Oh, wait: that would be “smitten.”

Especially because he left me the cryptic and Rachel the Sudoku. That he filled with the squares in with random letters is beside the point, really; it’s more the spot-on posture he’s adopted, as though he’s watched other people do crosswords his entire life. Just like that. I would have posted pictures of him playing Scrabble — grown-up Scrabble, mind you, not the kids’ version — with his grandmother last week, adding up the scores with his orange, foot-shaped calculator, but the camera ran out of batteries. It’s a whole new generation of word nerds here at Casa Non Grata, pottering around with our cups of cocoa and our dictionaries. He asks things like, “What are all the words in the world and who made them?” and “Why does the C come before the K and which one do you hear when you say ‘back’? And who decided that?”

Yes, who? Who decided that? Because there’s a five-year-old around here who would like a word with you.