Open Mind
The New York Times generates a word game called “Connections” that can be accessed daily on a smart phone. Its one-dose-a-day design provides an opportunity for regular brain stimulation while discouraging screen addiction. You sign in, play the game-- and win or lose, you’re done. It’s a delightful morsel for word nerds (like me). It lures you in but doesn’t take you hostage for the day. Like that tiny piece of chocolate swanky hotels leave on the pillow at turn-down service, it’s a little “somethin’ somethin’” that keeps you coming back for more.
This puzzle consists of four rows of four boxes, each holding a single word. The object of “Connections” is to find the thread that connects four words together. To win is to correctly slide four words into their respective four categorical groups, without guessing incorrectly more than four times along the way. The categories the words are destined for are way more specific than generalized tubs like “nouns” or “verbs.” And most of the words could elbow-lock with one another in a variety of ways—at least groups of three of them could anyway. Therein lies the rub.
The key to solving the puzzle is keeping an open mind.
My brother and I each play it and then swap a text about it almost every day. It’s challenging. yet hardly ever impossibly hard to solve. He takes his time (there’s not a limit) while rarely making a mistake. I go fast (giving myself a five minute deadline) while sometimes using all the strikes at my disposal in getting the sorting done. The accountant in him dots his I’s and crosses his T’s. The athlete in me shoots and misses but grabs the rebound to try again. He methodically lays out the striations. I race through the possibilities as if my hair were on fire. But what intrigues us both about the puzzle, despite the opposite roads we take in solving it, is how it makes us think.
The fact that it does is a given, how it does is a gift.
I suppose there are all sorts of ways to go about completing the “Connections” challenge. Quick scan…word by word deep dive…process of elimination…identify the word that seems to not fit anywhere…. But what makes the game such a challenge, regardless of how we go about it, is that once we start to think of a word in a certain context, it’s hard to think of it in another way. The danger, then, is that we try to force a fourth word to fit inside the category in our mind that seems so obvious for the three. That’s when the doors and windows disappear. Our minds default into corridors. And corridors are hard to escape from.
Constant vigilance is required to keep an open mind.
In the mid 2000’s, an HBO series called “Newsroom” (created by the brilliant Aaron Sorkin) used machine-gun fast dialogue and real-life recent events to explore the tension line journalists live on as they strive to fulfill their mission of delivering the news. They want to be first, but they’re charged with being right. (Or is it the other way around?) Unfortunately, speed and accuracy don’t always go hand in hand.
One specific episode showcasing this “Gumby-state” that newsrooms often find themselves in, revolved around the January 8th, 2011, shooting of U.S. Representative Gabby Giffords and 18 others in an Arizona supermarket parking lot. The episode is mummified in my mind.
As the team at Atlantis Cable News (the fictitious channel of “Newsroom”), bob and weave amidst the innuendo flying around like shrapnel about whether Senator Giffords was killed or had survived, the network’s president becomes enraged because other stations are “beating them to the punch.” In a pivotal scene late in the show, he pushes the producers to match other stations’ declarations-- and thus the on-air talent-- to “call” the senator’s death. But the producers cannot gain confirmation, so they keep stalling as their people dig. In the climactic moment when push comes face to face with shove, the executive producer is forced, despite his boss’s vehement orders, to make the decisive call.
“It’s a person.” Don, the producer definitively says. “A doctor pronounces her dead, not the news.”
The network president then storms off set, the on-air light turns red, and Will McAvoy, the prime-time anchor, goes live maintaining the station’s stance that they are still awaiting facts.
Seconds later, a staffer reaches an attendee at the hospital, cups her hands over the phone, and stands up and shouts, “She’s alive!” The producers feed it into the on-air talent earpiece, McAvoy delivers the news to the world, and the show cuts to a live affiliate at the hospital where Giffords is being prepped for surgery.
In the ticking seconds while the live shot from the hospital is rolling on-air, the team who kept the door propped open wildly comes unwound. They engage in a rapid-fire profanity-laced exchange fueled by relief, mutual respect and admiration, and the rush of emotion that needs somewhere to go once a heavy thing is set down.
Open doors are hard to hold.
Like journalists searching for validation, detectives are trained to not close loops too quickly-- because, of course, a premature judgement can cause them to overlook clues. But keeping the windows agape and the doors ajar is not for the faint of heart. It takes diligence. And courage. And strength. And practice. It’s not a thing any of us naturally do well.
I think that’s why my brother and I love the word game on our phones. He runs the wishbone, I run the air-raid, but we both get to practice pushing ourselves to think in different ways. The corridors of natural inclination still call. But the more we play, the easier it gets to hold them off for just a bit. In the same way muscles grow from use, so do open minds.