Or: How Do People Write That Fast? Well, this didn’t bode well. I had just, with great excitement, received my packet for my first-ever American Crossword Puzzle Tournament and saw that my contestant number was … 13. …

My grandfather was born in Croatia in 1897, a year and a place that assured his propulsion into the meat grinder of twentieth-century Europe. At seventeen he was drafted into World War I and promptly captured on the Russian front. During his imprisonment—on a family farm, according to my father…