On the advice of an old college professor, I recently acquired a dictionary of American proverbs. You might think this would amount to a few hundred sayings at most, but the dictionary contains more than 700 alphabetized pages of proverbial wisdom, superstition and folklore — certainly more than any of us will hear in our lifetimes. Consider, for instance, the proverbial dog. You’ve probably heard the phrase “Every dog has his day,” which is about how all people will be fortunate at some point in their lives. But I doubt you’ve heard this one: “A dog with money is addressed ‘Mr. Dog.’” I’m not sure even I know what this means: that wealth commands respect? That you’ve got to pay to play? That you shouldn’t give your dog an allowance, lest he overtake you in societal esteem? For word puzzle enthusiasts, proverbs aren’t so much sources of wisdom as they are opportunities for wordplay. A warning about “putting all your eggs in one basket,” for example, can be cleverly represented — as it was in a Thursday crossword from last year, constructed by Josh Goodman — as BASALLYOUREGGSKET. The saying “What goes up must come down” can inspire a crossword whose entries have to be read both up and down to make sense. We may not be taking the advice of the proverbs, but we’re still coming out smarter on the other side. There is no entry in the proverb dictionary for the word “puzzle,” but there are a few for gameplay. According to an old saying from Indiana, “a game is not won until it has been played.” In Michigan and New York, you might have heard, “It is well to leave off playing when the game is at its best.” This isn’t all that different from saying, “Quit while you’re ahead,” which is kind of the point: Despite their variations in metaphor, proverbs hint at universal truths. Lightning never strikes twice, and opportunity knocks but once. Fortune favors the bold, the early bird catches the worm and the squeaky wheel gets the oil. I’m sanding down some nuance here, but you can draw a fairly straight line from any of these sayings to the advice of the Nike swoosh — “Just do it.” The proverbs you live by may not appear in this dictionary, but I’ll bet they share substance with some that do. In fact, if you have any wise sayings of your own to impart, send them my way. Here’s one of mine: Once, while my partner and I were driving through farmland, we spotted a herd of standard black-and-white cows and noticed that there was one brown cow among them, glaringly unlike the rest. I was struck by the pathos of the scene — were we not, all of us, this brown cow? — and told my partner how sad I felt for the misfit cow. “Don’t feel sad,” my partner replied. “He’s the only one that doesn’t know he’s brown.” Solve the Midi
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