Gink Love
It seems odd to me that when people want to understand a piece of art, they often begin by learning something about its creator’s biography. For some reason, I tend to forget that the works that mean so much to me—musical compositions in particular—result from a great deal of effort exerted by a living, human imagination. It’s as if they emanate on their own from the everlasting world of ideas.
Will Shortz made it hard to hold on to this illusion when he started attaching bylines to the daily puzzles in the Times. Suddenly, the solver was faced with the various quirks of personality associated with this or that constructor.
Knowing what I do about the author of today’s puzzle, I can’t help but wonder if the clues are meant to be read as a sort of autobiographical statement by wunderkind Michael Shteyman, who is just barely in his 20s and who has already contributed more than 25 puzzles to the Times. Shteyman immigrated to Baltimore from Saint Petersburg at the age of 12, graduated young from Johns Hopkins, is planning to become a doctor, and also plays the piano and composes. Was it a conscious choice to include “Language study topic” (TENSE), “Dictionary features” (USAGENOTES), “Not native” (ALIEN) and “Duma demurral” (NYET) all in the same themeless puzzle? And then there’s “Advanced missile feature” (HEATSENSOR), which, although less direct, does point to one of the facts of life that for years cast a shadow over both his home and adopted countries.
Also, I have a feeling that having English as his second language is less a handicap and in some way a leg up. Think of his fellow Russian émigrés Vladimir Nabokov and Nicolas Slonimsky, who approached English with ears so unprejudiced they seemed incapable of cliché. I’m willing to bet Shteyman’s freshness is what left him open to absorbing, along the way, the completely unfamiliar GINK. Thanks to the nifty Dictionary widget,* I learned right away that, no, the correct answer for “Eccentric guys, slangily” is not GEEKS:
gink |gi NG k|
noun informal
a foolish or contemptible person.
ORIGIN early 20th cent.(originally U.S.): of unknown origin.
*Oxford American Dictionaries, Apple OS 10.4 ("Tiger")
Will Shortz made it hard to hold on to this illusion when he started attaching bylines to the daily puzzles in the Times. Suddenly, the solver was faced with the various quirks of personality associated with this or that constructor.
Knowing what I do about the author of today’s puzzle, I can’t help but wonder if the clues are meant to be read as a sort of autobiographical statement by wunderkind Michael Shteyman, who is just barely in his 20s and who has already contributed more than 25 puzzles to the Times. Shteyman immigrated to Baltimore from Saint Petersburg at the age of 12, graduated young from Johns Hopkins, is planning to become a doctor, and also plays the piano and composes. Was it a conscious choice to include “Language study topic” (TENSE), “Dictionary features” (USAGENOTES), “Not native” (ALIEN) and “Duma demurral” (NYET) all in the same themeless puzzle? And then there’s “Advanced missile feature” (HEATSENSOR), which, although less direct, does point to one of the facts of life that for years cast a shadow over both his home and adopted countries.
Also, I have a feeling that having English as his second language is less a handicap and in some way a leg up. Think of his fellow Russian émigrés Vladimir Nabokov and Nicolas Slonimsky, who approached English with ears so unprejudiced they seemed incapable of cliché. I’m willing to bet Shteyman’s freshness is what left him open to absorbing, along the way, the completely unfamiliar GINK. Thanks to the nifty Dictionary widget,* I learned right away that, no, the correct answer for “Eccentric guys, slangily” is not GEEKS:
gink |gi NG k|
noun informal
a foolish or contemptible person.
ORIGIN early 20th cent.(originally U.S.): of unknown origin.
*Oxford American Dictionaries, Apple OS 10.4 ("Tiger")
posted by DO at 3:10 PM
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