THE CROSSWORD PUZZLE AS METAPHOR FOR READING THE NEWS.

RAYMOND GOZZI JR. [*]

THE CROSSWORD PUZZLE usually sits next to the comics in our newspapers. It is often separated from the rest of the page by a border, and given a title, something like "Today's Crossword." We tend to assume that this puzzle is quite different from what appears in the more serious "news" sections of the paper. But actually, the processes of doing a crossword puzzle are similar to the processes of reading the news. This similarity leads me to claim that doing the crossword puzzle is an embodied metaphor for reading the news in the rest of the paper.

Just as doing the puzzle is like reading the news, often the news itself is like a puzzle. We have various clues given to us, a grid of meanings to be filled in, and interlinking words which slowly reveal more of the "answers" to the puzzles.

Both the crossword puzzle and the newspaper page are mosaics. The empty crossword puzzle is a formidable sight. It is usually mostly white squares, with black squares and rectangles filled in symmetrically on each side. How can we possibly get interlinking words to fill up all that space? Likewise the newspaper presents us with a grid on each page. It is sometimes laid out symmetrically, but always we have the vertical columns and the horizontal type. There is something formidable about a newspaper page as well -- how can we absorb and relate all the different information presented?

And then there are the clues. In the crossword puzzle, the clues are helpfully numbered, to correspond with appropriate squares. But the numbers are the most direct thing about them. Often the clues involve puns, double entendres, or indirect meanings. There could be several answers. This is where the interlocking grid comes in. We look at clues for several related spaces, hoping to get one answer which will then help us narrow down the others.

So, for example, the clue for 1 across is "Frolic." There are four squares to be filled in. The clue for 1 down is "Invoice word," with five squares. Not really any help there. So I move on to 2 down, "D-Day Beach," also five letters. The only one I recall is "Omaha Beach," so I pencil it in. If this is correct, then the second letter of 1-across "Frolic" is an "o." If this is not correct, then I am off on a wild goose chase, and hoping after I have filled in some more letters, I will see whether I need to change it. The interlocking grid should eventually resist incorrect words.

I do not have a clue about the clue for 3 down, "La Scala locale." So I move on to 4 down, "Outhouse," still five letters long. The only word I know here is "privy," so I fill it in. This leads me with "blank-o-blank-p" for 1 across, "Frolic." Now the choices are narrowed considerably. "Romp" is a good guess, and gets filled in. This also gives me some help on 1 down, "Invoice word," because I know it begins with "r." How about "Remit"? Looks good, and on we go.

To illustrate how the processes of solving a crossword puzzle are structurally similar to the processes of reading the news, I selected a story pretty much at random from The New York Times of July 19, 2000. The headline reads "Chairman of Parole Board in New Jersey Plans to Resign."

The headline is the basic clue. I don't know anything about this man or his situation, but because of the headline, a "grid" appears. There are blanks that need to be filled in, if I am to understand the story. There are also related clues and attached blank spaces, from schemas in my mind which are activated. "Parole Board" -- part of a prison system which concerns me a great deal. The United States has more prisoners per capita than any other nation in the world -- more than any "dictatorship" or "Banana Republic." "Chairman ... Plans to Resign" -- another schema comes into play, my distrust of bureaucrats and their doublespeak.

To fill in some of the blanks, I start reading. The first paragraph says: "The chairman of New Jersey's Parole Board, caught up in criticism of delays in parole hearings for hundreds of inmates and allegations of favorable treatment for a few others, said yesterday that he would resign by the end of the week."

This lead paragraph has given me more information, and filled in some of the blanks. Also the information starts to mesh with my negatively-tinged schemas about the prison system and about bureaucrats in general. Perhaps encouraged by the possibility of confirming my pre-existing opinions, I read on.

The next paragraph quotes the chairman saying he is resigning because of advice from his doctor. He had a history of heart troubles, etc. Do I accept this at face value? My schema of distrust for doublespeaking bureaucrats leads me to be skeptical. No bureaucrat publicly gives the real reasons for leaving a post.

The third paragraph says the chairman does acknowledge that "a factor in his decision was a continuing investigation by the state attorney general ...." We also get the information that the chairman was involved in paroles granted to a judge's son and two men "reputed to be members of organized crime."

So the different pieces of the puzzle are starting to come together in my mind's grid for this story. I am confirmed in discounting the health reasons for resigning. A new web of associations is called into play regarding special privileges for certain powerful people. "Organized crime" -- this phrase opens up more blank spaces on the grid, and activates a schema about gangsters and their complex relations with the authorities. However, these grid spaces are not destined to get filled in, as the story gives no further information about the parole cases.

Reading on in the story, it develops that the governor is unhappy with the chairman because he underreported the backlog of parole cases. The chairman claimed it was 303 cases, but the attorney general's office reviewed the files, and discovered a backlog of 2,201 cases. In addition, 469 other prisoners who had hearings were still waiting for decisions; and 145 others who had been granted parole were still in prison. In fact, several prisoners had filed a class action lawsuit against the state because of the delays.

This information, from paragraphs 6, 7, and 8 in the story, fills in yet more blanks, and makes it possible to be more certain about earlier interpretations. An interlocking grid of interpretation snaps into place. The man did not run his office correctly, tried to cover up his incompetence with statistical lies, did favors for some connected people but left a huge number of others mired in prison. The problems became so burdensome that the governor and the attorney general wanted him out, and he used his health as an excuse to get out. My schema for doubletalking bureaucrats is reinforced. My schema for a prison system grown too large receives more confirming evidence.

These, then, are the parallels between reading the news and doing the crossword. Just as filling in more blanks in the crossword puzzle makes it easier to figure out those difficult words you originally don't know, so also getting more information in the story makes it easier to "fill in the blanks" of a situation you originally have never heard of.

As we fill in the blanks, our other opinions about how the world works come into play, and provide related clues for interpretation. The grid for understanding this story gets fitted into a series of larger "grids," or schemas, already in our minds. The hapless New Jersey Parole Board chairman became an apt symbol for these larger issues, fitting nicely into my preformed schemas. But there were still some blanks left unfilled. The story had only filled in a part of the larger puzzle which it implied. (This is true of all language, as the general semantics "et cetera" principle reminds us -- there is always more to say, symbols can never completely map the territory.)

And so what do we get when we are done with the crossword puzzle, and done reading the day's newspaper? Some filled-in grids -- one actual rectilinear grid of the crossword puzzle, some virtual "grids" in our mental schemas for various topics. (I am sure that the "grids" in our minds are nowhere as neat and rightangled as the crossword puzzle grid. Our conceptual "systems" are probably more like a tangled mass of roots.)

There is satisfaction here, but I must admit to feeling a bit unsatisfied as well. Are the important puzzles ever really solved? The crossword puzzle leads to no larger meanings. The joy of it is in the process of solving it. Once it is done, and checked in the next day's paper, it is discarded. The newspaper does lead to some larger meanings -- what critical theorists call "ideology." But the newspaper, too, is soon discarded; the particular details of the day being forgotten and blending into stereotyped memory schemas.

I hope I have indicated that the crossword puzzle is, in a way, a metaphor for the rest of the day's newspaper. Maybe the lines between the crossword and the puzzles of the news are not as sharp as they seem.

(*.) Raymond Gozzi, Jr., is Associate Professor in the Park School of Communications, Ithaca College, Ithaca, NY. His most recent book, The Power of Metaphor in the Age of Electronic Media, Hampton Press, 1999, contains articles from Dr. Gozzi's columns in ETC, as well as new chapters on metaphor, and is available from ISGS.

REFERENCES

I must give credit to the real crossword puzzle expert in my family, my wife Barbara Logan, for solving the puzzle discussed in the article. For a discussion of schemas involved in news reading, see Graber, 1988.

Graber, D. (1988). Processing the News. New York: Longman.

Hanley, R. (July 19, 2000). Chairman of Parole Board in New Jersey Plans to Resign. The New York Thnes. Metro Section, B5.

The New York Times Crossword. (July 12, 2000). The Ithaca [New York] Journal. 2C.