[Sorry about the screwed-up linx below...it's an ongoing "MetaRex tech dumbness" plus "Typepad tech glitch" problem...for anyone interested the cut and paste linx are: 1) Rex's blog today-- www.rexwordpuzzle.blogspot.com/2013/02/el-al-hub-city-wed-2-13-13-pittsburgh.html 2) Deb Amlen's blog today-- www.wordplay.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/12/star-in-cygnus/ 3) Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind-- www.righteousmind.com ]
I liked Richard and Judith Martin's puzzle fine. The solve was smooth by my not v. smooth standards. A theme I'd felt was too intrusive and kinda clunky as I was solving came together with the final thematic answer VISAGED CARD....the combination of J, Q, and K = FACE CARD and J, Q, and K = VISAGED CARD clicked nicely in my verbal hindbrain.
Yep, I raised my eyebrows a bit on RACE WAR. But we online solver 31 wannabes don't have time to think about that stuff while we're solving...
I do have a minute to think about it now, though.
Rex mega-hated it. Much as I gotta get right down this morning to editing the references for my paper I gotta resubmit ASAP to my editor, that stirs me up...the excellence of Rex's spur-of-the-moment passion and reasoning on the substance and the tech of the puzzle calls for...something...
Here goes...
What Rex is really doing here--and it's a v. valuable service--is giving Will feedback..."no, man, you got this one wrong!"...
So let me try to do the same...
My first thought...
It's gotta be possible to can RACE WAR...let's see...
You could go w/ RACE MAN, which is a bit edgy but uplifting...okay...but TMA for transportation management authority stinks, and CHANGE going down is a super-ugly dupe of the theme answer JACKIE CHANGED...nope, that won't work...
How about RACE CAR? TCA is really nasty...wikipedia tells me it stands for tri-cyclide anti-depressant, the general class of stuff that preceded modern SSRIs like Prozac...if ya wanna go w/ the idea that everything and anything related to Prozac, Zoloft, etc. is news ya should/could use, then ya can go deep Maleska and hit solvers w/ a clue like "3-ringed Prozac predec."...
And then ya could always just tell the Martins, "Sorry-- I like your idea and your persistence in submitting* but I just can't go with this unless you clean up the top by getting rid of RACE WAR and getting something clearly better than TCA in the T-A fill."
Or you could just say this [to yourself only]...
"No way in the world am I gonna do TCA. That's old-era garbage. It's like doilies around the legs of a piano. Yep, I could ask the Martins to do this over. But I ain't gonna do it. I'm just gonna go with RACE WAR. This puzzle is at least an average-quality Wednesday. And we're not Germany or a lot of the world, where they walk around on eggshells. We're America, where excremental garbage like The Turner Diaries is constitutionally protected free speech. And as it happens I think that "anything goes" freedom-first quality is a great great thing about America. Not that I want to force anybody to agree with me on that...but hey, if I can nudge the culture a little bit more in the free-wheeling direction, let's go for it...I'm just gonna accept this one...and let 'em complain...more power to 'em, in fact...free speech is good!"
I'm not saying that that's actually went through Will's head at all in his decision to accept this puzzle. But I think that is a perfectly defensible stance to take about the Martins' puzzle.
Is Rex's stance also defensible?
Ya betcha.
Who's right? Well...I guess I'm personally (allowing for lots of ambivalences and "who am I really" ditherings) a lot closer to my "hypothetical Will" paragraph above than I am to Rex's reax. But I don't think I'm right and Rex is wrong.
And yet. In part of me, I do indeed think I'm right and that others who do not agree with me are not right. That is part of what it means to have an opinion. It may be a lesser part or a greater part than another side of me that says, "I am right and Rex is right, too." But I am a liar if I deny the side of me that says "I am right and therefore Rex is wrong." That side is part of the truth of human nature that is inscribed in me.
Perhaps we all can read a little Jonathan Haidt on how our righteous minds can blind us and on how we can at least sometimes detach ourselves from the struggle of right and wrong...for me, a huge part of the attraction of CrossWorld is that puzzles are a domain that is largely aesthetic, where beauty has a place of honor that it very often does not have in the domains of ethics, law, and business where I spend my working life.
*[Deb Amlen has a nice note from the Martins about that.]
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