You have before you a blank crossword puzzle, and, alas, no access to the clues. Now, someone has constructed this puzzle, to be sure, so there is a “right” way to fill it in. You decide to make a go of it, despite your lack of clues, and lo, after much trial and error, you manage to fill in every square. You end up with a grid filled in only by words that exist, or common abbreviations that many people would recognize.
And then, you find the clues! And of course, none of the words you put in there match the clues at all. For example, at 1 across, you put in FOOD and the clue in the original was “Shepherd.” Now what?
Well, you’re still bored, so you decide to write a story. And anyone who reads the story would be immersed in a context where the word “shepherd” means FOOD. (Maybe it’s a story about space aliens who eat farmers.) You go on to fill the story with more context such that all of the words you placed in the grid make sense with the original clues.
So, is the “right” way to fill in the crossword still the right way? Your way works too. Certainly, a person would have to have read your book first, but, look at the original: the clue for 19 across is “Langston Hughes poem.” The original had ITOO as the answer— ostensibly, a person trying to solve the puzzle would have to have heard of Langston Hughes and be familiar with his poetry. In your version, the answer is “ALPO,” since, in your story, Langston Hughes was a computer that wrote dog-food commercials, and the primitive people in your book didn’t have any form of poetry other than TV ads.
What’s the difference between Langston Hughes the “real” person, who most of the world has never met, and Langston Hughes the computer, who everyone who’s read your book knows about?
(I have no idea. I got the “idea” for even thinking about this from the Wikipedia article on Epistemology, specifically where it mentions Susan Haack’s “foundherentism.” I haven’t read the foundherentism article yet.)
You could go step further. Say, instead of working hard to fill in the grid with words that fit, you just put in random letters. And then you write that story, and you coin words that fit with the clues. Or you set up a context where it is understood that certain words and phrases yield a string of letters as a reaction. In your book, a “shepherd” is a Man, who Works Outside with Animals, so MWOA is the “correct” answer. A Langston Hughes poem is a Computer Written Dogfood Advertisement, so CWDA is the “right” answer.
The point is, you build a context to make anything “true.” I guess that’s going to suffice for a blog entry this month.
