LETTERS: LIFE'S PUZZLES ARE OFTEN HARD TO SOLVE

To the editor:

"A six-letter word for blue." Just the kind of world the puzzle worker lives in, but don't ask why he works a puzzle every day, for he may ask how you spend your time. The wag who first said "You can always find fun in the dictionary" might have included word puzzles. Of the 40,000 words or so which we know, any one might appear in a puzzle, and every word will tell a story.

The Post-Dispatch puzzle called for the word for blue. Cobalt was the answer. But how did cobalt, and element which is superhard, come to mean blue? A German etymology dictionary tells the story. When silver miners found blue streaks in the ore in the Hartz mountains 500 or more years ago, they believed that the Kobolt had been at work. You may know that the Kobolt is a goblin given to mischief. Come to the mine in the morning, and blue streaks have appeared. Blame the Kobolt. Pure cobalt is not blue, but if mixed with impurities it might be. And you go deeper into the mine than you have ever been. And you check the canary, and it has died. Then you suspect the fun-loving Kobolt.

Modern cobalt is so hard that magnets made from it cannot be machined but must be cast in the desired shape.

My madness about puzzles has helped to make me a local authority on cobalt.

But I am puzzled to note that although I have long been a regular morning disciple of word puzzles, I don't get better at it, and every day there are puzzles within the puzzle. But then life is sort of like that, and I wonder why, after having lived so long, I am not better at it.

PETER HILTY

Cape Girardeau