There’s still time to fill out our brief survey and share your thoughts on the Gameplay newsletter. One of the timeless clichés about being a writer is that it consists mostly of not writing. Sylvia Plath lamented the “very destructive paralysis and ruinous brooding and daydreaming” she felt when trying to begin a novel. In his journals, Franz Kafka called his periodic writing attempts “virtually useless” and referred to a “complete standstill” full of “unending torments” — to which I say, Same here, buddy. I bring this up because last week, in the midst of my kvetching about one of my own writing projects, an author chimed in to suggest that I reframe: Bad writing, she suggested, was simply “laying down base” for the better writing to come. The concept was new to me — I’m partial to the “lying down on face” method, myself — but seems to come from the world of visual art, and is used to describe the first layer of color in a painting or the rough sketch of a drawing. Applied to writing, that base layer is the often-terrible first draft of an essay or a book. And it’s how a lot of us approach solving puzzles. Consider the way that we crack into tricky crosswords, for instance: We start with our “gimmes,” the answers that feel immediately obvious to us: fill-in-the-blank idioms, basic trivia, familiar celebrity names and so on. This isn’t the satisfying part of the solve, but it lays the groundwork for the thrills — themes, spanner entries — that follow. The same layering process happens in Spelling Bee: Faced with any given letter set, regular solvers can knock out a half-dozen common words by rote. (I call this “putting in the mamas,” per the guaranteed MAMA, MOMMA and MAMMA trio of any board containing M, O and A.) It’s mindless, at times, but clears the mental chatter so you can focus on finding the pangram and spelling your way to Queen Bee. If you use the same starting word in your daily Wordle, it’s not so much a guess as it is a first draft, a rough sketch that clarifies the moves to come. I’m curious about what base-laying looks like for you, be it in puzzles or daily life. Send me thoughts on rough drafts and first moves at crosswordeditors@nytimes.com. Solve Today’s Capture
Puzzle of the WeekThis week, check out Rebecca Goldstein’s puzzle from Wednesday, July 22. In her constructor notes for this puzzle, Ms. Goldstein wrote: “One of my favorite genres of crossword theme is the representation of an object or game. Lately I’ve been thinking about puzzles that depict movement, and looking at the timeline of this puzzle, that may have started earlier than I realized. My first stab at this theme was in late 2023.” For more on this puzzle, read the Wordplay column.
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