Wanted: Puzzle

Originally posted Sept. 26, 2005

Welcome to another Monday in the life of me. How shall we start said Monday... How about with a bunch of angry voicemails about the Wonderword puzzle missing from today's paper? Yes, Bob, it's a mob of pissed-off senior citizens! And they're out for blood! Tell our editor what she's won today.

She's won...cranky attitude from crazed readers!! Watch this beauty gleam as she turns the key and hears: "Where's my Wonderword?!" Don't mistake her crestfallen look...she really is happy on the inside that readers base their subscriptions on the presence of one word search puzzle. She's a winner all around!

OK, so as you've guessed, Classified has once again sent evil my way by failing to put in today's Wonderword puzzle. If you don't know what Wonderword is, it's pretty much a word search game. They give you a list of words to find and you circle them in the puzzle, letter by letter. When you're done, the letters that didn't get circled spell out the answer to the puzzle.

I have to admit, I do Wonderword every day too. But when I didn't find it in this morning's paper, I didn't have the urge to call someone and spit poison at them. I got no less than a dozen calls about WW within the first half-hour of being at work. I even got one lady who left a message about the missing puzzle while I was on the phone with someone else about the same thing. I called her back within 10 minutes and said, "Hi, this is Kim, I'm calling from the newspaper and answering your message about the Wonderword puzzle."

Lady (very old and hard of hearing): "I can't understand a word you're saying."

Me: " I'm calling from the newspaper and answering your message about the Wonderword puzzle!!"

Lady: "I don't think we want to know. We're not interested."

Me: "Wait, but you called me..."

Click.

Yeah, great, she thought I was trying to sell her something. She thought I was trying to sell her Wonderword. Yikes...she didn't even remember that she had called 10 minutes earlier and left ME a message! Maybe I should have played along. Maybe I should have said, "But for a limited time you can get Wonderword for only $4.99 a play!" That doesn't even make sense. But maybe the call would have made more progress. Hmm.

I've also had a bunch of people threaten to cancel their subscriptions because the puzzle was missing today. They're paying $120 a year just to get a word search? Eek. And it's not like it's permanently gone...they're even going to run TWO puzzles tomorrow to make up for it! Calm down, people!

Sigh. Well, off to take my blood pressure. Again.

Lacey commented: I WANT MY WONDERWORD PUZZLE......

Kim commented: Bitch.