Even the innocent crosswords is being hijacked

I have been a crosswords nut since grade school in the early ‘60’s, starting out with picture puzzles in newspapers delivered daily at home on subscription. I eventually grew into the harder crosswords until I got to the real challenges posed by pocketbooks like the New York Times Crossword Puzzles, particularly those edited by Margaret Farrar. When these became unavailable, I switched back to newspaper crosswords.

Anyway, I always thought of crosswords as a pastime where one bothers nobody, an activity requiring no more than a comfy place to hunker down and lose oneself in a world defined by words for intellectual discovery. It is a world as real as the one outside the page. In a crosswords grid one finds history, science, literature, religion, entertainment, sports, etc. All of them unambiguously factual, no frivolous falsity nor subjective fantasy.

It was to my great horror, therefore, to come upon an article while doing a Google search for something else that was entitled "Crossword puzzles are everywhere. But how inclusive are the bylines and clues?" Just seeing the words crosswords and inclusive together in a single thought struck me with both immediate anger and dread. I knew at once that my innocuous crosswords are now under attack, targeted for takedown and takeover.

From when crosswords were invented to their rise in popularity, nobody probably entertained the thought that someday it would be targeted for expropriation by those who feel the world owes them their every whim, that everyone must submit to their own definitions regardless of how the natural order of things breathed life into them. Everything is now being contaminated by the virus of self-righteous arrogation.

The article I stumbled upon, written by Isha Bhargava for CBC News and posted on November 6, 2022, says "The issue of inclusion of race, gender, sexuality and other categories has been debated in the crossword world for decades." "When you only have puzzles that represent a certain kind of topic or are only of interest to straight, white men, a lot of people won't see themselves reflected in the grid."

I am truly aghast by such reasoning, by such logic. When I used to buy pocketbooks of New York Times crosswords, it was because I found them to be the most challenging. I did not buy them because they were made by Filipinos nor because I expected to find references to the Philippines in the puzzles. Similarly, I never did British crosswords because I did not like the construction nor could fully grasp the British wit that went into them.

In other words, if some people (the article refers to them as categories) want to see themselves in crosswords, they should make their own esoteric editions, in the same way that there are Filipino puzzles for those who like them. Me, I do not like Filipino puzzles, but I never damn their makers for not making them interesting or appealing to me. Puzzles, like many other individual pursuits, are always subjective.

The problem with these "categories" is they want to change the world according to their wishes, without regard or respect for others and what is true, proven, and incontrovertible by study, fact, and nature. If allowed to run roughshod over the world, they will destroy it as we know it. They have already started with institutions like the Oscars, calling it "too white" ignoring the fact that it is about excellence not race.

The result is that whenever a black person wins an Oscar, I will now have to doubt whether it was based on performance or color of skin. Then they started infesting sports, where a man who once played basketball as his natural self was allowed to play the same game as a woman because he just decided to be so. And now they have set their sights on pastimes like crosswords. The end of the world is truly near.