5 Of The Best Blogs To Follow About Crossword Puzzles
crossword clue puzzles are a very enjoyable pursuit, testing our vocabulary and knowledge at every turn, and providing an immensely rewarding and satisfying experience; which is, on those rare puzzles where the answers appear to flow from us like water from a tap. The rest of the time, crosswords may be infuriating with esoteric clues that could stump even a grand master of random knowledge.
Thankfully, we are here to maintain your hair firmly in your head, with 5 tips for crossword solvers that should help you navigate your way over the most challenging sections of the and all crosswords, whether or not it be a puzzle as innocent as the tv Guide puzzle, or as harrowing as The New York Times crossword.
When solving crosswords, you will give yourself a head start on the harder, longer words, and eliminate a majority of the puzzle. by filling in all the easy clues first. You may break the puzzle into blocks, across and down, until you reach the end of the clue list. Sometimes there can be a clue that could have two or more solutions. You may write all the possible answers down alongside their respective clues until you fill in enough squares to exclude the words that don't fit.
When you finish with all the easy clues, start on the longer words. Use a dictionary or thesaurus if you encounter a word with that you just are unfamiliar. You can also refer to a Bible or even an encyclopedia, in the event the clue will refers to a Biblical quote, or to a specific location or an event in history. Work through these clues in the same way you did with the easy clues, block by block.
As more words get filled in, the puzzle can get easier to solve, especially since several of the squares will be filled in when solving previous clues.
A great deal of times, the harder clues will be a play on words that are related to the theme of the crossword puzzle, so you may have to take the theme of the puzzle into account so that you can solve it. From then on, you may be able to solve the crossword by process of elimination and also by using some simple logic.
On occasion, the puzzle author may use some little tricks, like using numbers or symbols to accomplish parts of words or phrases. Solving a puzzle like this will require just a little creativity on your part. As an example, a puzzle may possess the word "arrow" in each theme related clue, and which could indicate a need to put a real arrow where these clues intersect. Often, you might have to replace a word with a number.
Read, Read, Read - There's no better way to improve one's knowledge than through reading. Every tidbit of information we come across is yet another kernel of knowledge that will be popped and put to use at the correct time when called upon by a crossword puzzle. Read books, read the newspapers, read about our history on Earth, and about how the world works, and you can find your understanding base is more than sufficient to tackle even the most terrifying crossword.
Get the Easy Clues Out of the Way - Take a quick run over the clues and complete those ones which come easily and quickly to you. Rather than taxing your brain on clues with minimal help, filling in most the easy content immediately will give you additional letters and aid for the better challenging clues to come.
Don't Be Afraid to Experiment - If you think you could know an answer, but aren't sure, or even in case you are totally guessing, don't be afraid to lightly mark that in and then use those letters to determine should they make sense with other clues. You just may discover that your guess was correct, and led you to solving a number of other clues as a result. Just the process of placing letters in one clue and using them to help solve another may help give you a different line of thinking on that other clue, helping you to solve it, even if your original guess was incorrect.
