Book excerpt: A love of the language and love of crossword puzzles are natural bedfellows. In The New York Times Word Power Crosswords, the interesting, obscure, and unusual vocabulary of the crosswords is highlighted and explained. For solvers who've ever wondered what, exactly, is a calx, the origins of the onomatopoeic brusque, or how Germany, Italy, and Japan came to be called the Axis in World War II, here's the perfect crossword collection.