17 Tips for Solving Crossword Puzzles
Strategies to Help You Crack Those Clues
For the past five months or so, I’ve been engrossed in my newfound hobby: solving crossword puzzles. The great lockdown has encouraged me to take up new hobbies with what we have available, and what we have at home are daily newspapers.
Below are the strategies I’ve learned so far for solving crossword puzzle clues. These are amateurish tips, so some of them may be common sense and obvious to many of you (but unfortunately not to me).
(Please note that I’ll be providing answers to some crossword clues to illustrate examples, so expect spoilers!)
1. Watch a lot of movies and television shows. A clue in one of the puzzles was “Garments in The Lorax,” and I was fortunate enough to have just seen the film a few days prior to solving the puzzle and knew right away that the answer was “Thneeds.”
One time I asked my dad what the answer was to 22 across “French river near WWI battles” as he’s an avid viewer of world war documentaries. In fact, he was watching one when I approached him about the clue. He then pointed to the television and said, “They just mentioned it. It’s ‘Marne.’”
2. Aside from movies and television shows, many crossword answers can be found from books. I’ve encountered clues about authors, Greek mythology and fictional characters, such as “Tom’s Missourian pal.” (Answer: “Huck.”) So read as many books as you can!
3. Think both literally and figuratively. I saw a clue once that said “Piece of cake” and thought it had something to do with an undertaking that was easy. As it turned out, it was actually referring to a piece of cake in the literal sense, and the answer was “wedge.”
4. Spell out single-letter answers, for example, “Poor mark” = “dee” or “Curvy letter” = “ess” or “Slingshot shape” = “wye.” It took some time for me to realize that letters of the alphabet should always be written in full.
5. Break down clues per word. It helps a great deal when a clue starts to feel overwhelming. For “Queen’s offspring,” offspring can mean children or descendants, and queen can mean a member of the royal family or a king’s wife. But why are the children specifically coming from a queen, not from a king or from the royal family in general? What else are notable queens? The answer for this clue is “ants.” Another possible answer is “bees.”
6. This may sound really obvious, but sadly it wasn’t clear to me at first: A clue in plural form has a plural answer, and a clue in singular form has a singular answer. If the clue is “Champagne sealers,” the answer would be “corks,” and if the clue is “Champagne sealer,” the answer would be “cork.” Sometimes when I’m extremely desperate to write down an answer for a difficult clue in plural form, I’d feel no shame and put an “S” at the end.
7. The clue and the answer are in the same tense. If the clue is “Push for,” the answer would be “urge,” and if the clue is “Pushed for,” the answer would be “urged.” So if you don’t know the answer to a clue in past tense, go ahead and add the “ED.” (You can always erase it later if it’s wrong.)
8. Have a correction pen handy. It’s okay to make mistakes.
9. When you do crosswords on a regular basis, you’ll find that answers tend to repeat, even when the clues are stated differently. For example, the clues “Chocolate snack,” “Cookie made with cocoa” and “Small, sweet sandwich” found across different crossword puzzles all have the same answer: “Oreo.”
10. It’s okay to research, especially when you’re stuck. Think of crossword puzzles as a way of learning trivia. (I use purple ink for my personal answers and black ink for researched answers, just to differentiate.) One clue I came across was “Founder of Methodism.” As I was positive that I’ve never encountered this person anywhere my entire life, I went ahead and searched it online and learned that it was “John Wesley.”
But prepare to be frustrated. In some cases, you’ll realize that you do know the answer to a clue you just searched for. Do you remember the Marne from number one? Another clue from the same puzzle said “What 22 across is made of” to a three-letter answer. I couldn’t solve it and kept saying out loud, “But it’s just water!” In desperation, I gave in and searched for it online only to be frustrated that the answer was “eau,” the French word for water.
11. When you’re tired, do something else and come back to it later for a fresh pair of eyes. Wash the dishes, take a bath, go to sleep. You’ll be surprised to know additional answers after taking a break.
12. One time we bought a different newspaper and found that their crossword puzzle was a lot different from what we were used to. Most of their clues had question marks at the end, as if they weren’t sure, for example, “Sniff the singer of ‘Coca Cola Cowboy’?” I had no idea what that meant or how to even start deciphering it. I learned later on that you had to think of a synonym for “sniff” and know who sang “Coca Cola Cowboy” and combine them to get the answer “Smell Tillis.” Perhaps each crossword puzzle style requires a completely different set of strategies.
13. Substitute clues with related terms instead of answering them directly. For instance, the clue “Vitamin allotments” made me think it was asking how often I take my vitamins, and my initial answer was “daily.” The answer turned out to be “doses.”
14. When you’re sure of an answer but it just won’t fit the specified number of crossword boxes, think of as many synonyms as possible. One example of such clue is “Pancake shape.” I was sure it was either round or circular, but there were only four boxes to fill. I had difficulty coming up with another word to describe the common pancake shape using only four letters. The answer was “disk.”
15. Watch out for multiple-word answers. Once I had a hard time completing the word “endu” to solve the clue “Eventually become.” It was actually “end up.” The opposite happened when I got confused as to why the answer to “Unite for a common cause” was “draw to get her.” Who was this person, and why would people unite for her? It was actually “draw together.” Yep, that actually happened. It also happened to my dad when he said “pepper on pizza” instead of “pepperoni pizza” and my mom when she said “pinon” instead of “pin on.”
16. Look closely at how each word is written. Is it italicized? One time my mom and I came across two clues in the same puzzle, where one had the word “Exodus” and the other “Exodus,” and it mattered a lot. The first one referred to the exodus in the Bible, and the second one referred to a movie title.
Another example is the clue “Did some home work.” My immediate thought was school homework, but then I realized that “home” and “work” were written separately, which meant it was referring to work done at home or, more precisely, for the home. The answer was “roofed.”
17. Think of the simplest, most common answer. For the clue “Maze instruction,” I analyzed too much about what one should do inside a maze. Should I keep right? I’ve heard someone say that before. In the end, the answer was simply “enter.”
Let’s get inside of my head right now and work out a crossword clue I haven’t answered previously.
The clue is “Clothing label annoyance.” The answer is a four-letter word.
Is “clothing label” referring to a clothing brand or the printed label at the back of a shirt?
If I were the owner of a clothing brand, what would I be annoyed of? Competition?
If I were wearing a shirt with a clothing label on my neck, why would I be so annoyed? Skin irritation?
Let’s fast-forward to a few minutes later. I’ve decided to crack other clues for the time being. After answering clues that intersect with “Clothing label annoyance,” I now have the first letter, which is “I,” and the last letter, which is “H,” which means the answer is “itch.”
In conclusion … despite all these seventeen techniques that I’ve compiled and learned on my own, I’m still not capable of solving a clue straightaway. Oh well. I will always relish that aha moment when I finally figure out the answer to a puzzling crossword clue.
Any tips you can share below?
