I do crossword puzzles enough that I feel I’m onto much of the trickery that the puzzlemakers employ. For example, a clue might say, “Logical beginning?” If it’s three letters, I know it’s likely to be “Eco,” since that’s a prefix that goes with the word “logical.” Sometimes they still fool me, but I’ve gotten pretty good at knowing the clue’s angle immediately after reading it.
I did a puzzle online this morning, however, that had one particularly troublesome clue for me: “Baseball card stat (3 letters).” The thing is, I’ve seen that clue countless times over the years in various phrasings. The answer is always “ERA” or “RBI.” That’s it. Just like when they ask for a Hebrew month, it’ll be “Adar,” and if the word “diarist” appears and the answer is three letters, it’s gonna be “Nin.” That’s just how it works. Well, I was having trouble getting the intersecting clues, so I didn’t know which answer it was going to be for this puzzle. I was short on time and had everything but that top left corner completed, so I got into my desperate mode and changed the difficulty level of the puzzle from “Master” to “Regular.” This allowed me to see if any letters were wrong by highlighting them in red. So I went back to that clue. First I put in an E, which was immediately red. “Must be RBI this time,” I thought, until the R was red too. “Ooh, changing it up, eh?” Next I tried an A for “AVG” but found that red as well. “Could they want HRs for homeruns?” Apparently not, as the H was wrong. I was very confused and checked to make sure I had read the clue correctly (which has unfortunately been the problem a few times in the past). Yep. “They couldn’t want OPS, could they?” I wondered. OPS is an advanced stat used by baseball and fantasy baseball geeks but not much elsewhere. Nope, O was wrong too. BBs (the designation for walks)? Wrong! SBs for stolen bases? Wrong again!
I gave up and did what I absolutely hate to do: I went through the alphabet until I was right. The first letter was…D. “D? For what, double plays? That’s odd.” But then the P was wrong. I honestly couldn’t think of a baseball stat starting with D, and so I went back through the alphabet again. (If you’re scoring at home, that’s for the first and second letter of a three-letter answer! The letter wheel this time stopped on…O. “You bastards,” I thought, and then I typed in the final letter: B. Yes, I suppose there is a Date of Birth on the back of a baseball card, but why the hell would the clue choose something with a dozen other abbreviated stat names when a DOB appears on every single form of identification? “Driver’s license stat,” “Passport stat,” or even “First stat?” would’ve been fine with me. But this…this was bullshit.