Saturday, July 30, 2005
Objectivist Crossword Puzzles
Stella Daily loves crossword puzzles. In fact she solves thousands of them a year. At age 21 she was reintroduced to the books of Ayn Rand that she had first read in high school. This started her reflecting on the use of words like ego in crossword puzzles:
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So she decided to take matters into her own hands. Mrs. Daily has created her own puzzles and has written the word clues to be consistent with Ayn Rand's beliefs:To the best of my knowledge - and I have solved five or more puzzles per day for the past five years - I have never seen a positively-phrased clue for EGO, only neutral and, more frequently, pejorative clues. A word that could be clued as "Man's sacred purpose" or "Working title for Ayn Rand's Anthem" is instead clued as "Megalomaniac's characteristic" or "'I' problem," as if being conscious of one's ego were a problem. EPA, on the other hand, tends to be clued as "Earth protector (abbr.)" or "Clean Air Act source, for short," implying that the Environmental Protection Agency has done good for the world in its regulation-making.
Besides the personal pleasure I get from creating a crossword whose makeup reflects my way of thinking, I hope in so doing to spread the ideas I espouse. As a solver, I have often been prompted to see a movie, read a book, or at the very least perform a Google search because of something I?ve learned from a crossword puzzle. I like to think that solvers of my puzzles may perhaps choose to pick up an Ayn Rand novel, see a movie whose protagonist represents a true hero, or ask questions about philosophy because of clues that I?ve written.Click here to access a hyperlink to some of her puzzles.
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