The Cruciverbalist Honeymoon – and Other Tips of the Trade

The crossword puzzle is the grandpa of word puzzles, and it shows no sign of slipping in its appeal. Recent studies suggest that a daily crossword might help solvers fend off the dementia that comes with maturity – you know, old-timer’s disease. I jump-start my brain each morning with a cross word (or two), no, I meant crossword or two, and then I grab a math puzzle and some coffee. I can sense the synapses sparking one at a time as I try to look at “wave on the beach” (four letters) from eight different perspectives. Knowing none of the letters, I decide to come back to it. In the next block I see “piece of hardware,” also four letters, and I start to wonder if I’ll ever get this solution started.
   
I know many smart folks who don’t have the time or patience for crosswords. Our modern society and its technologies can occupy our minds and hands for just about all of our waking hours – if we allow it. I know some who have given crosswords a shot, but when they encounter “Florida city” in five letters and Miami does not fit they say, “Who cares?” in so many words, and they give up and wad the page. Why, then, the popularity of puzzles and the enormous commercial industry which produces them? I think perhaps that there are thousands of us who didn’t give up, and, through numerous encounters with cruciverbal obstacles, have picked up the lingo and discovered some of the psychological motives of the constructors. They are relatively few in number – the constructors, not the motives – and you get to know their favorite words and tricks.
   
I’ve been taking some notes about these tricks, and have begun a compendium of baseline knowledge needed for crossword success. Lacking the space for compendiousness, I’ll share a few ideas here. Most of them can be summarized with the words, “go ahead, get your vowels in an uproar!”
   
Some clues are meant to misdirect you, so you must attend the details. Is the answer plural or past tense? A wave at the beach could be from – the surf, a person, or a whole raft of waders, but one "on the beach" is a wave in the sand, or a dune. There are not as many choices as first occur to you. Crosswords are hard to construct, especially if you have too many consonants clashing with other consonants. Vowels are a constructor’s best friends, and so the alternative five-letter Florida city in crosswords is Ocala. Bank on it. Using that logic, I list some other one-of-a-kind responses. There is only one month in a Spanish year, and that’s enero (January). The only pad for a puzzle is a steno pad, and the one Villa D’____ in Italy is Este.
   
So when you are stumped, think of a vowel-rich word, or one that has vowels in unusual positions. A tricky clue might be merely an attempt to disguise the answer “ate” or “eat” – clues such as wolfed down, polished off, or dug in. “Irate” is another grid-filling help, and teed off might be the clue. Of course “teed off” might be the clue for began or drove instead. Steady now – take heart, hart, or Harte. There are many other clues with almost always one practical answer. The only ___ Miss is Ole Miss, the only four-letter first name in mystery is Erle (Stanley Gardner), and the constructor’s favorite first name for a Hollywood director is Elia (Kazan). Know the differences between Uta Hagen, Uma Thurman, Brian Eno and Emo Phillips.
   
Oh, I may have oversimplified the task a bit. There are many prefixes for “bone-related,” such as ossa, osse, ossi, oste, osteo, and osto, but you will note that the vowels are well-represented.

We emphasized that crosswords are heavily laden with vowels, but we have merely scratched the surface with a few examples. Now, rather than present you with a laundry list of mots full of o’s, I found a vehicle to make my additional examples more interesting. Luckily, my favorite muses Erato and Urania sent me a poser, the answer to which I am able to make very vowel-full: “What if two crossword constructors fell in love and got married?”