City, or maybe Los Angeles.

More than half of my life has been devoted to putting words on paper. That doesn’t automatically make me an English language expert, but I did not know that table scraps are orts. Put the orts in the garbage. Take the orts and go slop the pigs.
Clues that have something to do with pigs also are popular with crossword puzzle writers. Having spent part of my mostly misspent youth on my grandparents’ farm, I know some stuff about pigs. If the clue is “feed the pigs” for a four-letter word (I know a little about four-letter words too) that starts with a “S” and ends with a “P” then I know to slop the pigs. But not with orts. A place where pigs live also is a popular clue on crossword puzzles. That could be “sty” or “pen,” both three-letter words. Which one is the correct answer is determined by what fits with 31 across or 16 down, e.g. That abbreviation of “for example” also is a favorite of crossword puzzle writers.
Crossword puzzles are not a serious hobby of mine but I read that doing crossword puzzles keeps the mind agile and helps prevent dementia in later years. Needing all the help available to keep my mind agile while preventing dementia in my dotage (old age is the clue), and at my wife’s urging, I recently started doing crossword puzzles again.
Again probably isn’t an apt description of my prior experiences with crossword puzzles because when I was young and agile physically and mentally I rarely finished a crossword puzzle. Back then a three-letter word for table scraps that begins with an “O” would have me skipping to the comics section of the newspaper leaving the crossword puzzle, word scrimmage, cryptoquip, word jumble and wordy gurdy uncompleted.
I never attempted, nor do I now, to solve sudoku puzzles because they involve putting numbers in a mysterious order and everyone knows that journalists are not good with numbers. If the agility of my mind depended on doing sudoku my brain would be a couch potato.
Crossword puzzle writers like to throw in a few foreign language clues every now and then. Normally those blanks are filled in when all the adjacent English words are completed. A kimono sash, for example (e.g.) is an obi. That is correct according to the next day’s paper which has the answers for the previous day’s crossword puzzle. That’s also why I do crossword puzzles in pencil although I know some elitists who do them in ink. The erasers on my pencils wear out first, by the way.
That came in handy when I obviously had the wrong answer to “A Donna Summers hit.” To begin with, I don’t know Donna Summers but apparently she had a hit called “On The Radio.” I am learning quite a bit, though, stuff I didn’t know or had forgotten. Such as a rainbow can be an iris. Did you know that? Or “once, once” means erst. Apparently I didn’t know that either. Or palm starch, e.g., is sago. Never heard of that either, but then I don’t use much palm starch so how would I know.
Then there are the clues that refer to another clue then back to the original clue: 21 down, see 12 across and the clue for 12 across is 21 down’s builder. Ark, Noah, why didn’t I make that connection? Or that responsibility is onus, stead is lieu, fit of peevishness is snit, and a Trivial Pursuit edition is genus?
For all their creativity in creating new words, crossword puzzle writers seem to be in a rut when it comes to certain other words. The word ore is used repeatedly with various clues such as miner’s discovery, prospector’s find, and mineral. Extinct bird is repeated as a clue at least three or four times a week and can be a dodo, moa or a roc. Gem is the correct answer for jewel, stone, ruby and opal. And if I’ve seen “CSI evidence” used as a clue once I’ve seen it a dozen times and the answer always is: DNA. I am catching on to those everyday clues and fill in the blanks for them first.
Doing crossword puzzles may keep the mind agile and even prevent senility as experts attest, but in the process it may deflate egos and destroy self esteem in people who didn’t know that table scraps really are nothing more than orts.
It’s time to fix a bite for lunch but I’m not quite sure what to do with the orts. I don’t have a pig pen or a pig sty full of pigs to slop, or a dog that would welcome the orts. But there is a murder of crows perched in the trees out back. Wonder how they would like some orts?