I can recall the handmade signs that used to pop up in our neighborhood each spring with the mysterious “NEFFA” acronym emblazoned on them.

I thought little of them until I’d start to notice streams of colorfully dressed people, some bearing and playing funky instruments, as they strolled and danced in the streets on their way to Natick High. Their festiveness, smiling faces, and general friendliness was more than I could usually bear.

“Deborah, let’s get away for the weekend…”

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Now I kinda miss those visitors.

That scene hasn’t been repeated in Natick since 2006, the last time that the New England Folk Festival Association held its annual get-together at Natick High School.  The event took place in Natick from 1967-1970, then from 1974-2006, and now calls Mansfield its home (well, it calls Zoom its home this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic).

The festival first came to Natick in 1967 after stretching into Rhode Island and suffering a financial loss due to low attendance. According to the group:

“Nothing daunted, the Committees got up, dusted themselves off, and headed for Natick, Massachusetts in 1967. Natick High School turned out to be one of the best locations ever, and the Festival stayed there for four years, more than recouping its losses.”

Natick provided a great venue for the event, which featured concerts, dancing, a craft show, and kids’ activities, including puppet shows. Several dance halls featured a variety of styles, from sword dancing to square dancing, and a player piano added to the fun.

But NEFFA left Natick after its 2006 event, getting the sense that a coming new high school would not be able to accommodate the festival. In its history, NEFFA writes: “An ominous question on the evaluation form asked people about alternate venues. This was in response to the possible renovation of the High School that is being considered by the town of Natick. Just before the 2005 Festival, the town of Natick rescinded permission to use the Lower Hall, as it is now a ‘Wellness Center’ filled with brand new fitness equipment and rubber floor (despite NEFFA’s offer to remove and replace the equipment and floor).”

NEFFA wound up holding its festival in Mansfield in recent years, but again found itself on the move due to an upcoming high school reconstruction.

This past year NEFFA canceled its event due to the pandemic, but is bouncing back with a virtual festival in 2021 from April 23-25.

NEFFA has made the rounds over the years, starting in Boston in 1944 at the YMCA. We’ll have to wait to see where it lands next.

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In googling “Natick” recently I was puzzled to see “natick crossword” show up as one of the top related searches.

Turns out that “Natick” is a dirty word among crossword puzzle enthusiasts in that it refers to an unguessable answer, according to the guy who coined this term.

That guy is Michael Sharp, a professor who blogs about crosswords under the moniker Rex Parker. [He claims on his blog: “I am the Greatest Crossword Solver in the Universe (when I co-solve with my wife)!”]

Whether Sharp has ever even been to Natick… I’ve been asked during a Twitter exchange not to reveal. But let’s just say there’s a reason he finds the town’s name to be a tough puzzle answer.

Here’s how he explains the term “Natick” on the front of his website:

A long time ago, I was solving this puzzle and got stuck at an unguessable (to me) crossing: N. C. WYETH crossing NATICK at the “N”—I knew WYETH but forgot his initials, and NATICK … is a suburb of Boston that I had no hope of knowing. It was clued as someplace the Boston Marathon runs through (???). Anyway, NATICK— the more obscure name in that crossing—became shorthand for an unguessable cross, esp. where the cross involves two proper nouns, neither of which is exceedingly well known. NATICK took hold as crossword slang, and the term can now be both noun (“I had a NATICK in the SW corner…”) or verb (“I got NATICKED by 50A / 34D!”)

As a result, the term “Natick” can be seen in the online Urban Dictionary and elsewhere referring to its crossword infamy. The PuzzleNation blog ran a post in 2020 headlined “Crimes Against Crosswords!” that cites Naticks.

Little did 11-year Natick resident and crossword puzzle creator Tap van Geel realize when his puzzle was published in The New York Times in January of 2019 that his hometown would be a point of note. The Times‘ Deb Amien wrote in her Daily Crossword Column:

Alert the media! The crossword puzzle constructor Thomas van Geel makes his New York Times Crossword debut today, but that’s not even the best part. The best part is that he lives in Natick, Mass. I don’t remember the last time I was this excited about a debut for entirely geographic reasons. This is too good to be true.

For his part, van Geel, is not a fan of crossword Naticks. “If an answer is too obscure, it’s not fair or fun to the solver, and should be avoided. I would love to sneak Natick into a puzzle, but I’m not surprised it became the poster child of obscure entries,” he says.

Interestingly, van Geel is not alone among those who have called Natick home to make their mark on the New York Times crossword scene. Another is Sam Trabucco, who has published multiple puzzles in the Times. When asked by Times columnist Amien what drives him to construct puzzles, Trabucco replied:

To rescue my hometown, Natick, Mass.’s heinous reputation among crossword people. For real, I was very confused when I first got into crosswords and read about “Naticks” considering I did spend 18 years of my life there. I even used to watch the marathon from there, like the clue mentions!

More: Read our Q&A with Tap van Geel, Natick crossword constructor extraordinaire

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