CROSSWORDS: Acquire Vocabulary, Knowledge

Summary | Quotes | Muses, Patron Saints and Superheroes |
References: General | Animals | Characters / Names | Dictionaries | Geography |
What/Who the Heck.../Stumper | Languages | OREO | Crosswordese

dicts
"32.365 Help For Cryptic Crosswords"
by Benn Photo
is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Summary

  • There are many meanings and contexts of words, e.g.,
    Why 'Run' Is The Most Complex Word in the English Language MF; 5/17/2019
  • More than one word (of same length) might satisfy the definition,
    especially if ambiguous -- use crossing entries to eliminate possibilities.
  • The pattern/features of a clue usually mirror the answer entry,
    e.g., noun: singular/plural; verb tense: present, past, infinitive, gerund
  • If the answer entry is a phrase, rather than a single word,
    the mirroring can occur before the last word
  • Language of the clue, e.g., French, Latin, Spanish, almost always indicates language of answer.
  • We'll see many examples of 'clue-answer mirroring' later in Decode Clues.
  • Letter sequences are common: abbrev., acronyms, 'alphabetic trio', compass dir.,
    initials of author/president, phone keypad, prefix, Roman numerals, suffix,
    tictactoe (O,X), time zones, TV/cable networks, etc.
  • "[var.]" usually indicates a variant spelling; theme phrases may be misspelled for the sake of puns.
  • The language of clues and answers will often reflect the decade of the puzzle,
    and style/preferences of the author & editor.
  • Answer words should not appear in clues, in the title (if any) or in other answers.
  • portmanteau: A word formed by merging the sounds and meanings of two different words,
    e.g., affluenza, alphanumeric, Bollywood, brainiac, Brexit, bromance, brunch
  • eponym: one for whom or which something is or is believed to be named
    e.g., America, Caesar salad, zipper, cardigan, kleenex, xerox, bandaid
  • Also know what you (usually) will not find: profanity, sad or disturbing topics,
    or overly explicit answers -- the so-called "breakfast test".
  • Read a lot; learn vocabulary, (vowel-heavy) 'repeaters' (e.g., area, aria, oreo),
    and 'crosswordese' ("words frequently found in crossword puzzles but seldom found
    in everyday conversation" but usually rarer in 'better' puzzles)     -- by osmosis from puzzles or from lists.
  • Try quizzes / flashcards, e.g., XWord Info Bar Game: Try to guess the answer as quickly as possible.
    Clues and answers are selected at random (from NYT). Some are easy, some are hard, some are fair, some are not.
  • Being good at Scrabble helps for 'official' words, but crosswords can includes phrases,
    made-up words/spellings (often puns), words from other languages, and letter sequences.
  • "Why would crossword puzzle developers include pop phrases or expressions
    for the puzzle? Historically, they’ve been focused on single words, right?
    Crosswords have indeed evolved throughout history. Each editor of the
    New York Times Crossword has had influence over puzzle conventions and what
    was deemed acceptable. The first editor, Margaret Farrar, for instance, was
    responsible for many of the conventions we use today, such as symmetrical grids
    and the concept of a crossword theme. When Will Shortz was hired in 1993, he
    wanted to 'bring in young contributors, fresher themes and more modern vocabulary,'
    he recalled in an interview last month. He was the first to allow familiar brand
    names in puzzles, and he helped popularize the use of longer, spoken phrases
    in fill. However, he was hardly the first to use multiword phrases -- in fact,
    puzzles as early as the 1950s had them. In 1951, the New York Times Crossword
    ran the entries TEA PARTY, SIDE STREET and DREAM MAN.

    As crossword puzzles become more popular and accessible, there is an even greater
    effort for the entries to feel “fresh.” With only so many words in the dictionary,
    puzzles would end up repetitive and dull with only single word answers. As editors,
    when we review puzzles, we don’t only allow multiword phrases; we actively encourage
    puzzles that feature fun phrases and interesting expressions. We generally consider
    phrases to be more colorful and interesting and to have more cluing potential than
    long one-word entries." ~Christina Iverson; NYT Easy Mode newsletter, 12/22/2023
  • "Why does it seem as if every puzzle includes ESAI Morales?
    What did crossword constructors do before he started acting? The typical themed
    crossword puzzle in a 15x15 grid has four or five long entries going across the grid,
    with black squares breaking up the rest of the grid into smaller sections that are
    mostly made up of four- and five-letter words. We like to see a couple of long entries
    running down as well, but the majority of the grid will consist of relatively short words.

    The truth is, there aren’t that many familiar four- or five-letter words, and not all
    of them have convenient letter patterns. We tend to see a lot of the same words
    repeated in crosswords; some of them don’t stand out as much, because we see them
    in our everyday lives as well. ERA, AREA, ONE, ORE, ATE, and ARE are all among the
    top 10 most frequent New York Times crossword entries.

    Names like ESAI, ELI and ESAU, on the other hand, pop out because we see them more
    in crosswords than we do outside them. These are especially convenient because they
    are vowel-heavy, and because they end in I’s and U’s, which is fairly uncommon in
    English. If a word along the bottom edge of a grid has an I or a U in it, there are
    pretty limited options for what word can cross it. ESAI to the rescue! Because ESAI
    isn’t an especially common name, it has always been clued as referring to the actor in
    the NYT Crossword." ~Christina Iverson; NYT Easy Mode newsletter, 3/15/2024
  • "Why do New York Times Crossword puzzles contain so many French words?
    It's true that French appears a lot! One very practical reason is that the
    French words that have traditionally appeared are vowel-heavy and contain
    crossword-friendly letters, so they have ended up as mainstays, and thus have
    made their way into the dictionaries that constructors use when creating their grids.
    French words like ETRE, EAU and ETE have very useful letters, so they show up a lot.
    Other words that show up frequently: ESTA and ELLA (Spanish), ANNO (Latin),
    ORA (Italian) and HAI (Japanese).

    Constructing crossword puzzles that are fun to solve for a wide range of people
    is a bit of a balancing act. Some people think every entry in a crossword should
    be just one English word, but realistically there are only so many interesting
    grids you could make using only single words. The crossword allows for phrases,
    proper nouns and some non-English words because it makes it easier to create
    more varied puzzles. But going too far and allowing arbitrary phrases, any and
    every name, and every word in every language would make it hard for anyone to
    solve a puzzle. Editors are always trying to decide what we can reasonably expect
    people to know, or infer — or even what is worth learning -- if it's not common knowledge.

    When we clue words that call for knowledge beyond, say, what one might find in
    the first couple of weeks of a language intro course, we prefer that there be
    something especially inferable about the meaning. That might be because the
    word shares a root with an English word, or because the word is part of a place name.
    For instance, we have clued NAM as 'South, in Hanoi,' because the word can be found
    within “Vietnam,” which serves as an extra little hint. Similarly, we've clued
    MAHAL as 'Palace, in Hindi,' and SIERRA as'Mountain range, in Spanish.'"
    ~Christina Iverson, Easy Mode newsletter, 4/5/2024
  • "Why do some answers have a habit of reappearing?
    People often think that the editors are specifically timing puzzles to run the
    same entry a few times in a short span of time. In reality, such repeated
    instances are purely coincidental. In the average week of puzzles, we run
    about 585 entries across the seven grids. It would be impossible for us to
    schedule puzzles based on entries that already appeared. That said, we will
    take care not to run the exact same long phrase in a themeless puzzle within
    a short time, which is much more noticeable than a short entry.

    This question makes me think of the classic 'birthday problem' in probability.
    If you have a group of 23 people, there is more than a 50 percent chance that
    two of them will share a birthday. This number might seem surprising, until
    you consider that it could be any two people among these 23; there are 253
    possible pairs you can make with these 23 people. That’s more than half of
    the days in the year. By the same reasoning, with 585 words appearing in
    a week, there are 170,820 possible pairs of words. Of course, the crossword
    also uses proper nouns and phrases, but you can imagine that it would be quite
    unusual for a week’s worth of puzzles to not have a single word used twice."
    ~Christina Iverson, Easy Mode newsletter, 3/29/2024
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Quotes

Muses, Patron Saints and Superheroes

  • You may encounter entries or clues in crosswords that mention Greek muses (Wikipedia) (goddesses)
    for arts or sciences, e.g., Erato (love poetry), Clio (history), Urania (astronomy); Greek Mythology
  • You may also find entries/clues that involve patron saints (Wikipedia) for traditional/academic
    occupations and activities; also: Catholic Saints A-Z
  • You may also see entries/clues involving Superheroes (Wikipedia) and their powers,
    which seem mostly physical/sensory rather than mental; also: powers; powers and abilities
  • Inquiring minds might wonder who might be the muse, patron saint and/or superhero (if any)
    for crossword solvers and/or constructors -- or perhaps puzzles, games, words or problem solving in general?
    (there are no official ones that I'm aware of)
  • Some possible Muses for crosswords:
  • Erato: "poetry" -- crosswords might be considered an unusual form of poetry (word patterns)
  • Melete: "practice" -- crosswords require a lot of practice
  • Thalia: "comedy and pastoral poetry" -- wordplay and words
  • Mnemosyne: "memory"; also parent w/ Zeus of all the muses? -- crosswords certainly require memory
  • My choices: Mnemosyne or Thalia
  • Some possible Patron Saints for crosswords:
  • Teresa of Avila: "lace workers, chess" -- patterns, games?
  • Thomas Aquinas: "students, teachers, academics"
  • Lawrence: "librarians, archivists, students, comedians" -- organizing; word play?
  • Albertus Magnus: "philosophers, scientists, students"
  • Catherine of Alexandria: "librarians, students, philosophers"
  • Isidore of Seville: "computer scientists/programmers/users, students" -- and proposed for "Internet"
  • Margaret Farrar Simon&Schcuster, rules, 1st NYT crossword editor
  • My choices: Teresa, Lawrence, Isidore or Margaret (if she were to be canonized)
  • Some possible Superheroes/villains for crosswords:
  • The Riddler
  • (lesser known) superheroes with enhanced intelligence / intuition?
  • My choice: Riddler
  • Your nominations?

References

Animals

Characters / Names

Dictionaries

welshGeography

NYT: What/Who the Heck Is That? The Crossword Stumper

Languages

OREO

Crosswordese