You might also try podcasts such as Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day, Just Vocabulary, Podictionary, and NPR: Sunday Puzzle Podcast with none other than Will Shortz.īased on personal experience, I have faith in Tyler Hinman's statement. These books are certainly a brief shortcut to increasing your knowledge bank, they may serve as a refresher of your high school or college foundations that you may have long since forgotten. Simply glancing at the Times sports section everyday could even boost my most glaring deficiency (I have yet to try it).Īnother method is to brush up in a Cliff Notes fashion with books like The New York Times Guide to Essential Knowledge or An Incomplete Education: 3,684 Things You Should Have Learned but Probably Didn't. Whether it be sites such as The Daily Beast or Huffington Post, your local paper or the wider reaching New York Times, or magazines like Newsweek, The New Yorker or even People, those daily news bytes will inevitably add to your solving memory bank. Seemingly obvious, she recommended simply keeping up on your daily editorial reading. Recently, a 80-year-old master solver offered me some great advice. Outside of going back to school, there are less time consuming, not to mention more practical, methods that can help. I most likely will not procure additional degrees in philosophy, history or science just to advance to a Saturday speedy solving status (contrary to popular belief, Saturday is the most difficult day, not Sunday). Unfortunately, I'm neither mathematician nor musician. If you have that kind of mind, and you add it to it a wide range of information, and you can spell, you'd be a really great crossword puzzler." He's taken all those notes and absorbs what they mean, instantaneously. In other words, a piano player like John Delfin, the greatest crossword player of our time, he sits down and he sees three staffs of music and he can instantly play it. " Their ability to assimilate a lot of coded information instantly. Okrent explains what makes these professions most befitting: Okrent found that musicians and mathematicians tend to be the most adept. However, the film also interviews former NYT Public Editor, Daniel Okrent, who has insight into which minds make the greatest solvers. I got good predominately because I practiced. " I guess it's kind of a gift, but it's one I've worked for. I felt a glimmer of hope watching the crossword documentary, Wordplay, particularly when the young five-time-winner of the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, Tyler Hinman, stated:
On the other hand, if you're like me, you probably have a few areas of expertise, a decent foundation in a variety of subjects, and above all, a love for words and logic. If you fit that description, you might be a promising contender for NYT Crossword Editor Will Shortz' American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. Sure, it helps if you are a living encyclopedia, heavily laden with a wide range of trivia. Is a deeper educational background essential to becoming an advanced solver? Is solving strength predominately a matter of one's individual breadth of knowledge? For the amateur, at least, I'm not sure a ready database of facts is all that matters. I have often wished that I had more world history under my belt, any inkling at all of American sports trivia, a better understanding of philosophy, and whatever else might potentially boost my solving abilities. As a kid, I loved reading, excelled in spelling bees and enjoyed diagramming sentences. in textile design, I generally catch the art history clues, the repeated use of the answer ELL (a former measure of length used mainly for textiles), and a decent number of the literature, film & pop culture references. What does it mean to be a master cruciverbalist? I have often pondered the many factors: logic, pattern, repetition, areas of expertise, vocabulary, facts, worldliness, educational background, spelling, reading retention, memory, age, I.Q. This guide is for beginner solvers advanced solvers will not find it useful. I'm a beginner to intermediate solver, master of Monday-Wednesday, working on my Thursday-Sunday game. Writing this has helped me digest the information I've gathered and memorize those few remaining odd words or facts that turn up again and again.
This article is my own guide to what I personally find most useful. Many of them have useful information, some of it obvious, some of it not. I've read quite a few books and articles on solving crosswords. And when it comes to solving the New York Times crossword puzzle, the old cliche does apply: practice makes perfect. Contrary to the message in the image above, it's NOT over.
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