For astronaut Chris Hadfield, crosswords are heaven

How does a man who’s seen the world from space find small joys on Earth?

For retired astronaut and best-selling author Chris Hadfield, solving crossword puzzles is a daily source of wonder. In this instalment of the Joy Diaries series, Hadfield – author of the recent thriller Final Orbit – describes why teaming up with his wife to unlock word clues brings him joy and is a metaphor for life.

Most places are happy places for me but my cottage is my happiest place. I try to spend every moment I can there: Sitting out on the dock, looking at the water, river underneath and sky above. It’s not a winterized cottage but I live there about eight months a year. It’s a great place on Earth and a really great place to do a crossword.

My wife, Helene, and I have been together since high school. We took up crosswords maybe 25 years ago because we’re both weirdly workaholic people who can’t just sit down to eat a meal; we have to do something. We started doing crosswords at lunch and it soon became our thing. If we don’t finish at lunch, we’ll work on it over dinner. A difficult one might take lunch, dinner and lunch the next day. We’re eating and talking at the same time.

We do the New York Times crossword – not the one in the newspaper they just published; one from a book we have of them. We’ve tried to do it electronically, especially while travelling, but it’s not the same.

I sit on the right, because Helene is right-handed and she sits on the left, because she’s the one with the pencil. She’s rightly assessed that my handwriting isn’t very good. We always use a pencil, a very nice one with a good eraser. I do Sudokus in pen, but never crosswords. Sudokus are definitive, whereas crosswords can be nebulous.

We’re both good pretty at crosswords, but we’re differently good. I’m one of the best people in the world at song lyrics but the worst in the world at pop culture. I’m good at science and I’m very good at anagrams. I’m eternally in admiration of Helene. It’s amazing to find out all the things she knows about that I don’t.

Crosswords often require a certain way for your synapses to fire so you can find the second – or third – meaning of the clue. Our brains work so differently and a clue can read one way to her and another way to me. We can do the easier Thursday crosswords on our own but neither of us can do the Sunday crossword on our own. Together, we can. Between the two of us, we rock. That’s a metaphor for life.

If I’m getting frustrated with a word, I move on. If there’s too many of those in a crossword, if we’re just not one with the person who wrote it, we’ll say, “This one’s not for us. Let’s do a different one.” I’m not going to be simpatico with every writer and that’s fine.

We never cheat, but we might look something up if it’s a very specific fact that neither of us knows. Who was the conductor of the so-and-so at whatever in 1924? If there’s no way to figure it out, if you either know it or you don’t, then we’ll declare today a partial victory and look it up at the end. At least you can learn from it and maybe you’ll know it for next time.

Even if we don’t finish it, the crossword’s a nice little break from the day that I look forward to spending with my wife. I find them sort of a mental cleanse between whatever I’ve been doing and whatever I’ve got to do next. And we’re always very celebratory when we get it done. When we solve it, we kiss.

As told to Rosemary Counter