A similar breed

Crossword puzzles can be a sort of garbage disposal for cultural ephemera, and so for that matter can a person’s brain—which is a bit of self-revelation I grappled with when writing this week’s cover story, which is about crosswords. More than usual I had to edit myself for how much useless information I could pack into one article. In went the Times condom flap; in went the notion of being “crossword famous”; in went “MIDASS TOUCH.” But there was so much more!