Jon Haas of Orange Park was doing the crossword puzzle one Friday and, just a few squares from the end, came across a stumper. The clue: "Actor Tognazzi." The space: three empty squares.
He had no idea. None at all. So he did what many a 21st century seeker of knowledge would do.
He Googled it.
"Tognazzi," he typed. Immediately a dropdown bar appeared: "Tognazzi actor." Hmm, he thought. Had others been Googling for the same info? Could be.
And within seconds Haas had his answer. He entered the missing letters - U-G-O - and moved on, happy that the Mystery of the Italian Actor (1922-1990) had been solved.
Some crossword purists, though, had they witnessed his Googling, might have clucked in disapproval.
Was Haas cheating?
He doesn't think so. "Absolutely not. OK, this is a test, an open-book test, and it's just part of the challenge - let's go find this. It's research. Plus I learn something. You think I'm going to forget the name Ugo Tognazzi?"
Of course, that raises this question: Unless you're in a competition, is it even possible to cheat at a crossword puzzle?
Would you be frowned upon if you asked your breakfast partner who this Tognazzi person was? Or what if you reached for an atlas to find a six-letter port on Lake Huron (Sarnia)?
Or is all fair in love and puzzling?
There's no one better to ask than Will Shortz. He's the country's biggest crossword celebrity, after all: editor of The New York Times puzzle and a star in the crossword movie "Wordplay."
Shortz has heard the question many times, so he was ready with an answer (which comes at the end of this story). By e-mail, he said it's an issue that challenges every solver, and everyone has to come up with his own rules.
Some are absolutists: Any help at all is cheating.
Some say you can't look anything up, but you can ask a spouse or a friend.
Some say you can look things up in a dictionary or atlas - if you have just a couple of squares left to fill. Or if you're done and you just want to verify what you've filled in.
Others are more liberal: Googling is OK, within limits (say, three Googles per puzzle). Others, he notes, say that for notoriously hard puzzles - say, the Friday and Saturday New York Times crosswords he helps create - unlimited research is fine.
In his e-mail, however, Shortz didn't even discuss those online sites that will just give you the answers, with little effort on your part. They seem pretty unambiguous: One's even called Crosswordcheats.com.
You'd never catch Tracy Gallavan there. She's an elementary school music teacher in Duval County and a frequent crossword solver. She prefers to live by her wits alone.
"So most of the time, I'll leave the space empty," she said. "I don't have a need to complete the actual puzzle."
Sometimes, though, the itch to know what should be in those frustrating empty squares becomes too much. "I have Googled three or four times," Gallavan admitted. "I feel a little bit guilty going there, but sometimes I will because I just want to know."
Mark Kaye, a morning DJ on WAPE (95.1 FM), won't Google when he does his crossword every day. He sees nothing wrong, though, with asking others for help.
"I think sharing information with a live person is OK. You're still using brain power - just not your brain power."
Kaye, though, has nothing against those who turn to books or computers to fill in those empty blanks.
"It's not like cheating at golf, where you're just lying about how good you are," he said. "As long as you're learning, there's definitely a benefit to that. It's OK. And clues are reused all the time. Maybe down the road you'll actually get smarter and be able to finish the puzzle by yourself next time."
Shortz thinks that approach is just fine. In fact, any approach is fine. To him, it's not cheating unless you think it is.
"When people ask me, I always quote Will Weng, who was one of my predecessors as Times crossword editor: It's your puzzle. Solve it any way you want."
matt.soergel@jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4082
