Why do I sign the entries in this log as “The Obelist”? For that matter, what is an “obelist”? Taking the latter question first, I note that the word appears in no standard dictionary. Not at Dictionary.com. Not Merriam-Webster Online. 
Not in the Webster’s Deluxe Unabridged Dictionary, Second Edition, that squats on a shelf in my living room. In a Google search of “obelist,” the only helpful pages that turn up are those that associate the term with a trio of obscure detective stories from the 1930s. Obelists Fly High, Obelists En Route, and Obelists at Sea, by C. Daly King, define “obelist” in more ways than one, according to online sources. The chief meaning: “one who harbours suspicions.” It’s worth noting that King, in each of his highly puzzle-oriented tales, included a special index called a “clue finder,” where readers could discover the pages on which he had hidden signs and portents of a solution to that book’s mystery. An obelist, therefore, is the sort of reader who scours a murder story for “suspicious,” secret-laden passages.
One online commentator suggests that “obelist” is cognate with “obelus,” a favorite word of mine—or, more to the point, the word for a favorite symbol of mine. The obelus symbol, also called a “dagger” (the word has the same derivation as “obelisk”), is the cross-like glyph (†) that appears in old forms of printing. It, too, has multiple meanings and uses, and among them is the “mark of suspicion” that scholars of yore would insert in a dubious or corrupt bit of text. In early-modern times, the obelus became a mark used to flag a footnote; it served as an understudy of sorts to the asterisk. That usage has become rare in our own period. In another usage, also rare today, an obelus becomes the mark of death, employed by typesetters to signal the year that someone passed away. (An asterisk would signal the year of birth.)
So an obelist, perhaps wielding an obelus as a tool of his trade, is one who notes details with a keen, suspicious eye. In other words, he’s a critic. (An obelist of course can also be a “she,” but in the case of this web log he is not.) An obelist also takes particular interest in things of the past and in things that passeth away—in history and in mystery. And that’s pretty much me.
More generally, I choose to call myself “The Obelist” because I want an alias behind which I can hide, and I like the sound of that one. Thus, while I hope that what I write here has some little merit, I see a trace of significance in another meaning of the term that C. Daly King reportedly offered in his books: “a person who has little or no value.”
