For those of you who can read both languages, you would know that the above title means: Crossword 解決, and for those of you who can not read the Japanese but are of analytical/puzzle-solving bent, you would have deduced from the first sentence of this paragraph that クロスワード is the Japanese for "Crossword" and 解決 is the Japanese for "Solution".pic: クロスワード レディーズ ("Ladies' Crosswords") is the title of the magazine; can you see the pink 10? That's to show it's the Oct. issue. The "19" is because it's the 19th year anniversary of the publication.
Several years ago, I was having a difficult time handling a problem and began to feel I would lose my mind trying. "Help, God;" I remember praying. "I can't handle this!"
You would never guess the solution God gave me for my problem: He put my 7th-grade son Raymond in the hospital with acute appendicitis! (Wait; I'll explain.) The relatively easy, routine surgery took longer than usual, and the doctor told me later that his appendix had attached itself to the back wall so had to be detatched from it before it was extracted from the body. And a tube was attached to drain out the infection, so I could expect his post-operative hospitalization to last a bit longer than had been expected, I was told.
pic: My 7th-grade son. Notice: most junior highers and high schoolers in Japan wear uniforms!
After my son got a little better, he felt good enough to feel bored with all the time on his hands and nothing to do...so I went down to the hospital store and picked out a puzzle book for him, to help fill up that time. Well, when I handed it to him, he said he wasn't interested--it was for ladies, after all--giving the book back to me. It was the only one available in the store! What was I supposed to do with it, I wondered: I could manage number and picture puzzles, but the rest of the book would be a waste; I couldn't do puzzles in Japanese!
I opened to a page with number puzzles. The English name for puzzles like this is "Sudoku", the original name "Su", meaning "number", and "doku" for "solve. The new Japanese name is "Numplay": yes, "numbers" and "play with". Why would a puzzle have a Japanese name in English but be referred to in Japanese by using English words? It's a...puzzle to me.
Anyway, I solved a "Numplay" or "Sudoku"--you choose the name--and looked for other puzzles requiring mental calisthenics in numbers. When I was done with those, I looked for visually-solved problems; and even then, I had finished only a fraction of the book. So I decided to try my hand at the easiest crossword puzzle. I was pleasantly surprised to discover I could complete it perfectly! So I tried another one, and another more difficult one...until I had finished the entire book! I was no longer しかたなく (resignedly?) doing things to keep it from being a waste of money; I was totally enjoying and engrossed in it.pic: "Candle Numplay" on left, "Kanji Parts" crossword on right
Incidentally, Raymond's hospitalization ended up being two weeks. And when he was released from the hospital, most of the puzzles were completed, and it dawned on me: the problem that had been plaguing me weeks before had never crossed my mind the entire time. God had decided to take it--I couldn't do anything about it anyway--and send me relief in a very unexpected way. Wow.
P.S.(If you're interested, my thoughts on "Strapped-on Skydiving", illustrated on the cover of the ladies' puzzle book above, can be found on the Sept. 25, 2005 post of the "Come into an MK's Kitchen" blog, which can be read by clicking on the last link at the bottom of this page.)
