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Lesson 5 Letter Patterns |
Conquer the NYT Crosswords (10) |
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Look for patterns and think about the building blocks of the English Ian guage. In general, consonant and vowel sounds alternate, but some If the second letter in a word is a consounds contain multiple letters sonant, not every letter can precede it. For example, in 2006, there was a New York Times crossword in which the words SHIRE and SPODE crossed at the 5 Some solvers were unfamiliar with both the china/ceramics brand name SPODE and the SHIRE horse. But if you've managed to fill in * HIRE and *PODE with the help of the crossing entries, you can narrow down the possible letters. The P is most likely preceded by a vowel or the letter S, and the H probably follows an S, T, C or P. The educated guess would be to use the S, which fits the pattern for both words. Most longer words that end with a G end with -ING, and a D or R at the end of a word is often (but certainly not always— pay attention to the clue) preceded by the letter E. These patterns can nudge you toward guessing the answer and figuring out crossing entries.
In his guide to crossword construction, Crossword Puzzle Challenges for Dummies, Patrick Berry writes that the most common letters at the end of English words are D, E, G, N, R, S, T and Y Let's say you think a Down answer is FIJI, but these letters would be the final letters in the Across entries that intersect with the word. How many words end with an I or J? Not too many. See if the Across clues will accommodate these unusual ending letters, and use this knowledge to help guide you to the correct answers.
It can also be helpful to think about the relative rarity of certain letters when you're choosing between two possible answers. For a clue like [Bygone despot], the answer is usually some version of TSAR. The word is spelled CZAR more often outside of crosswords, but the spelling containing only common letters—TSAR—appears about four times more often in the Times crossword because it's easier for the constructor to find a crossing word containing an S. (Two less common variants, TZAR and CSAR, seldom show up in the crossword.) So when you're torn between two possible answers, the one containing only common letters is often your best bet.