A raven is perched atop a weathered gravestone. A full moon glimmers beneath the opaque curtain of clouds. Conveniently silhouetted against the gigantic moon, vampire bats soar in squadron-like fashion, presumably en route to suck some unsuspecting (and undoubtedly beautiful) woman’s blood. There is no color, only shades of grey.
The cover of the Brain Games “Poe Puzzles” has nothing ambiguous to say about Edgar Allan Poe. And why would it? Brain Games is a printing company that exclusively produces puzzles and brain teasers and, since the biggest word on the cover by far is “Poe”, it’s no surprise that the Brain Games marketers opted with such a cliche and “spooky” cover. The fact is, when someone sees the word “Poe” on anything, without fail, the immediate connotation is something very similar to this cover. Fulfilling those expectations from the audience is a smart and safe move from the marketers but, most importantly, it reinforces the stereotype of Poe that utterly permeates Western culture today. A stereotype that, if was more closely examined in relation to the man’s actual work, would quickly dissolve into nothing more than the shallow cartoon that it truly is.
The book stands about ten inches tall, eight wide, and less than an inch deep. The book bears a spiral spine, presumably to encourage flipping the book in half to allow maximum accessibility to the pages, workbook style. The cover is cheap laminated paper. While the title “Poe Puzzles” dominates the majority of the cover, just below is a smaller and more accurate title: “More than 100 Brain Teasers Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe”. On the first glance through the following pages, it becomes immediately clear that the operative word here is “inspired”. But even that is pushing it.
You don’t have to be a puzzle expert (if there even is such a thing) to see that this is one of the laziest, most ramshackle and uninventive collections of uninspired busywork currently on the market. There are only two types of puzzles and they are repeated haphazardly throughout until the book simply ends. There’s the word search and there’s the word unscramble . . . and that’s it. The only thing that connects these puzzles in any way to Poe is the words that are being searched for and the words that are being unscrambled. Here, a generous reader might find the book’s saving grace: the selections are superb. With the searches, there is normally a long passage from one of Poe’s most famous works with random words highlighted (these words the ones to be found in a grid of jumbled letters on the right page) and with the scrambles, it’s normally a Poe quote— not normally from a literary work but more often from a letter, article, or simply Poe folklore— that has merely had the letters rearranged. But the actual substance quoted from Poe is fantastic. This, of course, is no credit at all to the good folks at Brain Games but solely to Poe’s literary and wordsmithing genius.
The puzzles are terrible. The substance is fantastic. And the most fascinating thing about this book is how it deals with this substance. This is also what is most disappointing thing about it. Because the substance that the Brain Games creators have essentially copied and pasted into their rubric of puzzle-book-making deserves far more credit than just serving as a word bank for a ten year old’s pastime. It’s purely a cash grab. By slapping the name “Poe” on the front of the issue, and by using words that Poe once wrote (even if they’re jumbled together until they’ve lost all context and coherency) the creators can harness an audience that may have otherwise not been interesting in a puzzle book while sparing them the trouble actually reading a work of his. And all this without deviating from their tried and true algorithm.
The other puzzle books made by Brain Games range from your traditional sudoku books to puzzles exclusively about house cats. But the more eye-grabbing material almost always involves something to do with violence— specifically murder and crime. Some of the other titles are “CSI”, “Murder Mystery” and “True Crime”. And then there’s Poe. It’s an interesting combination and simply grouping these titles together speaks volumes about the connotations desired. It’s really not about what the Brain Games creators think, but we can see their choices as looking glasses which reflect the sentiments of our popular culture. From a business standpoint, no company is only going to put out products that they do not anticipate will do well with their target audience. And if they’ve had previous success with a puzzle book inspired by the true accounts of murderers, a fair look at today’s society would undoubtedly lead any marketing team to consider a “Poe-inspired” puzzle book to be the next one up to bat.
But the substance presented in this specific book is not particularly obedient to this stereotype. The passages in this book are certainly taken exclusively from his darker and more horror-themed stories (Black Cat, Raven, Tell-Tale, Crypt etc.) but they defy the simple characterizing that this company so desperately appears to be trying to jam them inside. These passages carry none of the goofy and tropey violence and pop-out-scare aspects as such a corny cover might imply. And the quotes from Poe that populate all of the “Unscramble” sections are rarely even macabre. In fact, they hit on a range of all sorts of subjects. In these selected “macabre” quotes, Poe touches on a variety of topics; such as unrequited love, art for art’s sake, the value of poetry, the purpose of artistic creation, and tropes in literature (such as the death of a beautiful woman). It seems the creators actually ran out of “scary” things to quote Poe on so they just started wheeling out his more well-known quotes and then mixing them in with the dark excerpts to fill the pages, hoping the less “scary” one would simply blend in. The truly depressing thing about this book is that, while the content selected is phenomenal, profound, witty and yes— often terrifying, the act of blanketly lumping it all under this ridiculous Hollywood-esque “scary movie” cover and then treating it as if it’s primary purpose is to serve as an elaborate word bank for not-so-puzzling word puzzles crosses over from being merely silly to parasitic and downright disrespectful.
Imagine if someone today took some of the writings of Martin Luther King Jr. and did the same thing— simply pasting them on the left page, highlighting a few and then sticking them in a grid of jumbled letters and calling it good. And then, selling the book with the claim that to enrich their children on the eloquent words and noble sentiments on Dr. King, parents should buy this book for their children so they could skip the hassle of actually teaching them who this man was, what he stood for, and having them read his writings in their entirety. Of course, if that book was being sold, there would be a cultural uproar from much of America. Now, I do not mean to equate the accomplishments of Dr. King and Poe. While Poe changed the world in his own way, Dr. King is frankly, on a different level. However, I believe that one day, this exact scenario described will almost certainly come to pass much like it has with Poe. The only difference is that we are not far enough removed from the life and times of Martin Luther King Jr. for that to be socially ‘okay’ for Brain Games to swoop in and use it as a cash grab. Yet.
But, in conclusion, it’s not the creators at Brain Games’ fault. They, as marketers, are simply observing what is working in the popular consumer culture. They’ve noticed that people have deconstructed and mytholisized Poe to such a point that his works do not stand as anything except quaint anecdotes of the imagined character that bares his surname and profile. Is there an antidote? Well, yes. If we, as a popular culture of consumers, actually read and attempted to appreciate him as a thinker, a writer and a poet, we would not be satisfied with the watered down and scandalized caricature of Poe that currently dominates. And thus, marketers would not be able to sell us puzzle books that do nothing more than invoke his name and watch the money roll in.