If cryptic crosswords, also known as British crosswords, have ever made you feel dumb (I was relieved to learn they make a lot of British people feel dumb, too), then you need to know about a recent study. A pair of British researchers took a close look at what it takes to excel at cryptic crosswords, and found that the really good solvers aren’t who you might expect.

Regular crosswords involve, among other things, finding synonyms in the midst of puns and wordplay, and in a really good puzzle, devilishly tricky clues. To be good at solving these takes a lot of cultural knowledge, a reasonably big vocabulary, and an ability to “think outside the box.”

Cryptics are more like cracking a code. A really hard code. Before you can figure out the answer, you have to decode the clue! The study, which took the form of a survey, found that “super solvers” — those who could solve a difficult puzzle in under 15 minutes — were far more likely than ordinary solvers to work in or have training in mathematics and computing.

And that explains why the British government used a cryptic puzzle as a screening tool to recruit people to work at Bletchley Park, the home of the World War II project to crack Nazi codes, and the birthplace of modern computing. They weren’t looking for someone who knew how to spell Alan Alda.* They were looking for people who were skilled at cracking codes.

If you’ve never tried cryptics, or like me, tried and couldn’t get past the very beginning level and would like to give it a(nother) go, the free Substack newsletter “On Words and Up Words” by Jack Shepherd offers a series of posts that constitute what Shepherd calls a crash course in cryptics. Let me know if you try it.

* Alan Alda is one of a few super-common crossword answers, called repeaters. These are helpful (perhaps even necessary) for filling in the complex grids of regular (not cryptic) crossword puzzles because they have a high ratio of vowels to consonants. Other common repeaters are: era, ore, Erie, and oboe.

If you have a guess for the answer to the (non-cryptic) crossword clue in the subject line, respond to this email with your answer. HINT: It’s not Alan Alda.

’til next time,

Avery

Image by Steve Buissinne via Pixabay