MANSFIELD — Almost 20 years after he retired from his teaching career, John Calhoun made a unique curriculum.
Calhoun worked a part-time job about 10 years ago that left him with a lot of free time that he often used to read or listen to music.
“It must have been a Friday that I was sitting at my desk and I was thinking to myself, ‘this is a really boring job,’ and I was thinking ‘thank goodness it’s Friday — TGIF,’” he said. “I started thinking a couple hours that afternoon how many of those four-word phrases we know.”
These four-word phrases and cliches became the subject of Calhoun’s original word puzzle book “QUADS,” which includes nearly 200 puzzles and activities for adults.
For a few years, Calhoun carried a writing pad and pencil around with him to record other phrases that he heard in conversation or television ads. In one month, he had more than 50 phrases and later made a spreadsheet to organize them.
“Then at that point, my teacher’s brain thought, ‘you’ve got all these word statements, you could turn these into word puzzles,’” Calhoun said.
Calhoun dedicated time each evening to writing and designing “QUADS” in a Microsoft Word document. Despite the effort he put toward completing the book, Calhoun didn’t think he could sell it until a family friend connected him with a printer in Shelby.
He said online printers would have charged more than what he thought he could sell the book for, but having a local printer allows him to order 50 or 100 books at a time to sell later.
Calhoun markets the puzzle book door-to-door in Mansfield’s Woodland neighborhood, first introducing himself and asking if he can leave a copy with his neighbor for about a week before coming back to ask if they would like to buy it.
“I drop a copy off so they can look at it then I come back the next week to pick it up if they’re not interested,” he said. “I believe that once they get it in their hands and look at it, they’ll want to buy it.”
Though he has asked bookstores if they want to carry “QUADS,” Calhoun said door-to-door marketing has been most effective for him so far.
“I would say, most of the time, people smile at me and they’ll say they’ll take a look at it because they know I’m going to come back and pick it up,” he said.
John Calhoun’s eldest son, Scott Calhoun, helped edit the text of “QUADS,” and tested puzzles with other family members before John Calhoun finished putting the book together.
Scott Calhoun is a professor of English at Cedarville University who has written and edited academic books and papers. He said John Calhoun told his family about his idea for a puzzle book and kept them updated on his progress.
“I wasn’t surprised — he’s a very creative and mathematically-minded person,” Scott Calhoun said. “He enjoys problem solving and puzzles, so on the one hand, I wasn’t surprised he made it, but on the other hand, I was impressed he made a whole book of them and they were very creative.”
Scott Calhoun helped his father research different publishers of puzzle books and write proposals, but he said most publishers didn’t know what quad puzzles were, which made the book difficult to market online.
Though online publishing and marketing of “QUADS” was unsuccessful, Scott Calhoun said he was impressed with his father’s perseverance.
“It was a hard and long process to go through,” he said. “I was just so impressed and proud and happy that he didn’t give up and he just kept pursuing a way to get the book out there.”
Scott Calhoun said he thinks writing and marketing “QUADS” is a fitting project for his father.
“He’s always been willing to see a project through ups and downs,” Scott Calhoun said. “It’s a perfect project for this stage of life for him and it really reflects so many of his interests that have been there for his whole life.”
Being the author, publisher, marketer and delivery driver for “QUADS” also gives his father a reason to stay active, Scott Calhoun said.
John Calhoun created a packet of five sample puzzles to email to people interested in “QUADS” if they want to write in a sample or don’t live in the Woodland neighborhood. He also sent a chapter of the book to Microsoft’s headquarters thanking the company for its software.
Calhoun said he was surprised to receive an email back from a Microsoft employee reading, “It was amazing that you created such a wonderful piece of yours only by using Microsoft Word.”
His designs include geometric crossword shapes and intricately placed highlighted circles on more elaborate word puzzles.
“(Word) is the only computer program I know as a teacher,” Calhoun said.
Though Calhoun has hundreds of quads, he didn’t put in the book and a few puzzles he thought might be too challenging, he said he doesn’t want to write a second volume while he’s still marketing the first.
Calhoun estimated he sells a book to every third person he talks to in the Woodland neighborhood. One neighbor came back to Calhoun to buy four copies to give to family members.
Each chapter has two new puzzles, usually more difficult than the puzzles in previous chapters, Calhoun said.
“I pick up what was in the previous chapter and build another chapter with a couple more,” he said. “By the time you get to chapter six, it’s the longest chapter in the book and I love it. It’s my favorite chapter in the sense that it’s got everything in it.”
Chapters seven and eight are collections of their own unique puzzles. The last activity in “QUADS” was inspired by one of Calhoun’s friends writing him a letter saying he is “one in a million.” The activity ends with completing the quads Calhoun’s friend used in the letter.
“That’s a very personal end of the book,” he said. “That one’s tough. You don’t want to start in chapter eight — you’re not ready for that.”
The last pages of “QUADS” are the book’s answer key, which John Calhoun said was tedious to write.
“It’s just very mechanical and boring,” he said, “but you have to have an answer key for this thing. A teacher knows not everyone’s going to know this stuff, they have to be able to look stuff up.”
John Calhoun used to be a math teacher, but said he likes the creativity of word puzzles. He finds sudoku repetitive and boring “with no real creative element.”
“People look at this book and ask ‘you were a math teacher? What are you writing word puzzles for?’ and I say ‘honestly, math is a puzzle,’” he said.
Calhoun said he is happy to share “QUADS” with neighbors and customers, especially because his original goal was “just to write it” to prove he could.
Contact John Calhoun at joleca1123@aol.com for a sample puzzle packet or to buy a book for $20.
