Review

Attention

Culture

Film & TV

Weirdness

21 October 2024

5 min read

Ludwig’s clues to the answers we long for

Puzzles preserve a fully realised truth in the clue, and, if we are willing to persevere, we will be rewarded.

Jack Chisnall

Jack Chisnall is a former gag teller and Oxford Theology graduate, combining the two at Holy Fooling.

Two TV characters, a man and a woman, stand in front of a crossword cover walls of a room.

Anna Maxwell Martin, David Mitchell.

BBC.

The BBC have scored a bingeable hit with new comedy-drama Ludwig, starring David Mitchell as a maladroit puzzle-setter who is roped into a rather fabulous whodunnit. It involves his missing twin, a police detective whom he must impersonate in order to chase the trail of the disappearance. While on the case he solves a few other conundrums, giving the show many intriguing, if knotty, narrative threads.

It is not the first-time crossword setting and detective work have gone hand in hand. One of the very first cryptic crossword setters - the ‘grandfather’ of the genre - was Edward Powys Mathers, who also dashed off a mystery thriller, Cain’s Jawbone in 1934. The novel was provided to readers in the wrong order, with the simple but infuriating challenge to reconstruct the right sequence of pages based on maddeningly subtle internal clues. Despite offers of a cash prize, virtually no solutions were submitted.

Such is the dilemma of a cryptic crossword setter - when is clever too clever? Puzzles can appeal so much to our pride; our desire to be part of an ‘in-group’ which understands the highbrow references to opera, Latin oratory, and cricket slang. Those who can outwit them are part of an elite rank. The Telegraph crossword of 13th January 1942 was used as an exercise to recruit for the ENIGMA codebreaking unit. Indeed, when Mathers all but invented the idea of a fully cryptic crossword in the Saturday Westminster Gazette in 1924, his challenges bore the banner ‘Crosswords for Supermen’.

There is fundamental connectedness behind the world, and working on the presumption of such a unity allowed him to collect ideas and references from across the globe and throughout all history to form his tricksy clues.

I’ve often started out on a cryptic crossword, hoping to discover that I am one such genius, only to bitterly give up shortly afterwards, irritated that I don’t have that instant ability to see the solutions. I stare at the riddle, wanting to be one of those people who can naturally recall information, connect ideas, or see what has been hidden in the tortuous clue. Surely the appeal of a show like Ludwig is that it gives us an aspirational glimpse at the peak of human mental prowess, even if Mitchell’s wannabe inspector is a little socially awkward. He still possesses a penetrating gaze that looks through the surface of things, to see what no one else can. He is one of those ‘supermen’ - beholden to no one, able to uniquely see the way things are all by himself.

And yet, when Edward Powys Mathers died in 1939, he was referred to in his Observer obituary not as a kind of lone snobby genius, but “the gentlest of men… a saint”. It’s appropriate, as crosswords have long been a curiously churchy phenomenon: in the small list of great UK cryptic writers, two have been Anglican priests (Revd John Graham, known as Acaucaria, and Revd Canon A. F. Ritchie, or Afrit). Even Mathers’ fondness for Biblical allusions in his clues “led many to endow him with ecclesiastical rank” as Roger Millington’s book on Crosswords put it. Christian faith, because it is a religion built on the idea that God is with us in flesh, invites us to pay attention to the world around us. The world is not something to escape from, but is rather the place that, in Jesus Christ, God has come to meet us in. It makes you want to understand time, place, and culture, to better understand the God who has spoken through them, and given them meaning and destiny. In reference to this way of seeing things, Mathers was spoken of as a ‘catholic’ thinker in his obituary. This did not mean his church affiliation, but rather an instinct for seeing how everything is part of a greater whole. There is fundamental connectedness behind the world, and working on the presumption of such a unity allowed him to collect ideas and references from across the globe and throughout all history to form his tricksy clues.

There is also a negative hint in this obituary clue, ‘catholic’. Crossworders work under a nom de plume (David Mitchell’s character John for instance, who goes by ‘Ludwig’). And while Mathers was indeed a generous, open-minded man, he sealed his reputation for difficulty by adopting the pseudonym ‘Torquemada’, in reference to a former Grand Inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition. So, if Christians are alive to the interconnectedness of all things, we also have a reputation for the institutional guarding of those very mysteries. History shows believers have tortured those who do not come to their idea of what the answer is; indeed, they have set the questions for too long, in the eyes of many hostile to the faith.

Puzzles preserve a fully realised truth in the clue, and, if we are willing to persevere, and learn a new way of seeing, and of paying attention, we will be rewarded.

But this is the tension that crosswords offer us - a very authentically Christian way to think about the way God spells things out for us which does not rely on a stark binary of ‘true’ or ‘false’. He reveals things like a puzzle; slowly, and cryptically. Some might fairly object to this comparison, on the grounds this would make God too ‘out there’ - far away from the intimate father that Jesus bids us address so familiarly. Does it make God too remote and enigmatic to say he is setting riddles for us? But actually, a puzzle does not deceive us, like a mask does. Puzzles preserve a fully realised truth in the clue, and, if we are willing to persevere, and learn a new way of seeing, and of paying attention, we will be rewarded. The answer is there, reaching out to us, if we only commit ourselves humbly to receiving it. It may cost us much effort and time. It may require us to learn things afresh. But this is part of the joy of trying to see, as St Paul puts it, "the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things”.

Jesus himself spoke in parables, very much like cryptic clues. But this was no elitism, designed to cut out those without the high IQ of David Mitchell’s ‘Ludwig’. Arrogant intellect or love of one’s own status is, for Jesus, just as much a bar to those seeking a solution, because to find the answer requires a certain submission - a discipline - to see things as the puzzle-setter sees them. If we proceed only to do things our way, we remain blind: seeing we do not see, and hearing we do not hear, nor do we understand.

Article

Character

Culture

Leading

Virtues

19 September 2024

6 min read

What is Putin thinking? And how would you know?

The self-centeredness of modern culture is antithetical to strategic thinking.

Emerson Csorba

Emerson writes on geopolitics. He is also a business executive and holds a doctorate in theology.

Preisdent Putin stands behind a lectern with a gold door and Russian flag behind him.

What is Putin thinking?

In a world of Google Maps when walking on city streets, or of Waze when driving, it is difficult to ever become lost.

The AI algorithm provides us with the shortest route to our destination, adjusting whenever we make the wrong turn. We do not need to think for ourselves, technology instead showing the way forward.

But there are times where it is possible to get lost. This happens less in a city with its clearly set-out streets, and more so when taking the wrong turn in open expanses: hiking in the mountains, traversing farmers’ fields or while navigating at sea. In each of these situations, a miscalculation may lead to peril.

It is in these situations that we must carefully think through our steps, determining how to proceed, or whether to turn back. Often, these situations are ambiguous, the right way forward unclear.

Much of life – perhaps more than we wish to acknowledge – is like this, more akin to a walk across an open field with multiple possible routes forward, than a technology-enabled walk through a city.

When making important decisions, our grasp of a given situation, of others’ intentions and motives, and the networks facilitating and constraining action, are less evident than we may initially think.

This acknowledgement of uncertainty is no reason for delay, but rather a basis for careful deliberation in determining what to do, and how to proceed. It is necessary if we are to pursue what we believe is right, in a manner that may produce positive results.

In a recent interview with the BBC Newscast podcast, University of Durham Chancellor Dr Fiona Hill – who previously served as White House National Security Council Senior Director for European and Russian Affairs, and currently as Co-Lead of the UK’s Strategic Defence Review – provides listeners with a powerful reminder on how to proceed within ambiguous situations, especially in navigating the choppy seas, or rocky terrains, of human relationships.

Strategic empathy requires self-restraint when natural impulses urge a person to make rapid conclusions about the reality of a given situation – the default human tendency.

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Dr Hill uses the term “strategic empathy” to consider how the political West might proceed in its relationship with Russia, and specifically with Vladimir Putin.

Strategic empathy is a serious commitment to understanding how another person thinks, considering their worldview, their key sources of information (in other words, their main three or four advisors, who have a person’s ear), and other emotional considerations that underpin decision-making.

It is much more than just putting oneself in other’s shoes, as is often said about empathy. The approach is one of realism, suspending judgment based on self-protective or self-aggrandising illusions, in favour of what is actually the case.

In the case of Putin, Dr Hill helpfully reminds listeners that his worldview is drastically different than that of Westerners, and that significant intellectual effort (and specifically, intellectual humility in setting aside one’s own default frames of reference) is necessary to consider decisions from Putin’s perspective, and so make the right decisions from ours.

Technology is here an assistant but not a cure-all. Whereas AI might – based on a gathering of all possible publicly available information written by and about a particular person – help to predict a person’s next move, this prediction is imperfect at best.

There are underlying factors – perhaps a deeply engrained sense of historical grievance and resentment in the case of Putin – that shapes another’s action and that can scarcely be picked up through initial conversation. These factors may not make sense from our perspectives, or be logical, but they exist and must be treated seriously.

This empathy is strategic, because effective strategy is the “How?” of any mission. Whereas a person’s or organisation’s mission, vocation or purpose (all words that can be used relatively interchangeably) is the “Why?” of a pursuit, strategy is the “How?” which itself consists of the questions “Who?” “What?” “When?” and “Where?”

To understand how to act strategically requires a prior effective assessment of reality. This requires going beyond what others say, our initial perception of a situation, any haughty beliefs that we simply know what is happening, or even the assessments of supposedly well-connected and expert contacts.

Dr Hill’s strategic empathy is an appeal to listeners to ask questions – digging as much as possible – to arrive at an assessment that approximates reality to the greatest degree possible. This exercise might be aided by AI, but it is at its heart a human endeavour.

Strategic empathy requires self-restraint when natural impulses urge a person to make rapid conclusions about the reality of a given situation – the default human tendency. The persistent asking of questions is difficult – requiring mental, emotional and intellectual endurance.

There is considerable wisdom in Dr Hill’s reflections on strategic empathy, which extend well beyond the fields of intelligence, geopolitics or defence. The idea of strategic empathy helps show us that in much of modern culture – which glorifies the self, individuals putting their wants, needs and desires before those of others – developing strategy is very difficult.

The key then, when deliberating on potential right courses of action in ambiguous situations, is to not begin believing that the right way is clear. It rarely is.

Why is this the case? When popular culture favours phrases such as “You do you,” the you becomes a barrier to asking questions, with some aloofness to the situation, necessary for understanding how another thinks. People are encouraged to focus on themselves at the expense of others, and so fail to understand others’ worldviews and ways of operating.

Simply put, the self-centeredness of modern culture is antithetical to strategy. It impedes deliberation, which involves patience in the gradual formation of purpose for action. It wages war against the considered politics or statesmanship that many want to see return. In place of this is crisis or catastrophe, in which self-focus leads to clashes with others that could otherwise be avoided or worked through carefully.

The Biblical story of the serpent in the garden is another vantage point for the idea of strategic empathy. Soon after Adam and Eve eat the apple in the garden and become “like gods, knowing good and evil,” God searches for them and asks “Where are you?”

It is right after individuals try to become the judges of good and evil – “like gods,” that Adam and Eve find themselves lost: God’s “Where are you?”

Put differently, when a person is convinced they are right, but without asking questions, they make mistakes, they likely suffer unnecessarily because of this, and then become anchorless – the “Where are you?”

This applies to countries as much as it does to people: the more they moralize, seeking to become the judges of good and evil in a complex geopolitical landscape, the more they drift from their sense of purpose.

The key then, when deliberating on potential right courses of action in ambiguous situations, is to not begin believing that the right way is clear. It rarely is. A belief in evident rightness often leads to error, whereas the ability to suspend such judgment helps reveal – often gradually – the right path forward.

The strategic empathy approach requires both assertiveness – in asking good questions and maintaining persistence in doing so – and self-restraint in the face of believing that the right answer is clear.

The glue between assertiveness on the one hand and restraint on the other is faith, which helps a person to move forward in a trusting manner, but without exerting oneself so much so that they become the centre of the situation.

So, while Google Maps, Waze or other technologies might be at our disposal in our travels, both real and metaphorical, these technologies only get us so far.

The right way forward is seldom initially clear when navigating ambiguous situations, the frequency and stakes of which increase as we embark boldly – with faith – on the adventure of life.

Dr Hill’s strategic empathy – asking questions, listening carefully, suspending a self of sense, seriously considering diverging worldviews, and adjusting as necessary – helps us to achieve the understanding and direction we need.

Indeed, this approach is fundamental to a more effective and resilient political West. It is necessary for sounder deliberation, better strategy and statesmanship, in an increasingly ambiguous world.