They have been friends for eleven years. They have communicated entirely through crossword puzzles they mail to each other.

This is a story about two women who have been friends for eleven years, who live approximately three thousand miles apart, and who have — over the entirety of those eleven years — communicated with each other exclusively through hand-drawn crossword puzzles that they mail, in physical envelopes, using the United States Postal Service, at a rate of approximately one puzzle every four weeks.

The two women — I will call them Ingrid and Margaret, because they chose the names, and because when I asked why, Ingrid said, “They sound like the names of two women who have made a very specific arrangement and are, at this point, not going to change it,” which I found sufficient — are fifty-two and fifty-five. Ingrid lives in a small town in central Vermont. Margaret lives in a small town on the coast of Oregon. They met, in 2014, at a professional conference in Chicago. They have not, in the eleven years since, ever seen each other in person again.

They have not, in the eleven years since, ever spoken on the phone.

They have not, in the eleven years since, ever exchanged an email, a text message, or any form of instant electronic communication.

They have, in the eleven years since, exchanged approximately one hundred and forty-three hand-drawn crossword puzzles.

The puzzles have become the friendship.

The origin

The origin of the arrangement, in Ingrid’s careful telling, was ordinary.

Ingrid and Margaret met at a three-day professional conference in Chicago in October of 2014. They were, at the time, both mid-career professionals in the same field — a field Ingrid asked me not to name, but which she has told me involves “a specific kind of analytical work that a very small number of people in the country do, and that we happened to both be doing.” They were both attending the conference alone. They ended up seated next to each other at a Wednesday-morning breakfast panel that neither of them, in retrospect, remembers anything about.

They had breakfast together on Thursday morning. They had lunch together on Thursday afternoon. They had dinner together on Thursday evening.

By Friday, when the conference ended, they had spent approximately fourteen hours in each other’s company over the course of three days. They had, in Ingrid’s account, agreed that they liked each other very much. They had, in Ingrid’s account, agreed that they would “stay in touch.”

They exchanged business cards.

They flew home — Ingrid to Vermont, Margaret to Oregon.

Neither of them, in the following six weeks, contacted the other.

The reasons, Ingrid has told me, were mundane. Work was busy. Life was busy. Neither of them, in the six weeks after the conference, found the specific moment when reaching out to a person they had just met felt like the right thing to do.

By the seventh week, Ingrid has told me, “the window for a normal follow-up email had closed. You do not, in the professional field we were in, email someone six weeks after a conference to say ‘It was so nice to meet you, we should stay in touch.’ It is either the first two weeks or it is nothing.”

Ingrid has told me she assumed, at the seven-week mark, that it was going to be nothing.

She has told me that in the eighth week, she received a large flat manila envelope in the mail.

The envelope had a return address in Oregon.

Inside the envelope was a single piece of paper.

The piece of paper contained a hand-drawn crossword puzzle.

The first puzzle

I want to describe the first puzzle, because Ingrid has told me she still has it, and because it established, without meaning to, the specific form the friendship would take for the following eleven years.

The puzzle, in Ingrid’s description, was — by the standards of professionally-produced newspaper crosswords — modest. It was a fifteen-by-fifteen grid. It had, in the standard American puzzle format, a specific rotational symmetry to the placement of the black squares. It had, according to Ingrid, “the specific slightly-wobbly quality of a hand-drawn grid that someone had tried to make regular but had not fully succeeded.”

The puzzle had thirty-six clues.

The clues were — Ingrid has told me — specifically constructed to be answerable by her, and by nobody else.

The clues, in Ingrid’s account, referenced the following: the specific breakfast panel Ingrid and Margaret had attended on the Wednesday of the conference (which neither of them remembered anything about, but which they had — during their Thursday dinner — mocked at length); the specific name of the small salad Ingrid had ordered on Thursday afternoon and had, apparently, complained about; a joke Ingrid had made about the hotel’s carpet pattern that Margaret had, evidently, remembered word-for-word; the specific first name of Ingrid’s cat, which Ingrid had shown Margaret a photo of on Thursday evening; the name of the specific street in Vermont that Ingrid had described her house as being on; and several other small pieces of biographical information that Ingrid had, in the fourteen hours of their acquaintance, apparently mentioned.

The puzzle had, according to Ingrid, no accompanying letter. It had no explanation. It had, at the top of the page, a single small note in Margaret’s handwriting: “Started this on the plane home. Finished it last week. Thought you might solve it.”

There was no return address in the note. There was no request for a response. There was, in Ingrid’s phrasing, “nothing about the puzzle that indicated Margaret expected anything from me at all.”

Ingrid, in her account, solved the puzzle over the course of the following weekend. She then, in the following two weeks, made her own puzzle. She mailed it back.

She has told me she has not, in the eleven years since, communicated with Margaret in any other way.

The system that developed

The system that developed, in Ingrid’s careful account, was not planned.

It emerged, in the way of most sustained arrangements, from the specific fact that neither of them ever proposed anything different.

Approximately six weeks after Ingrid mailed her return puzzle, Ingrid received a new puzzle from Margaret. Ingrid solved it, made a new one, and mailed it back. Approximately six weeks after that, another puzzle arrived. And so on.

The frequency of the exchanges settled, over the course of the first two years, into a rhythm of approximately one puzzle every four to six weeks. The rhythm has, in the years since, remained approximately consistent. There have been weeks in which the exchange has been faster — when one of them, in the specific way of people with unstructured weekends, has been in the mood to make a puzzle quickly. There have been months in which the exchange has been slower — when one of them, in the specific way of people with demanding jobs or difficult months, has taken longer to sit down with the puzzle. There has never been, in the eleven years, a gap longer than four months between exchanges.

The exchanges have, over the eleven years, developed a specific set of conventions.

Each puzzle is, without exception, hand-drawn. Both women have — in their separate places, thousands of miles apart — settled on the same paper: a specific eleven-by-fourteen inch piece of thick white cardstock that both of them buy from the same specific brand, which one of them had mentioned during their original Chicago conversation. They do not, either of them, use crossword-construction software. They do not use graph paper. They draw each grid by hand, on the cardstock, with the same specific brand of black felt-tip pen. The grids are, at this point, extremely regular. Both women have — over eleven years of practice — become very good at drawing straight lines by hand.

Each puzzle contains, without exception, between twenty-eight and forty clues. Both women have, over eleven years, quietly settled on this range as the correct size for a hand-drawn puzzle to be pleasant to solve.

Each puzzle references, in its clues, specific facts from the friendship. The names of small things they have, in previous puzzles, mentioned to each other. Small biographical details each of them has, over the years, quietly shared through the puzzles. Small ongoing jokes that have accumulated across many exchanges — a running joke, for example, about the name of a specific breakfast cereal Ingrid had mentioned in a puzzle in 2016 that has, in the years since, been referenced in approximately eleven subsequent puzzles.

Each puzzle is accompanied, without exception, by a single small note at the top of the page. The notes are short. They are usually one or two sentences. They are, in Ingrid’s phrasing, “the only real letter-writing that has happened between us in eleven years, and it happens in the same five-second window it takes to write a note at the top of a puzzle.”

The notes, over eleven years, have included the following.

“Started this in March. Finished it in April. Sorry.”

“My mother died in September. I was not ready to make a puzzle for a while. I am now.”

“This is puzzle 47. I think we should acknowledge that we have made 47 puzzles.”

“I made this one on a plane. It is not, in my opinion, as good as usual. I sent it anyway.”

“You will hate 14-Down. I am sorry. I could not help myself.”

“Happy anniversary. I hope you know what I am talking about.”

The notes have never — in eleven years — extended past three sentences. Neither woman has, in eleven years, initiated a phone call, sent an email, or attempted to schedule a visit.

What they know about each other

I asked Ingrid, in the course of three phone conversations, what she actually knows about Margaret.

She has told me she knows a great deal.

She has told me she knows the name of Margaret’s dog (Lorenzo), the name of the specific street Margaret’s house is on (she declined to share it), the name of Margaret’s late husband (Peter), the year Peter died (2017), the specific radio station Margaret listens to while she makes puzzles (an NPR affiliate out of Portland), the name of the small stationery store Margaret buys her cardstock from, the names of both of Margaret’s adult children (she declined to share these too), the name of the specific novel Margaret was reading in the fall of 2019 that she referenced in three consecutive puzzles, the specific chair in Margaret’s kitchen where Margaret has told her, in a puzzle clue, she does most of her puzzle-making, and — this is the one Ingrid has told me she treasures — the specific set of small habitual expressions Margaret uses when she is annoyed, which Ingrid has been able to slowly reconstruct from clues in which Margaret has quoted herself.

She has told me she knows, in her own careful accounting, “approximately three hundred small facts about Margaret’s daily life.”

She has told me she has told Margaret, in return, “approximately the same number of small facts about mine.”

She has told me she does not know Margaret’s political views. She does not know Margaret’s opinions on any current national event. She does not know what Margaret watches on television. She does not know what Margaret thinks about the specific field of professional work they both, at the time of their meeting, did — a field Ingrid has since left, and Margaret, based on hints in recent puzzles, may also have left. She does not know whether Margaret has ever been to any of the places Ingrid has been to. She does not know whether Margaret has, in the past eleven years, been happy.

She has told me: “I know Margaret extraordinarily well. I know her in a specific way that I do not know most people. I do not know Margaret at all in the ways that most friendships operate. It is a strange combination. I have made my peace with it.”

Why they have never expanded

I asked Ingrid, in each of our conversations, why the friendship has never expanded beyond the puzzles.

She has told me the answer is not, in any single way, easy to give.

She has told me that in the first year, she assumed the friendship would eventually expand. She has told me she assumed, at some point after the sixth or seventh puzzle, that one of them would eventually add a phone call, or a visit, or an email. She has told me that at some point in the third year, she realized this had not happened.

She has told me she then, in the third year, spent approximately six months considering whether she should be the one to initiate.

She has told me she considered, in that six months, the following.

She considered sending Margaret an email. She had, from Margaret’s return address labels, been able to identify — via a small online search — Margaret’s professional email at the small consulting firm Margaret worked for at the time. She had also, through the same search, been able to identify Margaret’s personal phone number.

She had, at the six-month mark, sat at her computer for approximately forty-five minutes composing a draft email that read, in its final draft, “Hi Margaret — I have been thinking, and I wonder if you would like to schedule a phone call sometime.”

She did not send the email.

She has told me she deleted the draft. She has told me she then, in her own account, “sat with the specific decision I had just made and tried to understand it.”

She has told me the understanding, when it came, was the following. “I had, at that point, been receiving puzzles from Margaret for three years. The puzzles were, in a way I had not previously identified, the specific and complete form our friendship had taken. Every puzzle contained, in its clues, the specific version of Margaret that Margaret wanted me to have access to. Every puzzle I sent contained, in its clues, the specific version of me that I wanted Margaret to have access to. The friendship had, without either of us designing it, become a friendship that was mediated entirely by the specific care of a puzzle.”

She has told me: “The puzzles were not a limitation of the friendship. The puzzles were the friendship. If I sent Margaret an email suggesting a phone call, I would not be expanding the friendship. I would be attempting to convert it into a different kind of friendship. The different kind of friendship would have different terms. It would have different intimacies. It would have, most importantly, different demands on both of us.”

She has told me: “I did not want the different kind of friendship. I wanted the one I had.”

She has told me she has, in the eight years since deleting that draft email, never come close to trying again.

She has told me she believes Margaret has, at some point in the eleven years, made a similar decision.

She has no evidence for this. She has told me she suspects it anyway.

What the puzzles have, over eleven years, done

I asked Ingrid, in our final conversation, what the puzzles have done for her over the course of the eleven years.

She has told me she has thought about this a great deal.

She has told me: “The puzzles have provided a specific kind of steady attention in my life. Once every four or six weeks, for eleven years, I have received a package in the mail that I know contains a specific set of small ideas Margaret has, for approximately two hours of her time, sat down with a piece of cardstock and constructed for me. She has thought carefully, in that time, about what I would find pleasant to solve. She has thought carefully about what small facts she wanted to reference. She has thought carefully about what small facts she wanted to reveal about her own life. The result — the actual puzzle in the envelope — is, in every case, a specific artifact of two hours of Margaret’s careful attention to me.”

She has told me: “This is not, in the specific way of most modern friendships, a normal thing to receive. Most of my friends do not, once every six weeks, spend two hours making a small hand-drawn object for me. They do not need to. They text me. They call me. They see me. Their care for me is expressed continuously, in small ways, throughout the ordinary course of our lives. Margaret’s care for me is not continuous. It is discontinuous. It arrives, in physical form, at specific intervals. It arrives already completed. It arrives as an artifact that I can — and I do — hold in my hands.”

She has told me: “This has, over eleven years, meant something specific to me that I do not think I could have gotten from another kind of friendship.”

She has told me: “The other thing the puzzles have done is that they have, once every four or six weeks for eleven years, required me to sit down and think carefully about Margaret. When I make a puzzle for her, I am — for approximately two hours — considering Margaret. I am considering what small facts about her I remember. I am considering what small facts about myself I want her to know. I am considering what small jokes we have built over the years and which of them I want to reference this time. I am considering what would make Margaret smile.”

She has told me: “I do not, in my ordinary life, spend two hours every six weeks considering any of my other friends this carefully.”

She has told me: “I am aware that this is a strange sentence. It is nonetheless true.”

What is going to happen

I asked Ingrid, in our final conversation, what she thought was going to happen — with the friendship, over the coming years.

She has told me she is fifty-two and Margaret is fifty-five. She has told me she expects, in the specific way of people at their stage of life, that at some point one of them will begin to have health difficulties. She has told me she expects, at some point, that the exchanges will become slower. She has told me she expects, at some point, that one of them will die.

She has told me she has, in the past two years, occasionally thought about what will happen if Margaret dies before her.

She has told me she does not, in any direct way, know how she will find out.

She has told me: “I do not have Margaret’s phone number. I do not have the email address of any member of Margaret’s family. I do not have any way to be notified, in the specific and immediate way that modern friendships allow, that Margaret has died. I will find out, most likely, when I do not receive a puzzle. When six weeks have passed, and then eight, and then twelve, and then sixteen. When the specific pattern of the past eleven years has stopped, and continued to be stopped, and I will — at some point — have to accept that it is not going to restart.”

She has told me: “I have thought a great deal about this. I have decided, tentatively, that I do not want to change the arrangement in order to protect against it. I do not want to exchange phone numbers now, in case one of us dies, so that we can be notified. I do not want to add a small emergency provision to the friendship. I want the friendship to remain what it has been.”

She has told me: “I have decided that if Margaret dies, I will notice, over some number of months, that she has stopped sending puzzles. I have decided that I will, at that point, wait a longer number of months to be sure. I have decided that I will then, at some point, stop looking for a puzzle in the mail. I will make one more puzzle, and I will not mail it, and I will keep it, and it will be the last one.”

She has told me: “I have thought about this specific ending in some detail. I am at peace with it. I do not want to design a friendship that is protected against loss. I want the friendship I have.”

What this is

I have, in the weeks since I first heard this story, thought about the specific and unusual ways that friendships between adults can — if they are protected — develop shapes that are stronger and more sustained than the shapes we assume friendships need to take. Ingrid and Margaret have, over eleven years, sustained a friendship without a single phone call, a single email, a single visit, a single text message. They have sustained it, instead, through one hundred and forty-three hand-drawn crossword puzzles, mailed in physical envelopes, at intervals of four to six weeks.

The friendship is, in the specific way of the modern world, unusual. But it is also, in the specific way of the friendships that people actually sustain over decades, ordinary. It is a friendship organized around a specific shared activity. It is a friendship that does not require either party to be more than they can be. It is a friendship that has, over eleven years, been protected from the specific pressures that most modern friendships fail under — the pressure to be constantly available, the pressure to expand, the pressure to demonstrate care continuously rather than discretely. (For a related earlier piece on the small quiet ways that people can, over time, develop friendships that operate on their own specific terms, see the Wattalife story about the group of twelve women who kept a WhatsApp group active for six years after the wedding it was created for was cancelled.)

Ingrid told me, at the end of our final conversation, that she had received a new puzzle from Margaret the previous week. She has told me she had not yet started to solve it. She has told me she was, in her own careful phrasing, “saving it for Sunday afternoon, which is when I most like to sit with a new puzzle from Margaret.”

She has told me that the small note at the top of the page, this time, read: “This is puzzle 143. I am not sure whether this is a lot or a normal number. I hope you are well.”

She has told me she has, in the week since receiving it, been thinking about how to respond in her next puzzle.

She has told me she has, tentatively, decided on a clue for 14-Across.

She has told me the clue will be: “A number that could either be a lot or normal, depending on how you count it (3).”

She has told me the answer, in Margaret’s puzzle-solving language, will be “ONE” — as in, one hundred and forty-three puzzles, but also, in the specific way Margaret will understand, one specific friendship, and one specific arrangement, and one specific eleven-year practice of showing up for someone in a way that is small and slow and complete.

She has told me she thinks Margaret will get it.

She has told me she is, tentatively, sure of this.

—

Margot Hale is the editor of Wattalife. She has, since reporting this story, been considering the specific friendships in her own life that she has, without meaning to, allowed to become less specific over the years. She has identified two of them. She has decided, in the specific way of a person who has just spoken to someone who has made a friendship out of hand-drawn puzzles for eleven years, to write both of those friends a letter this week. She is not sure yet what she is going to say. She is sure only that the act of writing it, on paper, in an envelope, will — she suspects — matter more than the specific words.