Critics have called out crossword puzzles in recent years for their editors and content being too old, white and male.

I get that, but I also urge puzzle makers not to completely do away with the old-style clues that still have something to say.

I’m thinking, for example, of the frequent arcane clue “part of QED,” which is usually looking for the second Latin word of “quod erat demonstrandum,” which literally means “what was to be demonstrated,” or essentially, “I rest my case.”

The Latin acronym was used at the end of geometry proofs or written philosophical arguments — light years ahead of today’s TBH, IDK or LOL.

We don’t use QED much today, although the pirate Jack Sparrow, portrayed by Johnny Depp, said it ironically in a “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie. When he tries to prove to himself that a character he sees can’t be real, he says in his slurred English accent: “You can’t be here. QED, you’re not really here.”

I first ran into this phrase when I started doing crossword puzzles in my 40s when my parents moved in with us. The puzzle itself seemed outdated — on paper! — and also just hard. My dad worked on it from the daily newspaper and would leave it out on the kitchen table, luring me to eventually take a few stabs at it. I was surprised I could get some of the clues and thrown by the outdated ones.

When QED showed up I asked him about it, and he knew the Latin words right off.

When it came up again in a puzzle, my dad was beside me in the waiting room of his doctor’s office in Frederick. I had pulled out the day’s newspaper puzzle — folded in my purse — and started asking him about various clues: a golfer’s name, a warship and the QED clue, which I had promised to remember going forward.

We were there in the noisy doctor’s waiting room with patients of all ages — kids playing near our feet, CNN on in the background — waiting to find out about my dad’s recent mini-strokes. When we saw the doctor, we heard the strokes would likely return and might be more serious.

In the car, I told my dad things he had missed without his hearing aid.

But there was no easy way for me to give him the news that he might be out of fixes when he had been fixing things all his life. As a kid, he took apart radios and put them back together, and he used this same skill in World War II repairing Jeep radios, even for a few consecutive all-nighters during the Battle of the Bulge.

He didn’t seem fazed by this news. Still a New Englander at heart, even after living in Maryland more than three decades, he suggested we pick up lobster rolls for lunch. It was April 1; he said we should celebrate spring.

A few weeks later, he seemed ready to resume things he had put off. Sitting at our kitchen table he asked the age-old question about why some people he barely knew wanted to be friends with him on Facebook. He also said we should get back to the oral history project we had been doing because, as he put it, he had “more chapters to go.” There was more he wanted to tell.

When he died days later, I was left wondering what he still wanted to say and also determined to continue our puzzle tradition.

The next April 1, with coffee and the day’s puzzle in hand, I thought about how a year had gone by since our last crossword collaboration.

I hadn’t gotten far when the five across clue — “part of QED” — showed up.

I looked around as if someone were looking over my shoulder. It caught me off guard but didn’t fully surprise me. It made me think of my dad, of course, and the irony that he had never been someone with something to prove.

This clue now connects me to him and to an era when this expression was that day’s slang.

When it comes up now — as I hope it still will on occasion if the old clues mix with newer ones — I will continue to give it the pause of recognition it deserves.

Carol Zimmermann is news editor at the National Catholic Reporter and lives in Germantown. She does crossword puzzles once a week.