Mike: Helen is a great fan of codeword puzzles.
Helen:...In fact I like all sorts of puzzles – that’s why I married the everlastingly interesting puzzle that is Mike! I like games and jigsaws and sudoku and...my latest addiction: codeword. If you’re not a puzzle person, you may not know that codewords look like crossword puzzles but without the verbal clues. All you have are the squares, each numbered with numbers 1-26 and, for beginners, one or two numbers with letters as starters. In the puzzles I like now, you get no starters at all and you just have to guess by the frequency of each particular numbered letter. Of course there are almost always high numbers of ‘e’s and usually more vowels than consonants - but...only ‘almost’ always and not always ‘usually’. Positioning of the letters, by whether they are ever ‘doubles’ in the puzzle and knowing which letters usually follow which together, with the exercise of logic, can also be useful!
Mike: To me puzzles, especially codewords, seem like an exquisite form of torture. A crossword now and then is my limit! But Helen loves them! Perhaps she can see herself at Bletchley Park helping to thwart the Nazi foe. They keep your mind active as you get older, they say. Yes I believe that but I can think of better ways of doing it. Occasionally she will call out to me something like: 5 letters, three Y’s. And so the agony begins.
Helen: I hit trouble this week with a word which I just couldn’t work out no matter how many ways I looked at it and how many letter combinations I tried. Eventually I looked it up in my trusty Clue Solver app! Like a lot of things in life, as soon as you know the answer it seemed obvious. The code dissolved and I was pleased – but frustrated with myself for not seeing it without help! A bit of a phyrric victory!
In a week when I, like millions of others, have been worrying about the various situations in the world which could arise, it occurred to me that the world situation is like an infinite codeword with many more than 26 letters. It is beyond me. I flatter myself that I’m good with words, they have been my professional tools and my personal delight all my life...but my expectations about how the 26 letters of the alphabet are put together on this occasion were inadequate, one-eyed, incomplete. This was a unique and, to me at least, entirely unpredictable combination which defied my expectations.
Mike: We all do this sort of thing all the time in different areas of life. We place a particular shape on events or attitudes and come to certain not entirely persuasive conclusions. We put a certain construction on the behaviour of others, form a conclusion or often a judgment and live with it as if it were true. We do not imagine or we forget that other constructions might exist. We are convinced. And so we misunderstand other people’s behaviours. Life becomes like a giant Rorschach blot test.
Helen: Just as in ordinary life so also on a global scale. The future of the globe lies in the mystery of that Giant Algorithm which is God or Fate or Chance – however you want to name it. An infinite number of factors are involved of which the real estate president and his plan for the eastern end of the Mediterranean is only one tiny fraction. Knowing ‘the outcome’ requires leaps of the imagination beyond the finite. I'm learning very slowly that the healthiest response is one of my alltime favourite responses to situations I can't manage, 'There is a God but it's not you!'
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