If reading solved puzzles still doesn`t give me a large enough data set, I need to take an even more extreme approach, where I aggregate all the crosswords and answers from each puzzle, sort them by frequency, and then memorize the most popular answers up to a certain threshold – removing the context of the puzzles. Since I didn`t practice for the Thursday puzzles at all, I`m completely unable to decipher these new types of clues. I`m almost proficient at the toughest Friday and Saturday puzzles and yet completely incompetent for Thursday puzzles. Here`s the same puzzle, but I`ve highlighted all the words I`ve memorized as part of my crossword trainer training. I also added “As Ever” and “In Toto” because these are answers I remember seeing in other crossword puzzles (even though they weren`t in my dataset). In other words, I assumed that the content of one particular crossword hardly matches the content of another crossword. I argued that each puzzle would contain its own, almost unique anecdotes drawn from an infinite pool of crossword knowledge. Our ultimate guide includes everything from where to find crossword puzzles, how to solve crosswords, the most common crossword clues and answers, and other fun facts about America`s most popular word puzzle game. Nothing is more boring than a difficult crossword puzzle to understand, but don`t worry! Type in that tricky crossword hint into our tool and you`re in crossword heaven! I don`t know how I know where this ideal place is. After all, it`s hard to say if my inability to identify patterns is due to my generous handling of cheaters, or because I haven`t seen enough puzzles, or because there are simply no obviously learned patterns. But I have to do my best. For example, when learning languages, most people think they have to go through years of classroom study, grammar exercises, online courses, etc. before they can communicate with native speakers (because that`s how everyone seems to do it).
But in fact, these advances are probably not ideal – instead, if the goal is to speak the language, then the best way forward is to go straight to that stage. These are two reasonable indications (dieci is Italian for ten, due is Italian for two, and tre is Italian for three), and yet there is no way that my knowledge of one will be transferred to the other “automatically”. With this new motivation, I was able to spend 90 minutes fully focused with the crossword trainer today. Tomorrow I will do the same. With our word search tool, crossword puzzle fans can easily type in the clues that amaze them and let our word pinch come up with different options. There are two main strategies for getting help with crossword puzzles: type in the hint and let our crossword tracker get answers, or try our wizard to find the specific word based on the letters you have and the size of the space you need to fill. Interestingly, the same kind of weirdness appears in other areas of my life. For example, at the end of February (the month of my backflip challenge), I was able to land a standing backflip, but I still haven`t made a decent midway reverse throw. On the first day of the month, I explained that crossword solving is considered one of the few activities that doesn`t have a standard training approach. As a result, part of this month`s challenge has been discovering a standardized approach to crossword puzzles that can be replicated by others. Even though I don`t receive automatic fills, it seems that I am learning other skills that are useful but not yet quantified: 1.
I am learning to better recognize common types of deception; 2. I construct a kind of statistical mental model whose letters are most likely to be next to which other letters (sometimes depending on the clue if it is a foreign word, etc.); 3. I learn what are the most commonly used answers that I can still spot in the grid, even if the clue does not match the clue I learned; etc. The average Saturday puzzle takes between 20 and 30 minutes to “solve,” which means I can only complete ~60 puzzles during the entire month. To create this program, I need two things: 1. a lot of crossword data and 2. An interface that displays this data as a quiz. While standing in line at airport security and listening to part of the book on information redundancy (about 50% of the way), I finally realized the parallels. I thought, “Wow, this has something to do with crossword puzzles. This will be a perfect start to tomorrow`s Medium post.
Depending on the difficulty and the specific journal editor, you can find cryptic crossword puzzles with weird features like this: Remember that if you get stuck on your daily crossword puzzles, the answers can be easily found with our clue finder! But this type of training is how effective learning happens, so I`m prepared for the temporary (sometimes strangely pleasurable) pain that`s yet to come. Using this data-driven approach, I was able to quantitatively ensure that I optimally sequenced my training, prioritized based on the activities with the greatest impact. Until then, I`ll just try to sleep well tonight. Even though I can try to optimize every little exercise, my brain`s energy level seems to be the most important variable, so I`ll treat it as such. By creating this waiting loop, my brain became much more receptive to finding the right answers in crossword puzzles. Yesterday, I aggregated 100,000 crossword lines on the internet containing the clues, answers, and explanations of all the NYT puzzles between 2009 and 2016. Anyway, the point is. My crossword trainer and letter trainer were able to use this feedback loop and became much more effective training tools than I originally suspected. A few months ago, I subscribed to the NYT crossword app and started solving Monday puzzles again. I`ve also tried the Tuesday and Wednesday puzzles, but I still can`t solve them without help. We traditionally think of memorization in the context of a Grade 7 student memorizing a stack of memory cards to replicate that information in a test.
In this scenario, the student does not have to determine what is important and what is not – the teacher does this on behalf of the student – thus depriving the student of the valuable part of the learning process. After the first year, I mostly stopped solving crossword puzzles and only solved a few simple puzzles each year. Of course, the crossword puzzle is important, even if I am not yet fully able to quantify or measure its benefits. I don`t know how folk dance and crossword puzzles ended up in the same category, but the point is clear: Ericsson, the preeminent authority on expertise and human achievement, doesn`t believe crossword puzzles can be mastered in a predictable and accelerated way. Surprised, I decided to see how crossword puzzle blogger Rex Parker assessed the difficulty of the puzzle. And that`s where the error happened. There`s no way I`ll get to know the majority of the crossword puzzle, which only solves 60 random puzzles, so I have to speed up this process somehow. Instead of crossword puzzles, I was able to run the audiobook version of The Big Short today (I would recommend it. It was my second listen, and it was still as good as ever). I had less time to “read” this month, so I was happy to enjoy a good, entertaining story (especially if it`s Michael Lewis). During my first year of college, I started doing NYT crossword puzzles every Monday (since the newspaper was distributed for free in the student center and cafeterias).
As a result, the same types of words continue to appear in crossword puzzles, creating patterns that are surprisingly easier to learn than I expected. The most important advice is to practice. It took Max German a month to finish the New York Times crossword puzzle on Saturday, and it took constant practice, about 46 hours in total. He used a lot of memorization with letter training, memorized crossword puzzles and pairs of clues, and solved a considerable number of puzzles. Practice is a big piece of the puzzle, but not the only one, as more difficult puzzles like cryptic crossword puzzles require divergent and flexible thinking.