Crossword Games

The puzzles people search for by name

Most crossword solvers are not looking for a crossword. They are looking for their crossword, the one that runs in their paper, and they search for it by the name printed above the grid.

Two of the best known come from King Features Syndicate. Sheffer carries the name of Eugene Sheffer and is the shorter, brisker of the pair. Thomas Joseph is the other, a compact daily with a fondness for short fill and clean clues. Both appear in newspapers across the United States and both are here in the same form.

Stan Newman's Daily Crossword comes from the crossword editor of Newsday, and it is the one to pick if you want a modern American grid with contemporary vocabulary. The Daily Commuter is the puzzle by Jacqueline E. Mathews, built deliberately to be finished in the time a train journey takes. Premier is the large weekend style grid for people who want an hour rather than fifteen minutes.

If your paper dropped one of these, or you never got round to buying the paper in the first place, this is where they live.

Reading a clue, properly

A crossword clue is a definition with a costume on. Under the costume there are rules, and they are consistent enough to learn.

• The definition sits at the start or the end of the clue, almost never in the middle.
• A question mark means wordplay rather than a straight definition.
• An abbreviation in the clue signals an abbreviation in the answer.
• A clue in the past tense takes an answer in the past tense, and the same goes for plurals.
• Words such as perhaps, say and for instance mean the clue is giving an example of the answer, not a synonym for it.

That last one catches people for years. Clued as flower, perhaps, the answer might be rose. Clued as flower alone it might be river, because a river flows, and the setter is allowed to do that to you.

Where the grid does the work

The reason experienced solvers finish faster is not that they know more words. It is that they use the crossings sooner.

An unreadable clue becomes readable once two of its letters are fixed. So the efficient order is to sweep the whole grid taking only what you are certain of, then sweep again with the letters you gained, rather than sitting on the first clue that resists.

Fill in the short answers early even when they feel worthless. A three letter entry crossing four long ones contributes four letters to four different problems, which is a better return than any single long answer.

Choosing a difficulty honestly

Crossword difficulty is not about vocabulary size, it is about how far the clue sits from the answer.

An easy crossword clues mostly by direct definition. A hard one clues by association, misdirection and shared cultural reference. A cryptic does something else entirely: every clue contains both a definition and a set of instructions for building the answer letter by letter, and once that clicks it is the most satisfying form there is.

If you are new, start with the mini. Five by five, a couple of minutes, and it teaches the clue conventions without asking you to hold twenty threads at once.

When a grid stops moving

Every solver hits a point where nothing new appears. There are three reliable ways out.

The first is to reread the clues you already answered. A wrong entry that felt right is the most common cause of a locked corner, and it will not reveal itself while you are staring at the empty squares around it.

The second is to look at the enumeration and the letter pattern rather than the clue. A seven letter answer with a fixed T in the fifth position is a much smaller search than a seven letter answer with an idea attached.

The third is to leave it and come back. This is not a joke about patience. Crossword answers surface from memory in a way that resists effort, and twenty minutes away genuinely works more often than twenty minutes more of staring.

Every day, at the same time

The reason crosswords survived every other puzzle fashion is the rhythm. One grid a day, roughly the same size, roughly the same difficulty, finished with coffee.

That rhythm is also what makes people better at them without practising. A daily solver builds the clue vocabulary through exposure, which is why the puzzle that felt impossible in January is comfortable by June.

All of the dailies here reset each day, and none of them ask you to sign in to keep your place.