The hidden language of crosswords

I got a book of New York Times crossword puzzles, edited by Will Shortz, as a gift. I had never been a crossword addict or even an aficionado, but a gift is meant to be enjoyed, so I began working through the puzzles in the evenings as I watched the news.

It was fun and a bit of a challenge. Some clues required common, less common, or even esoteric knowledge, like:

Ark builder (4 letters)
Marilyn Monroe’s real first name (5 letters)
1960 chess champion Mikhail (3 letters)
Hawaii’s state bird (4 letters)

I knew NOAH because pretty much everyone does. NORMA I remembered thanks to the Elton John song “Candle in the Wind.” My misspent youth playing chess gave me Mikhail TAL, the magician of Riga. I had to look up Hawaii’s state bird, the NĒNĒ, or Hawaiian Goose. It’s fine to look stuff up, I learned. And I noticed that macrons and other diacritics are ignored in puzzles, as are apostrophes and hyphens.

Some other interesting linguistic patterns caught my attention too. Clues draw on a range of vocabulary knowledge, both hifalutin and lowfalutin:

Kiddy coop (6 letters)
Zilch (4 letters)
Big to-do (6 letters)
Call bad names (6 letters)
Slangy denial (4 letters)
Giggle, for example (5 letters)
The, grammatically (15 characters)

There are some tricks, of course: when puzzle clues use an abbreviation, that’s a signal that the answer is an abbreviation. There are fill-in-the-blank answers, some requiring a phrase rather than word. And when a place in another country is used, that signals a foreign word or phrase.

Code-braking org. (3 letters)
“_____ luck!” (5 letters)
“Put ___ good word for” (3 letters)
Nap, in Oaxaca (6 letters)

Most puzzles have some kind of theme that may manifest itself in the longest clues. A puzzle about relaxing had the clue:

Flops down (13 letters)

Some clues are efficient enough for puzzle-writers that they turn up a lot from puzzle to puzzle:

Midway alternative (5 letters)
Poker payment (4 letters)
Thin Man dog (4 letters)
Ukr. Or Lith., once (3 letters)

What especially caught my interest linguistically were clues that drew on ambiguity. Some ever so gently guide you in a false direction with clues that can go in several ways. For example, “blubber” might be the noun FAT or the verb CRY, and “restaurant handout” could be TIP or MENU depending on whether the server is the hander or handee. If your mind gets stuck in one direction, it may take you a while to find the right path. “Looker” turns out to not have to do with looks; the answer was EYER. “Right-leaning” has nothing to do with politics. The answer was ITALIC, as in the font. I wanted “Animal House” to be FRAT, but it turned out to be ZOO. And I was stumped by “Heel” until I got enough crossing letters to realize it was CAD rather than something anatomical.

Thinking my process through has helped to up my crossword game and to enjoy it even more. My nightly goal is to finish before the news is over.

And if any of the unanswered clues above have stumped you, here are the answers: PLAYPEN, NADA, HOOPLA, REVILE, NOPE, TEHEE, DEFINITEARTICLE, NSA, LOTSA, INA, SIESTA, TAKESALOADOFF, OHARE, ANTE, ASTA, and SSR.

_{Featured image by Ross Sneddon (@rosssneddon) via Unsplash}