LESSON LEARNED

I’ve played the New York Times “Connections” game/puzzle for quite a while now. It asks me to find a commonality/connection between four sets of four words in the sixteen-word grid.  And then it tells me how I’ve done in comparison to the others who played the same game.

It’s that last bit that’s taught me a lesson.  A hard lesson.

There are games when I do quite brilliantly.  Oh, my, I say to myself, how smart we are.  And, how un-smart all those others are!

But then there are those days when I fail miserably and others succeed to the nth degree.

It’s taken me quite some time to figure out just exactly why.  But I finally have the answer and it’s come down to one little word  AGE.

It’s this simple:  The words I know, love, and understand have been in my vocabulary for years and years.  I know their meaning and can “connect” them to other words with similar meanings.

But now, there are “boti-ish” words which have apparently evolved from a new, automated, and soulless vocabulary.  Words which make no sense to me. At all.

Which is to say that I will continue to do very poorly on Connections when “those words” are in the puzzle.  But I’ll still beat the daylights out of all those young whipper-snappers when MY words are in the grid.

So there!  Take that!  Oh, and you youngsters might consider getting a Webster’s Dictionary.    Who knows? You might just learn something.