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February 23, 2026 
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One of the Strands puzzles I constructed last year focused on marginalia, inspired by an idle thought about how many ways we have of supplementing text with more text via EPILOGUE, FOOTNOTE, POSTSCRIPT or ADDENDUM. More recently, I’ve been thinking about the extras that come at the beginning: the preface, the prologue, the preamble. The introduction to the exposition, the outlook at the onset. Why is there so much to say about the saying? More important, why do I need to be there for it?
Most books begin with some kind of foreword or introduction, sometimes both. I used to think these sections were optional and would skip past them, but lately I have felt increasingly obligated to read them. Prefaces are the tip screen of books, spun around to face me as the author looks away and pretends to be doing something else.
I am just as guilty of unnecessary preamble. I am the kind of person who begins a question with “Can I ask you a question?” — don’t you dare reply, “You just did” — and who serves something I’ve just cooked by listing all of the things that might be wrong with it. This might be what bugs me about front matter in books: More often than not, it comes off like a disclaimer. “Before you read this, I know what you’re thinking!” Really? Maybe I’m not thinking at all. But if I am, it’s about how I would like to get on with Chapter 1, because my 10-minute attention span for starting a new book has nearly elapsed. A preface is one too many pieces of jewelry, a distraction from something that was already coordinated. The time it takes for a movie’s opening credits to play makes it too easy to decide to watch something else. The only exception is the opening credit reel for “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” in which each successive screen apologizes for the previous one.
If I seem impatient, it’s only because I enter into most every experience eager to get to the part that everybody is talking about. Nobody says, “Just wait until you get to the preface!” Do they? I’m willing to be dissuaded. If you’ve ever encountered an introduction you found genuinely necessary to your appreciation for a book, or movie or what-have-you, I want to know. Please send them my way (without preamble) at crosswordeditors@nytimes.com.
Cryptogram
