ANDRZEJ KRAUZEA secret I would like to share: I am addicted. My particular compulsion is the need to try my hand at any word puzzle I encounter: crosswords, double-crostics, whirlpools, switchbacks, scrambles, you name it. Midair, thumbing through in-flight magazines; in doctors’ waiting rooms; perusing the tabloids; wherever, I’m licking my pencil. I have withdrawal pangs if I can’t get my hands on the two puzzle pages published every Sunday in The New York Times Magazine. I have a crush on Will Shortz.
One of my favorite types of word teasers (sadly, not found in the Times) is the cryptogram, which requires deciphering a quote or sentence encoded using the 26 letters of the English alphabet. I love cryptograms because they allow me to fantasize about what it might have been like to be at Bletchley during WWII (obviously, a most elementary-level fantasy).
Of course, the work of Alan Turing and all those dedicated to cracking the Enigma code contributed to the invention of modern-day computers and their storage of information using binary units of 0 and?1. It makes me wonder how astonished those codebreakers would be if they could read this month’s cover story about encoding messages in DNA to solve the problem of how to store ...
