This is Part 2 of a series. Don’t miss Part 1, next week. (I know what order series normally go in! Get over it already!)
Maggie the Cheagle and I decided to watch “Lost” again. Last year, we watched for the first time, with Susan along for the ride. We went through all six seasons in about two months.
We became acquainted with Dr. Jack Shephard, Kate Austen, Hugo “Hurley” Reyes, Sayid Jarrah, Charlie Pace, Claire Littleton, John Locke, James “Sawyer” Ford, et al. I usually had the laptop going, multi-tasking as I watched. I missed the scenes involving crosswords.
When I saw the Locke puzzle that I write about in Part 1, I got excited. Even though the scene lasted only seven to eight seconds, I got that the writers wanted the audience to absorb the clue “Enkidu’s friend” and the answer GILGAMESH. I also caught that GILGAMESH made a mess of the words crossing it.
Though in season two, the Locke puzzle in a sense was the last puzzle featured. The first puzzle time-wise is in a flashback on season Three’s “A Tale of Two Cities.”
Jack’s sitting in his car outside a pre-school playground where his estranged wife is working. He has a two-day beard and looks fatigued. He’s finishing a cup of coffee. The scene starts with a shot of the car’s console, where we see his pager, reading 7:15.23 a.m., atop a newspaper folded to the crossword, which appears to have been fully solved, in ink.
Research shows the puzzle to be an anachronism: Jack’s plane would crash in September 2004, but the puzzle he has solved weeks earlier was in newspapers on July 31, 2006. Oops!
The puzzle’s theme is simple enough: Four two-word phrases are presented, the first words of each being synonyms: REQUIRED COURSES, ESSENTIAL FACTS, VITAL STATISTICS, …. George Shayler is the author, Rich Norris the editor.
While this theme arguably feeds into the show’s plot, the only significance of the puzzle is to suggest that Jack’s been sitting in his car for a while. Nothing more. As with Locke’s puzzle, the writers did not consider the crossword’s role significant enough to go to any extra trouble for its sake – like digging up a two-year old paper or maybe retaining a cruciverbalist to consult.
“Lostpedia” lists the “visible clues and answers,” including 42A, “Unpleasant but indispensable parts of a job” – NECESSARY EVILS. It also lists “other notable answers,” including OVEN, because Juliet burned her hand on an oven; O’TOOLE, because Bernard and Rose met at a pub named O’Tooles; and SOT, because Jack’s father was one. To all of that I say, “Piffle!”
The first appearance of a crossword is in “Walkabout” – season one, episode five – where Shannon is sunning herself, magazine and pen in hand, puzzle showing. Boone approaches and shares his worry about Rose, who’s been sitting alone and apart from the group since the crash. Shannon replies, “What’s a four-letter word for ‘I don’t care?’” – a stereotypical crossword gag line that would never be uttered by a serious solver!
A special “Lost”-inspired puzzle appears as this week’s I Swear Crossword. Another will appear next week in conjunction with Part 1 of this series.
Vic Fleming is a district court judge in Little Rock, Ark., where he also teaches at the William H. Bowen School of Law. Contact him at vicfleming@att.net.