The first crossword puzzle appeared December 21, 1913 in the FUN pages of The New York World, Pulitzer’s paper. It was the creation of Liverpool-born journalist, Arthur Wynne, originally called a word-cross but misprinted shortly after to its familiar form, an early victim to own imposition of anarchic plasticity onto language. With understated transatlantic modesty, Wynne claimed crosswords were as old as Pompei. Back home, old poet Housman would name these the “days when heaven was falling, / The hour when earth’s foundations fled.” The world would be at war half a year later.

My son sits at the desk, knee propped on its edge, keyboard in lap. Nearby, a television bolted to the wall displays a high-definition humanoid, clad in luminous armor inscribed with obscure heraldry, dancing with ecstatic abandon. Were it not odd enough that they are dancing in the lugubrious depths of a biomorphic dreadnaught inhabited by a terrible and hostile alien race intent on destroying the earth and everything upon it, the dance they dance is the “Carlton,” made famous by actor Alfonso...