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It had been a long day. Sudoku sighed and waved the bartender closer for another snack of graphite.
Most of the other customers were sipping on ink cocktails in various colors, but after the day he had had, with over a thousand imbeciles viciously crossing out the 9 in row three, column two they had confidently written in a minute earlier with their ballpoint pens, he craved the smooth, gravelly texture of graphite, needed the reassurance that any aftereffects could be cured instantly with just a little bit of rubber. He’d once listened to a group of crosswords debating over the best 5-letter adjective for ink. They had finally agreed on 'heady'. Sudoku wasn’t very good with words, but he didn’t think that heady came from headache. He hadn’t asked them.
Sudoku was sitting alone. He was used to that. He assumed he was something of an introvert, although he'd never thought so growing up. At home, he’d been considered pretty outgoing – adventurous even. Nobody in his family (and it was a rather large family, all those brothers and sisters and more cousins and aunts and uncles than even he could keep count of) had been surprised when he’d told them about the job he’d accepted abroad exactly six years ago. Of course, a lot of his relatives had been doing the same. The family elders had shaken their heads at them, talking gravely about tradition and flighty Western morals, about staying away from all those loose word games, and had he seen what they’d done to his second cousin once removed over there?
“She’s calling herself Wordoku now”, they'd said, with dark looks. “No respect for her heritage. Soiling the family name.”
Sudoku, though, was certain that he had brought nothing but honor to the family name, doing his part to spread it across the world – even to those innumerate parts of the world that read the 8th page of the Backwater Chronicle and smeared ballpoint ink all over his grid.
He might as well get started on tomorrow’s puzzle, make sure it was a good one, given the special occasion. For a minute, he toyed with the idea of celebrating the day somehow – giving all the sixes as clues or working the date of his first appearance in the paper into the puzzle – but he discarded that thought as fanciful and vain. Her Ladyship might get a kick out of that – (hell, she’d helped people make marriage proposals) – but he didn’t need coquettish memorials of his own big day. He doubted anyone had even no—
Someone shoved a cocktail in his face. It was bright pink and glittery, and – were those letters floating on top? Sudoku squinted.
PYHAP VYNASIRAER
“Weeelll, if it isn’t the game of the hour!” The voice was rather slurred, but Sudoku recognized it nonetheless. He looked up. Jumble didn’t look like he was in a particularly celebratory mood – hemostly looked wasted. “Congratulations, dude!” He waved haphazardly at the cocktail, and the letters shifted.
HAPPY ANNIVERSARY
“Uh, thanks?”
“Bet you’re having a blast. Bet you’re just warming up for your big night out, huh?”
“Actually, I was about to go…”
“I mean, you’ve got it all going for you, yeah?” Jumble made another sweeping gesture; apparently, ‘all’ encompassed the paltry contents of the rather shabby pub, namely the bar, five rackety tables, and a coat rack.
“Most popular game in the Chronicle for six years running, everybody just so happy they got you, all of them going on about how you’re so smart, all those, those numbers, and, and logic, and – you don’t need any of that word mumbo-jumbo, no need to try to make up something clever out of just four words and a picture clue, and people won’t give you recognition for it anyway because hey, who are you, you’re not even a real crossword, you’re just that scrambled letters game, shouldn’t you be in the children’s column with the Misses Spot?”
Sudoku blinked. Jumble grabbed a chair and settled down opposite him.
“I mean, yeah, I know I’m easy, shit, so what? What’s wrong with a little lighthearted fun? So I like making people happy – some simple satisfaction, starting your morning with a moment of success. Doesn’t all have to be about world-changing quotes or knowing personal pronouns in five European languages or being able to do alternate pair exclusions, you know?"
Jumble gave him a bitter look accompanied by a dismissive gesture. "Well, I guess you wouldn’t. I guess it doesn’t fit into your neat little world, huh? All boxed and squared and sorted and predictable; man, I bet that’s just lovely.”
“I…” Sudoku struggled to find something to say, but as usual, words eluded him. “Are you all right?” he asked carefully.
Jumble finally stopped gesticulating and looked at him. Something in Sudoku’s expression must have made him sober up a little. Now, he just looked tired.
“Oh God, I am sorry. I shouldn’t have. ‘S not your fault, anyway. Not really. Hey, for what it’s worth, I meant it when I gave you the drink. Congratulations. You deserve it.”
Somewhere beneath several rows of confusion, Sudoku found his manners. “Thank you. That’s very kind of you.” He raised the glass and took a hesitant sip. The drink tasted exactly the way it looked: as if it had been squeezed straight from a kindergartener’s favorite glitter pen. Sudoku thought he should probably make a complimentary comment, but he was currently doing his best to avoid making a face.
Jumble was apparently done talking. After an uncomfortable pause, Sudoku soldiered on.
“To tell the truth, I’m rather surprised you noticed. That’s really very considerate of you.”
Jumble gave him a lopsided smile. It softened his face, and with a jolt, Sudoku remembered that there had been a time when he’d found Jumble rather attractive. At the time, he’d also thought that Jumble seemed really easygoing and friendly with everyone. It had made the discovery that Jumble was a jerk who didn’t think that the new game in town was worth his time all the more hurtful. Even Cryptoquote’s outright disdain hadn’t hurt as much as Jumble’s quietly efficient rejection.
“I didn’t think you’d noticed me at all, really,” Sudoku mumbled into his drink.
Jumble still didn’t speak; his letters were starting to shift uncomfortably. But when Sudoku looked up at him, he was smiling widely.
“Sure I noticed you.” And then he winked. “I’m not blind, you know.”
*****
Sudoku was the last one to arrive at the office the next morning, something that had never happened before. He really should have refused that last bite of graphite, but he’d had to clean his palate after the rainbow ink shots. In the foyer, the Misses Spot were flirting with some holiday crossword shaped like a Christmas tree. Sudoku's initial impression that he wasn't the brightest tree in the street was confirmed when he asked: "So, you're identical?"
The misses giggled good-naturedly.
"Oh, everybody always says that."
"But we're not"
"We're very close, though."
"Spot the difference?"
They did a little twirl and curtsy, showing off matching cardigans and swinging skirts. The crossword was dumbfounded, but Soduko spotted a missing earring and he thought the stocking patterns were suspicious.
He ducked his head and snuck past them. He liked the Spots, they were one of the few games who always had a kind word for him (they did for everybody), but he wasn’t ready to deal with their fussing and questions right now. He wasn’tentirely sure what had happened last night, and only part of that was due to his waking up with a few more blank squares than at the beginning of the night.
Jumble and he had been out all night. There had been drinks. Correction: there had been a lot of drinks. They had talked. They had both belted the lyrics to I Do My Crosswords In Pen. At some point, they had started a contest of who could solve the other faster, and Jumble hadn’t so much beaten as annihilated him. Those were the facts – unfortunately he had't the first clue how to interpret them. He needed some more givens to solve this particular puzzle.
The Lady rose when he entered the office. She was impeccably dressed as always, but as it was a Tuesday, her outfit was one of her more casual ones. “Sudoku!” She gave him a gracious nod and a vague smile. “I hear congratulations are in order.”
Then she actually offered him a perfectly manicured hand. Sudoku blushed and mumbled something about “thank you” and “honored” as he shook it. Never mind what the family elders had to say about word games; the Lady was a class act, a legend, a glimpse of Big Apple glamour come all the way to Backwater County.
Behind her, Jumble gave Sudoku an enthusiastic thumbs-up and wiggled his eyebrows. Apparently, whatever truce they’d formed last night was still in place. Sudoku would have been happier about the gesture if Cryptoquote hadn’t been giving him his patented look of disdain at the same time.
“His modesty amounts to deformity. Margot Asquith.”
Cryptoquote’s jabs at him had stopped being subtle a long time ago. Sudoku sighed and got to work.
Three hours later he had mistaken a 6 for a 9 and completely messed up tomorrow’s puzzle. There was an uncomfortable churning in his central box and apparently, he was starting to hallucinate because the grid before him was filling up with letters.
NNAWA TGE
A RNKID
Letters that moved. This couldn’t be a good sign.
WANNA GET
A DRINK
?
The question mark appeared as an afterthought.
“No more ink,” Sudoku said feebly. “I don’t think my columns would survive it.”
“I envy people who drink - at least they know what to blame everything on. Oscar Levant.”
“Shut it, Crypto. Hey, no worries, I was talking about some toner. You look a little faded around the edges.”
*****
They got toner and a few bites of paper at the corner store.
“Is it me, or has Crypto acquired a new volume of jerk quotes?”
Sudoku shrugged.
“He’s been doing that for a while. I don’t know what I’ve done to him, but I’m obviously not his favorite game.”
It was sad, really. When Sudoku had first joined the paper, he had thought that he and Cryptoquote had a lot in common.
“Really going out on a limb here, but have you considered the possibility that he’s jealous?”
“Jealous?”
“You don’t seem to realize it, but you’re the most popular game in the paper. And Crypto used to be all up on his high horse about how superior he was to us lowly trial and error games, because he’s solved by the power of reason. You might have taken the ink out of his squares just a little there.”
Sudoku got about half of that, but it didn’t matter much anyway. The central point remained.
“I don’t care why he’s doing it. I just wish he’d stop. I’m used to not being anybody’s favorite coworker, but at least the others just ignore me.”
Jumble shifted his letters.
“We really haven’t made it easy for you these past six years, huh?”
Why didn’t he ever have answers outside of a 9x9 grid of numbers?
“I… I don’t mind being by myself. And the Misses have been very kind to me. And I do appreciate your invitation to toner! That was very considerate of you!”
“Hey, hey, calm down. That was a rhetorical question. I do know I’ve been an ass to you, no need to bash me over the head with it.” Jumble smiled weakly.
“I’m… not bashing anything?”
“You truly have a gift for turns of phrase, don’t you.”
“What?”
“And sarcasm. Wow, you really suck at the whole communicating thing. I kinda missed that while I was busy being drunk and soliloquizing last night.”
Sudoku fiddled with his outer cells.
“It’s just that you word games are all about obscure vocabulary and puns and cultural references. I’m not very good with that.”
Jumble snorted.
“Okay, okay, I’m not very good with words. It all seems very illogical. The Misses have tried to explain some of it. They’ve been very patient.”
“You’ve been taking communication lessons from a picture game. For children.”
It did sound rather stupid when put like that.
****
After that toner break, they fell into a pattern. Sudoku loved it when things fell into patterns. His new life had moved from a grid that seemed to lack half the givens to something that might actually be solvable.
He and Jumble spent their breaks together and went out for drinks once or twice a week. Sudoku had learned to stay well away from Jumble’s glitter-and-rainbows concoctions, though he didn’t mention his general dislike of ink until Jumble proudly presented him with a Japanese ink stick as a belated anniversary present.
“Is anything wrong with it?” he asked after Sudoku’s embarrassed attempts at polite acceptance.
“No, I’m sure it’s fine. It’s just… I don’t really like ink. It gives me migraines.”
Jumble’s face cleared.
“Oh, that makes sense. You should’ve said. Now that you’ve come clean, can I say that this stuff is vile? Or is that insulting your heritage?”
“I’m not actually Japanese, you know,” Sudoku said, which rather effectively killed Jumble’s smile.
“Oh shit! Is it Chinese? Dude, I’m sorry, that’s so embarrassing! I swear I didn’t want to be offensive. Fuck, is that offensive, too? Should I just stop talking? Please stop me!”
Sudoku couldn’t stop himself from laughing.
“Stop, stop, it’s all right! I was raised in Japan. But my family is originally American. My father hired a genealogist once, and he claims we have French and Swiss roots. I don’t really think it matters. They use numbers everywhere, and right now my cousins are spread all over the globe.” He spread his arms theatrically. “I’m a world citizen!”
That made Jumble laugh, too. They stuck to graphite and glitter ink from then on.
Jumble tried to teach Sudoku the intricacies of the English language.
“I’m obviously the most qualified teacher here. The others may say I’m easy, but hey, with me, you get the real deal. Obscure vocabulary? Check. Tongue-in-cheek clues? Check. The picture that says a thousand words? Check. Really, you couldn’t do better.”
And there was the eyebrow-and-smirk combination that made Sudoku's hidden pairs shift.
“Here, this one should be simple.”
CIRPK
◯◯◯☐☐
AKCTY
☐☐◯◯☐
RJAEBB
◯◯☐☐◯◯
NOTSYT
◯☐◯◯☐◯
It is a truth universally acknowledged:
◯◯◯◯◯◯ ◯◯ ◯ ◯◯◯◯.
“There has to be some sort of algorithm or strategy. There just has to be. I just can’t work it out.”
“Dude, the strategy’s called trial and error.”
"That’s not strategy, that’s cheating!"
"Not when you're me. Okay, I’ll give you the words, all right? But you’ll work out the answer. I’m telling you, it’s obvious."
PRICK
TACKY
JABBER
SNOTTY
Ten minutes and 284 trials later, Sudoku had to admit that yes, it was.
Sudoku tried to reciprocate by designing a rather intricate puzzle for Jumble and talking him through it, but Jumble dissolved into a fit of giggles when they got to naked pairs.
*****
Reactions from Sudoku’s coworkers were predictably mixed. While the Misses hugged and congratulated him on “finding his other half” (and Sudoku took great care not to think too much about that expression), and the Lady’s Sunday Two Down spelled OPPOSITESATTRACT, Cryptoquote used the Monday paper to let them (and the rest of the world) know that
Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go. -- Oscar Wilde
Sudoku only laughed – Cryptoquote’s jibes had lost their sting around the time Jumble invited him for that first toner – but Jumble shifted with anger.
He was also, it turned out, rather skilled at revenge.
“This is breaking and entering!” Sudoku hissed.
“No, I’m pretty sure this is my office.”
“Yes, but not your computer.”
“Hah! Trial-and-error. Never fails,” Jumble interjected smugly as the password screen faded.
“Now: watch and learn. This is called beating someone at their own game.”
And he entered the code for the weekend edition.
7 11 | 22 2 19 | 1 19 18 1 19 16 | 12 2 | 25 12 4 19 | 12 3 | 16 10 14 16 | 12 | 14 7 | 2 22 16 | 3 22 7 19 22 2 19 | 19 25 3 19. - Woody Allen
“I still think we should have gone with Gabirol.”
“What, ‘The test of good manners is to be patient with bad ones?’ Not nearly what he deserves.”
“What if people find out?”
“How would they? Crypto’s not gonna report it, he’d never admit that someone outwitted him. And even if he did – it’s not like they’d throw you out, you’re famous. And who would suspect dumb little Jumble? Hey, think I should reset his password to JERK?”
Sudoku wanted to protest, he really did. It was just hard to get the words out between the fits of laughter.
*****
They were sitting on the roof of the office in the early hours of the morning. It was that quiet time when most readers were sleeping, yesterday’s paper thrown out, today’s not yet delivered. Sucking on a pencil, Sudoku silently admitted defeat. He had got far, but the last numbers of this particular puzzle still eluded him. He didn’t know why seeing Jumble smile felt like finding an unhoped-for hidden single. He didn’t know what message Jumble had scrambled into that smile. He had no fucking clue where this thing they had had suddenly come from, and if it would last, if it would always be this – the two of them, together, not supposed to fit but somehow making it work, regardless Cryptoquote had to say about it – or if he wanted it to be.
You know you can just ask when you don’t get something Jumble had said to him once, and so Sudoku decided that just this once, he would simply request a hint.
“Why did you ignore me, before?”
Jumble looked like he’d suddenly noticed his solution was missing a letter.
“Oh. Oh God, I’m sorry, you must have thought I was an ass. Look, it wasn’t your fault, I mean, it wasn’t anything you did – not intentionally at least. See, I had this friend, Wordsearch. That was before you came. She was the best. She had a real eye for the hidden things, she’d always see right through everyone. And she had a wicked sense of humor. You know, she used to sneak dirty words in the paper and pretend they were just scrambled letters. The Spots used to have stern words with her, but really, I think they were jealous because all the smart kids liked her best…”
Sudoku had no idea where this was leading, but he didn’t much like it so far.
“Anyway, the smart kids apparently weren’t enough, because they fired her. A little over six years ago now. You took her grid in the Chronicle.”
And there was the blow to his central sub-grid.
“So that’s why I didn’t talk to you. At first, I mean. I guess it just hurt to look, because all I could think about was how you’d cost me my best friend. She’s working for some monthly up in Canada now. The others here - they like me, because I give them no reason not to, but I know a thing or two about shifting meanings, and friendly and friends are different words.”
Sudoku had absolutely no idea what to say. It all seemed inappropriate.
“Are we friends?”
Well done. Leave it to him to find the most inappropriate reaction.
Jumble gave him that smile of his, the little lopsided one that resonated somewhere deep inside his grid.
“Of course.” He wasn’t facing Sudoku, but the letters on his back were shifting, which Sudoku knew by now was a nervous tic.
OPEH
ONTD
UPDIST
WANGOBALLWIME
“When I did start looking – well, I guess I was a little intimidated, you know? I mean, you’re brilliant, and smart, and so together, and people don’t usually notice, but what you do, it’s so creative and beautiful and so simple on the outside, when really none of us could even begin to understand the algorithm that goes into your daily work… And I mean, just look at you, all those neat boxes, no black spaces, no irregularities...”
Jumble still wasn’t looking at him, and the letters were still shifting.
OLEV
OWAYNUT
EPEASL
AYSSEY
Sudoku wasn't particularly good with words, but he thought he'd finally puzzled it out. He reached out, ran his hand over three letters on Jumble’s shoulder and felt them shiver and shift under his hands, just as Jumble shifted and turned into his kiss.
Sudoku grinned against his mouth.
“You know, I think I’m finally getting the hang of this.” He shifted four more letters into place, and Jumble moaned and started mouthing along his jawline.
“I think I know a number or two I could do on you, too.”