Two wins, one crossword

I introduce the word 'fog' early on, because it is this that I wade through seeking that elusive word, knowing it is there and trying desperately to scrape a coating of forgetfulness from it. I theorise that this constant scraping away keeps the words clean and bouncy enough to leap out of the what is fast becoming a brain cesspool.

There are only certain words available to be found. The rest lie deeply buried and some have never been there in the first place.

For these reasons, I choose to do fairly simple crosswords.

The action of being able to quickly fill in those crossword squares makes me feel smarter and easily fulfilled.

I know there are more difficult crosswords about because these are the ones favoured by my husband.

While I stare askance into the middle distance pondering the word that means to go up (ascend), my husband does a quick brow furrow, before popping in answers like 'silat' (Malay martial art) and 'ballista' (giant cross bow). Many of his words that he momentarily ponders are revelations to me. They do not have to be dragged up from any depth, because they have never entered my brain in the first place. And my brain is perfectly happy without them.

And so, once my waiting-room magazine-style puzzles are complete, rather than check for answers, I pass my puzzle book on to he-of-the HG Wells invention ('cavourite').

He adroitly fills in those blank spaces, delighting in correcting my own simple answers. He chuckles away, telling me how to spell words like easel (I always have to think about the order of the 'e' and the 'l') and letting me know that if I had put in the right word at 2 down (or spelt it corrrectly), 7 across would have been easy. And of course if I had answered 7 across, the extra 'e' at 3 down would have made that one easy too.

I smile and nod. My skill at self deception has kept me buoyed. My agile mind has afterall, completed most of the crossword without help. Tick one to me.

It is assuredly a win, win situation. The second win goes to my crossword wizard for finishing the job and keeping this foggy fighter afloat.

- Linda Muller