A Happy 80th Birthday Crossword Puzzle for Dylan Fans

My granddaughter Lena is also
a Dylan fan.

My daughter creates crossword puzzles, many of which have been published in the NYTimes and other major publications. Because she's also a Dylan fan I thought she would not object to my requesting a Dylan-themed crossword puzzle for his 80th birthday. It's not quite as easy as a Word Find puzzle. It will make you scratch your noggin, much like trying to resolve the meanings of many of Dylan's lyrics. 

Speaking of puzzles, Dylan used the word "puzzle" only once in all his catalog. Bonus question to those who solve the crossword: In which Dylan song did the word Puzzle appear? 

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The NYTimes image below is filler so as to put a little more separation between the puzzle and its solution. Look at the answers only if you've given up all hope. Enjoy!

One of Christina's puzzles was published on January 1, 2020
the first NYTimes puzzle of the new decade. 

SOLUTION:

TRIVIA ANSWER: "All Over You"
        Bootleg Series Vol. 9: The Witmark Demos

        "Well, you cut me like a jigsaw puzzle..."

"Happy Birthday, Bob!"

EdNote: Every blog post this week will be Dylan-themed in one way or another. If Dylan is not your thing, come back in June. There's a backlog of other material waiting to be shared.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BOB

Related Links

On Breaking In to the New York Times Crossword Puzzle Community

Making Crosswords for Fun and Profit: A Visit with Christina Iverson

This week is Duluth Dylan Fest
Many of our events will be streaming.

Duluth Dylan Fest Links

www.bobdylanway.com

www.duluthdylanfest.com

www.facebook.com/duluthdylanfest/

Local Art Seen: Snapshots from the Duluth Arts District (It's A Puzzle)

Last night after work I drove downtown, parked my car, putting on my walking shoes and did a walkabout, snapping photos at various venues where art was happening, is happening or was about to happen. It was a variation on "a random walk down Wall Street," except that the only investment was time, and the aim was to collect photos, not investment ideas.

When I go home last night I did an inventory of my take and decided it might make an interesting game. Can you identify where each of these photos was taken?

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

There are all kinds of puzzles in the world. When we're growing up they are a way to test our wits. Though I'd heard about Richard Hansen's latest venture (Andy Bennett's imaginative mind is in the mix) I really didn't understand it till last night. Evidently this is something catching on elsewhere, the next level of immersive entertainment. It's one thing to be dropped into a virtual world where you have to solve puzzles and collect clues in order to move to the next level. Solve Entertainment has created an actual environment in which you enter the story in real life. The "Game Rooms" can be found upstairs from the new Blacklist Artisan Ales at 120 East Superior Street. Richard Hansen gave me a tour last night and guess what? Over 5000 people played Solve at their former location. Find out more here on their website.

As for today's Local Art Seen Puzzle, it's basically aimed at getting you in and out of some of our local venues where you can see art downtown. Here are the identifying remarks about the photos above. 1. Blacklist Artisan Ales (formerly the Last Place On Earth) is the latest venue to decorate their walls with local art. Paintings by John L. Peyton are currently on display, billed as one of Duluth's most prolific artists.  2. Duluth Art Glass, view through the window with reflection. I love reflections, and nothing reflects like glass.  3. The Zeitgeist Atrium is featuring large format photography by Kip Praslowicz, local documentarian, titled Watershed: Wild Humans. This photo here is from the attempt to set a Guinness World Record for snow angels that took place at UMD a few winters back. Thanks for the memories, Kip.  4. Window dressing at Steampunk artist Richard Roswall's space.  5. Red Herring Lounge is decorated with pictures by Rooster Tail Ink. Last night Janet Kennedy and Rich Updegrove spoke to a gathering crowd about the issues that are propelling them to run for city council this fall. Kennedy's slogan is, "Meet, Talk and Find A Way."  6. If you didn't figure it out, photo number six is inside one of the puzzle rooms at Solve Entertainment.  7. The last, of course, is the sign pointing the way to Solve.

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There's always plenty happening here in the Duluth Arts Scene. Tomorrow night Sarah Brokke will have an open house / reception at Gallery 315, the former Washington Studios Gallery. 5-8 p.m. There is also an opening at the Duluth Art Institute called Reservation Pop with Wendy Red Star, followed by a talk at The Underground, and a Saturday workshop titled The Artist As Culture Producer. FOR BEST RESULTS, print out my blog post from this past weekend and carry it around in your purse or pocket. That's what some people do anyways.

Meantime, art goes on all around you. Get into it.

Puzzles and the Ambiguity of Bob Dylan

Puzzles by their nature imply solution. We don't buy an 800-piece puzzle and wonder if it'll go back together again. When I was a kid my dad used to bring home bent nail puzzles like these that we'd struggle over, having to take apart or put back together. It was assumed that they're going to resolve, whether it's taking these nail things apart or whatever.

So it is with mystery stories. Whether Agatha Christie or Sherlock Holmes, it's essentially a given at the outset that Hercule Poirot will learn whodunnit by the end of the story, or that Holmes will solve the mystery that has stumped Scotland Yard. The fun, for readers, is trying to take the clues one is being fed by the writer and "get it" before our hero does.

How about real life? A lot of situations we find ourselves in leave us feeling puzzled, and there appears to be no resolution. The puzzles of life are often more complicated than those bent nail puzzles. We're tested, fail and in the end left confused. It would be nice if everything we stumbled into were as neatly packaged as the crossword puzzles we find in our daily paper. The crosswords may be challenging, but I've yet to see our newspaper publish one in which there was no solution whatsoever. Real life problems, like finding employment, have no real assurances. At least the newspaper prints the answers to the Crypt-O-Gram and the Word Jumble and the daily crossword puzzle.

This is an intriguing feature of Bob Dylan's career as a songwriter. Because of our experiences as readers of Agatha Christie, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and others of their ilk, we approach song interpretation much the same as we would a mystery. We search for clues, and we assume that there is a solution to the problem of interpretation.

What Dylan does in many of his songs is more like life. It doesn't come neatly packaged. It is not a math equation like 2 + 2 = 4. It is when we try to dissect his lyrics rationally that we at times run into problems, because occasionally the song is intended to be engaged emotionally, or on some deeper level. The composition intrigues the mind, but the texture of the images touches us in other ways than we ourselves can articulate. The effect of the lyrics is heightened by the musical accompaniment to create moods and sensations.

The direction modern art took with abstract expressionism and minimalism was off-putting to many people because when they attempted to engage the work intellectually and rationally. Kandinsky opened the door to alternative ways of viewing a painting, the emotional/aesthetic path. Dylan explored this as well as he strove to get the right sound to wrap his words and ideas around, words that did more to veil interpretations than to reveal them.

All this to say that Dylan's ambiguity is more like the puzzle that is life than it is the jigsaw puzzles we sometimes occupy our time with. The puzzle of life has pieces that don't always fit so neatly together.

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If you do like puzzles that have solutions, here's a cool site to try out: Jigsaw Planet. Or try out this British site with other varieties of puzzles.

Meantime, life goes on all around you. Engage it. 

Puzzles

Colors must fit together as pieces in a puzzle or cogs in a wheel. ~Hans Hofmann

Last night Susie asked if I could get the bungee cord unstuck from the gate. The fish hook shaped end had somehow penetrated the lift mechanism and seemed impossible to dislodge without breaking it.

I went out and examined the situation, wiggling the piece a bit to see exactly what the hangup was. It reminded me of the countless puzzles my dad used to bring home when we were kids. The puzzles were often pieces of bent metal in various configurations which you had to figure out how to disassemble. Depending on your level of patience, these mind benders could sometimes torture you as you shifted and flipped things around.

On one occasion one of my brothers gave up in exasperation on one of these puzzles and went to bed. In the middle of the night he sat up, the answer clear in his mind, and he returned to resume working on the solution, which came almost instantly.

So it was that the bungee cord and flange reminded me of my youth. And in a moment, after pondering motionless for a half minute, I arrived at the elegant solution. A very clever puzzle which I will call Gate and Bungee, to be sold for $9.95 if I can get it manufactured at a reasonable price.

Wikipedia defines puzzle as "a problem or enigma that tests the ingenuity of the solver." Puzzles can often be a form of entertainment. Crossword puzzles are an addiction for some people. Math problems can be a puzzle, and I myself never tire of word puzzles like the Scramble that appears in our daily paper.

Many things in life can be considered puzzles. Doctors try to solve the puzzles of patients' symptoms in order to diagnose illness. Psychologists do the same for the labyrinthine recesses of the mind. Counsellors strive to understand the complexities of personalities in order to help people unlock their relationship puzzles. In business, marketing professionals often see the process of increasing sales and market share as a puzzle to solve.

And then there are those who wrestle with the meaning of life itself, the biggest puzzle of all. Even when you think you have a handle on the "big picture" it can test one endlessly to figure out where your piece fits in the whole.

In the meantime, life goes on all around you. Have a great day, if you can figure out what you want to wear and eat today. Don't make it more complicated than it already is.

Ciao.

Case of the Gilded Lily

Why are mysteries so fascinating?

One of the most popular shows on television today is CSI, a.k.a. Crime Scene Investigation. Essentially, it’s about the realities involved in solving murders. Though I’ve never seen the show, I know it must be popular because it’s on nearly every night of the week now.

CSI is, of course, only the latest in a long line of mystery, whodunit types of stories stretching back who knows how far. I remember conversations with my grandmother about the mysteries of the Great Pyramid and all the questions it raised. The Greek historian Herodotus wrote about it twenty-five hundred years ago and it is still unearthing unresolved questions to this day.

What is it about mysteries and puzzles that gets us so engaged? In the realm of literature Edgar Allen Poe made his mark with mysteries such as The Gold Bug and Murders in the Rue Morgue. Suddenly, a genre was born. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes was all about solving imponderables with a searing brilliance. G.K.Chesterton’s Father Brown was a contemporary to Holmes with an equally rabid following. Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot became a household name through the murder mystery genre as well.

When television culture emerged the short mystery tale became a staple in the nation’s diet for diversion. The Rockford Files, Columbo, Murder She Wrote… The shows made for good fun as audiences attempted to solve the crimes faster than their heroes.

With regard to solving murders the literary character, and television show, that most strikes a chord with me is the one and only Perry Mason, created by Erle Stanley Gardner and later played by Raymond Burr. Having just watched five episodes (on DVD) of Perry Mason Season 1, it’s easy to see why this was such compelling television back in its day.

There were probably two things that made Erle Stanley Gardner’s books so engaging. First was the air of authenticity in the manuscripts. Gardner himself had been a trial lawyer. He did not have to research courtroom proceedings as a journalist. He lived them. His pugnacious hero Perry Mason no doubt mirrored his own real and imagined courtroom achievements. Second, his terse contemporary writing style continuously moved his stories forward. He didn’t waste time on tedious backgrounds and family histories. The books strode through the story, both revealing and concealing, leaving the reader illuminated yet in the dark as Perry Mason persisted through to victory, and victory again.

The Mason team included his personal detective Drake, and the ever efficient Della Street who provided a perfect counterweight to the granite and steel Mason. Raymond Burr brought Perry Mason to life ever so perfectly, the tough yet considerate counsel, who never seems to lose his cool, or his client’s case.

Erle Stanley Gardner’s own story is especially inspiring for young writers because he purportedly never published his first novel till in his forties, yet completed 82 Perry Mason novels before passing on. Yes, he had been writing pulp fiction for years before “making it” so it is not like something magical happened overnight. As was recently pointed out somewhere else, the only place where Success comes before Work is in the dictionary. Gardner paid his dues before reaping his rewards.

Mysteries, puzzles, mind games, concealed identities, disguises, surveillance, cryptography, encryption and decryption, decoding secret messages… these diversions can become almost obsessive at times. But they sharpen our minds by teaching us how to observe better, how to gather information and “see” in new ways. Applied thinking and problem solving are valuable skill sets in the real world. Leaders need these skills, and strive to develop them in others. Whether in the workplace, the community or the home, we really don't want or need a nation of sheep.

But let’s save that discussion for another time and give our attention to… The Case of the Jaded Jogger. Was it suicide, or was it murder?

Ten Lessons from a Picture Puzzle

Susie had been working on a puzzle that we had gotten for Christmas & I spent an evening helping. Within minutes I had an insight about achievement. Susie said making the puzzle had triggered all kinds of insights. Here are just a few of the lessons she gained by working the puzzle.

1) Start with frame. It’s almost impossible to put a complex puzzle together without doing the edges first. Life, the great puzzle, is more easily worked out when you first build a framework for putting it together.

2) Work areas that are obvious first. You focus on specific tasks. The red wagon. The blue door. Don’t worry about other parts of the puzzle. They will become easier to do later when the pieces around it are assembled.

3) Sometimes it seems like critical pieces are missing. But in truth they are all there, though we don’t always recognize them when we first see them.

4) Sometimes others help us. Their fresh perspective helps us see things we hadn’t seen before and thus moves us forward.

5) Sometimes it seems there are too many pieces. They can’t all fit in this picture, can they?

6) Christina (our daughter) came along and put in a piece. Even a child can see solutions at times that we miss.

7) Puzzles are put together one piece at a time. Achievement is a series of small successes.

8) Persistence is necessary in order to succeed.

9) It’s not arbitrary. You are following a pattern. Life works better when we have role models and people to pattern our lives after.

10) When a piece doesn’t fit, you can’t keep jamming it in trying to force it. Kids learn this at an early age, but many adults seem never to have learned this lesson.

January 22, 1994