Expert Advice: Tips for solving crossword puzzles

Host Amber Smith: Here's some expert advice from Dr. Rachel Fabi from Upstate Medical University. What advice do you have for solving crossword puzzles?

Rachel Fabi, PhD: I would recommend checking out The New York Times' Wordplay column, especially with the early week puzzles. The Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday puzzles of The New York Times are the easiest ones of the week. Those are also the columns that I write. I write the Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday columns. The goal of my column is to help new solvers get better and to learn to recognize patterns and the sorts of things that you'll see in clues, like what does it mean when there's a question mark, or what does it mean when a clue is in quotation marks? Or what does it mean if it ends with comma, say, question mark? If you don't do a lot of puzzles, and you're just getting into it, you'll have no idea what that means. And so we write the column for new solvers, with the idea of being here's some tips, to get into it.

Rachel Fabi, PhD: Aside from plugging my own column, other things that I recommend to new solvers is to just keep solving, because the more exposure you get to these things that are just in crossword puzzles, these clues to what's going on with the clues, the more you see that, the more you'll understand it quickly.

Rachel Fabi, PhD: And the third thing I recommend is to solve the USA Today puzzle. It is written at the easiest level of all of the daily puzzles that are published in newspapers. It is consistently really high quality. It is consistently really inclusive. The constructor slate is really diverse. I think 75% of their puzzles are written by women, compared with other puzzles out there where it's closer to 25%. They've been really intentional about shifting that gender ratio,and so the USA Today is just my favorite beginner puzzle for new solvers to check out.

Rachel Fabi, PhD: When you see a clue in quotations, it means that it is looking for an entry that is colloquial that means the same thing. And so it just means what is something that you might say that means the same thing as the thing in quotes?

Rachel Fabi, PhD: If your clue is, a noun and it's plural, then your entry is going to be plural. So the part of speech has to match, the tense has to match, that sort of thing.

Rachel Fabi, PhD: Brackets usually mean that, the clue is not necessarily a word or that the entry isn't necessarily a word, that you would say; it's more of an action. So for instance, in brackets, you might see, this is a clue that I wrote [more tuna, please]. And the answer was "meow," right? You're not speaking the word "meow," it's just something that means the same thing. When you have ellipses in the middle of a clue, it means that the first part of the clue before the ellipses is the clue to the entry. And so is the second part. But they're not necessarily related to each other. So it's basically giving you two clues to the same entry. And the "dot-dot-dot" is sort of a way of saying, "Isn't it funny that these two things are related (laughs), or that they can both mean the same thing, even though they seem different?" Another common thing that you'll see in crossword clues is an indication that the answer is going to be in a non-English language. And so sometimes that will be in the form of like at the end of the clue, you'll see (Fr), which just means "in French," right? But more commonly, in the clue itself, you'll have a word in that language. So you'll see a French word in this clue or a Spanish word or a German word in the clue, and that tells you that what you're looking for is going to be in French or Spanish or German, or whatever language.

Rachel Fabi, PhD: If, getting deeper into crosswords more than just solving occasionally is something that you're interested in, again, starting with the USA Today is a good on-ramp, and I think people who, really, this is meant for people who really love this will find from that entry point, a lot of different directions that you can go. You can, get involved with sort of crossword Twitter, and that's a whole space where you can connect with other constructors and other solvers. There are tournaments that you can do. Many of them have been online over the last two years, for obvious reasons. But I think, you have opportunities to compete and connect with other people, either online or in real life, and yeah, it's a really welcoming, kind, generous community. People are always looking to mentor new constructors and people who want to learn how to make puzzles. People are generous with their time and happy to help new constructors.

Rachel Fabi, PhD: And so it's a fun space to sort of explore.

Host Amber Smith: You've been listening to Dr. Rachel Fabi from Upstate Medical University.