CROSSWORDS: Language Skills; Vocabulary

Summary | Quotes | References: General, Other Lang.

Summary

• Word puzzles can exercise your vocabulary -- in multiple languages.
• Textbooks and course websites often include crosswords
  to test vocabulary and subject knowledge,
  e.g., Be Safer on the Internet: Web Browsing
• Well-designed crosswords are more than a collection of words
  (esp. weird 'crosswordese'), and obvious clues
  -- they force us to think outside (and inside) the box.

Quotes

• "Thoughtful working of cross word puzzles can not fail to...
  make the average American a more careful and fluent user of good English."
  ~Frederick (Maryland) Daily News, 1924
• The influence on the American vocabulary was audible.
  "Anybody you met on the street... could tell you the name of the Egyptian sun-god
  or provide you with the two-letter word which meant a printer’s measure."
  ~Frederick Lewis Allen, in Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s
• The main interest among fans in the 1920s was in the puzzle as an aid to language development...
  The literary intelligentsia including Franklin P. Adams, Heywood Broun, and Ruth Hale,
  took up the puzzle and fed this interest. Arthur Maurice, former editor of The Bookman,
  claimed to have found 40 words* which had grown unfamiliar through general mental
  laziness but were now resurrected due to the crossword puzzle craze -- suddenly popping
  up in everyday conversation. Maurice: "The constructive work of the cross-word puzzle
  lies in the awakening of the mind and tongue to the thousand and one words that have
  so long been dormant. It is the subtle restoration of these words, a direct result of the
  crossword puzzle, that is galvanizing casual talk into a new and healthy flexibility.
  A cathedral, for example, is no longer a blur of vague images. The picture has cleared
  with the rescued understanding of 'apse' and 'nave.'"
  
  *the 40 words (mostly short and heavy on vowels, many of them are still very much with us):
  Abet, acute, adapt, amend, ape (as a verb), apt, aroma, asset, aver; Ban and bare (as verbs);
  Carp (as a verb), cite, curt, curtail; Eke, elan, elate, emit, eon, etch, err; Foment; Goad;
  Inert, ire; Leer (as a verb); Maim, mar; Nee; Ooze, omit; Pry; Retard; Sate, seer, sever,
  smudge (as a verb); Terse; Vat. ~The Literary Digest of June 6, 1925
• "In their own way, crossword puzzles are an important language art...
  This makes constructors, editors, and publishers artists of a sort
  and supporters of the arts." ~The Muse Of Language Arts; Electricka
• "Crossword puzzles, like dictionaries, often feel like linguistic authorities. [But]...
  rather than sacred scrolls, crosswords and dictionaries are mirrors held up to language
  that reflect how people are talking and writing at a given moment in history.
  The advantage crosswords have over dictionaries is that they can change much more rapidly."
  ~Smithsonian
• "crosswordese:... words frequently found in crossword puzzles
  but seldom found in everyday conversation" ~Wikipedia
• "Crosswords appear in every language in the world. Chinese crosswords... are especially hard." ~Will Shortz
• "To be able to solve a crossword puzzle in a second language...
  shows a high degree of skill and knowledge therein." ~Britannica 2000 CD
• "In North America, crossword puzzle editors use what has come to be known as
  'The Breakfast Test'... when deciding whether an entry is appropriate or not.
  If you can talk about it at the breakfast table then it can appear in a crossword.
  Taboo subjects are death, disease, depressing news and scatological humor.
  As one editor famously quipped, 'People get enough of that in the rest of the newspaper.
  They don't need it in their crossword.'
  
  However, today one encounters famous brand names, movie and song titles and
  famous people which is a relatively recent development. Nowadays, there is more
  and more cheese and less crosswordese, those stale entries which probably will
  never disappear completely. Lively fill is what editors and solvers want.
  More jackals and zebras and fewer ernes and gnus." ~about.com
• "I can't remember a single thing I learned. Except for... Latin, and that's only because
  the nuns literally beat it into us and I use it sometimes for the crossword." ~Peter Cameron
• "Words are, of course,... the most powerful drug used by mankind." ~Rudyard Kipling
• "We try to do a Shakespeare play every year, because... I feel that it provides the
  best tool for actor training. It's challenging in performance and language, physicality,
  analytical skills, and this particular one is along the serious lines, which seemed to fit
  the bill in terms of the kind of genre we wanted to explore. I call this the
  Sunday 'Times' Crossword Puzzle for actors." ~Jack Cirillo
• "I love words. If I get a puppy... and I paper train him and if all of a sudden
  I'd open the paper and there's a crossword puzzle --
  'No, no, you can't go on that, honey.'" ~Betty White
• "My being a writer and playing Scrabble are connected...
  If I have a good writing day, I'll take a break and play online Scrabble.
  My favorite word as a child was 'carrion,' before I knew what it meant.
  I later created crossword puzzles, which was a lot about puns, and
  how words would create these strange, strange things." ~Meg Wolitzer

References

• topics: crosswordese, dictionaries, languages, vocabulary
• Electricka (Exploring the Arts Foundation) for / about crossword constructors, editors, publishers
• ESL Games
• Rearrangements: Can Crosswords Be More Inclusive?
  The puzzles spread from the United States across the globe, but the American crossword
  today doesn’t always reflect the linguistic changes that immigration bring;
  Mangesh Ghogre; history; NYkr; 12/18/2023
• The Latest Western Oppressor? Your Sunday Morning Crossword Puzzle
  about 'Can Crosswords Be More Inclusive?'; NatRev; 12/18/2023
• Planet Word Survived the Pandemic to Inspire a Love of Language
  Lexicon Lane exhibition at Planet Word (DC museum) offers word-sleuthing adventures to puzzle-loving visitors; NYT; 3/29/2022
• The latest word on Planet Word: Downtown D.C.'s language museum is set to open in May
  WaPo; 11/7/2019
• Crossword Puzzles Behind Bars lang skills for the incarcerated; 5/23/2018
• A Journey Into the Merriam-Webster Word Factory
  Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries by Kory Stamper; NYT; 3/22/2017
• Dictionary Fans Might Squee: OED Adds New Words, Because YOLO NPR; 9/12/2016
• What 74 Years of Crossword History Says About the Language We Use
  the world may have become more globalized, but the venerable puzzle now relies
  less on international words and place names; interactive charts; UBER; LIPO; NADA; ITO; MOI; NYT; 2/6/2016
• And Your 2015 Word of the Year Is -- the Face With Tears of Joy Emoji? Giz; 11/16/2015
• Puzzling Through My Fiction
  writing analogy: The Blank Beginning; The Walk-Away; The Dam Breakage; The Slow Clap; NYT; 8/15/2015
• The Use of Crossword Puzzles as a Vocabulary Learning Strategy
  A Case of English as a Second Language in Kenyan Secondary Schools; 2/2013
• Study reveals words' Darwinian struggle for survival 3/21/2012
• Coming soon to a crossword puzzle near you -- 100 new words MT; 7/12/2009
• Partying with all the gnus that fit Varble; [.pdf]; MT

Other Languages

• LexisRex crosswords in many languages
• Crucigramas (Spanish crosswords)
• Hebdomada Aenigmatum, a new book of crossword puzzles in Latin and ancient Greek
  Reut; 6/7/2019
• Crosswords in other languages examples; 5/29/2013
• The World's Geekiest Crossword Puzzle you'll need to know a bit of Klingon, Elvish, Furbish,
  Esperanto and a handful of other constructed languages; MF; 2/20/2007
• From Crosswords to High-Level Language Competency
  Cryptologic Quarterly, NSA DOCID: 3860656; .pdf; Spring/Summer 2005;
  The main thesis of this article is that the ability to solve an appropriately difficult crossword puzzle
  requires a high degree of competency in the language and culture of the puzzle. The main purpose
  here is to set out a framework for using English language crosswords to help English-speaking
  students achieve a high level of competence in some other language