Word games are my daily therapy

I’m a word nerd. Words are fun and games to me, a lifelong writer. I enjoy searching for the right synonym or phrase to spice up an otherwise ordinary article. At the newspaper office, crafting headlines is another form of “word game” to us. From puns and alliteration to acronyms and homophones, we try them all to get readers’ attention.

I will say, headlines still aren’t my strong suit, even after seven years in the newspaper business. In the annual North Dakota newspaper contest, we usually get outdone by a particular weekly newspaper editor from the Red River Valley. But I digress.

Words are my playing cards, you might say, and my favorite games involve words. After scrolling through the headlines of the day on the New York Times app, I gravitate towards the Games section. No, I don’t pay extra to subscribe to the games, but I do take part in the free mini crossword and Spelling Bee. It’s like therapy to my brain in the midst of a chaotic day.

The mini crossword is timed, and I rather look forward to seeing how fast I can solve it each day. I finished a puzzle in 37 seconds last week! Some days, like yesterday, it takes me a few minutes to fill in a 10-clue crossword. I got stuck on the clue “kids are warned not to cross them” – a North Dakota native who grew up on gravel, I put “road.” The correct answer was “eyes.” That threw me off for a bit!

In Spelling Bee, the goal is to find as many words as you can using seven letters arranged in a hive shape. Each word must be at least four letters long and use the center “yellow” letter in order to count. The ultimate “win” is finding the “pangram,” the word that uses all seven letters on the Spelling Bee board. I may not have made it to the oral round at the state Spelling Bee as an eighth grader, but I solved the pangram on the first try yesterday, coming up with “captivity” in just a few seconds. And I spelled it right too!

After months of hearing about how the newest word game, Wordle, was so “addicting,” I gave it a try this week. Again, I went to the New York Times app on my phone, where not surprisingly, they now have a daily dose of that too. I was pretty proud of myself- I solved my first Wordle in four guesses. For you Wordle newbies out there, I had six tries.

How fitting it was that my very first Wordle answer was “natal,” defined as “associated with one’s birth.” Yes, even my parents will likely tell you that I came out the womb forming words and haven’t stopped since!

I imagine I’ll be the modern version of my grandma Vonnie, who loved filling out the daily crossword in the newspaper as well as completing crosswords in her puzzle books. I always admired how she could solve what seemed like the toughest clues, with her dictionary and thesaurus at the ready on her sofa table. Armed with these newfangled interactive word games on my iphone, I figure I can keep my mind sharp and my fingers nimble well into old age.

Or maybe I’ll be like the 80-year-old Illinois woman who says her Wordle habit may have saved her life during a home invasion.

An avid Wordle player, she awoke one day to see a naked stranger standing beside her bed. He held her hostage, armed with knives from her kitchen, for nearly 20 hours. He locked her in the basement, without food or medication.

In the meantime, her daughter in California noticed that she had not sent her Wordle score for the day, which was unusual. She and her sister contacted the police, who performed a wellness check and discovered the intruder. A SWAT team was called in after the suspect was unsuccessfully tazed, and the 32-year-old was ultimately charged with multiple crimes. Well played, Ms. Holt!

Are you a puzzle fanatic? If so, we’ve got some new things for you, right here in your local newspaper.

On the New Rockford Transcript website, http://www.newrockfordtranscript.com, we feature new interactive crossword and Sudoku puzzles each week. Go to the “Recreation” section, and look for “Games and Puzzles.” You'll also find a weekly print crossword on page A6 (this week it’s on page A8).

This week on the Foster County Independent website, we are debuting a full page of puzzles and comics in our e-edition. The e-edition is available to all subscribers. To get your bonus fun and games page, go to fosterconews.com, click “free trial” at the top right corner of the page, and set up an online account. Once you are logged in, click on the red “View PDF” icon on the right side above the top stories, and choose the “April 11, 2022” edition. A pdf will download, which is a nearly exact replica of the print edition you get in the mail. However, the photos are all in full color!! At the end, there will be a “bonus” page of games and comics, courtesy of King Features Syndicate.

Come play along with us!