Swipe. Spell. Breathe.

How a Word Game is Helping Me Survive a Tumultuous Year (and Why PEACOCK Is Now My Patronus)

It starts, as most good obsessions do, with procrastination.

Specifically: I downloaded Crossword Jam in a waiting room, the way some people impulse-buy gum at the checkout line or adopt cats on vacation. I needed something to focus on besides the rising panic in my chest and the ancient cough coming from the man across the room who was definitely contagious and probably also running for Congress.

I swiped.

C–A–K–E.

Nice.

P–E–A–C–E.

Needed.

T–O–G–A.

(Rejected. Bonus word. The betrayal.)

And suddenly, I wasn’t in the room anymore. I was in it — the little grid, the warm beach background, the rush of spelling PEACOCK and watching digital petals rain down like I’d just been crowned queen of some vowel-based kingdom.

This is a story about how a word game got me through a hellish year. But first, we need to talk about ancient Rome.

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You see, word puzzles have been around since the dawn of “let’s keep our brains from rotting.”

The earliest known word square — the Sator Square — dates back to Pompeii. It was a 5x5 grid with the same words forward, backward, and upside-down. People think it was a brain teaser. Or a secret code. Or possibly just a very committed Latin student who wanted to show off.

By 1913, a man named Arthur Wynne created the first modern crossword puzzle for the New York World. It looked like a diamond and had clues like “what we do when we’re awake” (answer: LIVE). People lost their minds.

By 1924, Simon & Schuster published the first crossword book and included a pencil. (Marketing geniuses.) Soon came acrostics, word ladders, anagrams, and then… Scrabble. A game for people who love words and ruining family dinners.

Then came Boggle. And cryptics. And finally, Wordle — the sleek little word oracle we visit daily for five-letter enlightenment.

I love all of them. But I am loyal — ferociously loyal — to the New York Times Crossword, the undisputed queen of wordplay. Mondays are a warm hug. Thursdays are a psychological thriller. Saturdays are basically a wellness check. If you can finish a Saturday puzzle without crying, I assume you also climb Everest for fun.

But even the NYT Crossword can’t hold me when I’m scared, waiting, raw.

That’s where Crossword Jam comes in.

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You get seven letters. You swipe them into words. The game fills in a crossword-shaped grid. If you’re lucky, you get a sparkle explosion. If you’re really lucky, the owl claps.

This past year, I needed that owl to clap.

I lost my beautiful cat, Sweetie Pie, to cancer.

I lost Shelby, our glorious, gentle Leonberger.

My best friend died.

The 2024 election was stolen from Kamala Harris.

President Biden was diagnosed with metastatic cancer.

And I’m losing my hearing faster than I ever thought I would.

I am tired. I am grieving. I am turning inward. The world is so loud, and I am getting madder quieter by the day.

But in that quiet, there’s a puzzle.

Seven letters. One E.

Sometimes a PEACOCK.

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Now, let me back up — I haven’t always loved words.

I was dyslexic as a kid. I still am.

Words used to betray me in class. I could memorize the spelling, but pronouncing them out loud was like performing surgery on an octopus.

I recall one particularly awful day in third grade. My teacher — Mr. Ball — stayed after class. He sat in one of those tiny desks, folded his long legs under the metal bars, and said, “You’re the smartest one here. You work harder than everyone else. And someday, you’re going to create words. Because you see them differently.”

Reader, I wept into my pencil case. He gently patted my head.

That sweet, gentle man saved me.

Sighs. So have words.

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And now, decades later, I’m spell-swiping my way through grief.

• I spell PACK again and again and again.

• I discover COTE is a bird shelter and feel superior for an entire hour.

• I yell at the screen when TOGA is dismissed like an afterthought.

• I spell ONE and the game throws a confetti party like I’ve discovered penicillin.

There’s something so deliciously stupid and deeply sacred about these little wins. These absurd digital gold stars. When you feel like you’re losing control of your life, the ability to spell CAKE and be told “Excellent!” is… oddly healing.

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Have you ever been held together by something tiny?

A puzzle.

A ritual.

A moment of clarity in a grid of chaos.

That’s what Crossword Jam is for me.

It’s not therapy. But it’s close enough on days when therapy isn’t an option and cookies aren’t working.

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So here I am.

Still grieving.

Still tired.

Still deafeningly aware of every loss.

But I swipe.

I spell.

I build.

Because in the stillness, in the hush of waiting rooms and memory, there’s something holy in letters finding their right place.

Peacock. Level 848. One E. Victory.

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Tell me: Do you puzzle too? Are you a NYT addict, a Wordle whisperer, a Boggle brute, a Scrabble savage? What game has gotten you through something hard? Drop it in the comments. We are our own little crossword community now. Always forward, Gloria