When I first started doing crossword puzzles, upping my solving speed wasn't a top priority – honestly, it wasn't even on my radar. I was simply concerned with getting through a grid, no matter how long the process took.
If a clue tripped me up (which, in those early days, happened far more frequently than not), I lingered on it for minutes at a time, not wanting to move on until I'd figured it out. I often answered clues totally out of order, wasting time clicking on new boxes or going back to revisit previous attempts. It didn't matter to me whether I finished a puzzle in five minutes or five hours, as long as I finished it, eventually.
Over time, though, as my skills increased, I started taking speed more into account. Mastering "crosswordese,"
focusing on one chunk of the grid at a time and learning to quickly recognize when an answer was likely to be plural or in a certain tense helped hasten my solve time. But few solving strategies proved more helpful than this one: skipping clues I didn't immediately understand.
When presented with something confusing, it's human nature to want to figure it out. And there's no question that much of the fun of doing crossword puzzles is that satisfying aha! moment you get when you realize you've finally decoded the meaning of an especially vague or punny clue. But if you want to be a fast solver, working towards this moment has to be less important than working through the grid, period.
If you remain stuck on a tough clue until you've cracked it, the consequence isn't just the extra seconds or minutes you're adding to the clock. It's also that you're not giving your brain time to reset and reorganize, which it needs to do in order to form the new connections that'll help you come up with the answer. Instead, leave that clue behind and move right onto the next. Chances are, the answer you previously couldn't figure out will suddenly appear in your head – sometimes even before you've started filling in the next one's letters.
To put it simply: Distraction helps us remember. It's like when you blank on the name of an old friend or childhood TV show – standing there frozen and demanding your mind spit up the correct word rarely ends the lapse (but definitely adds to the frustration). But when you walk away and shift your attention to something new, boom! The name you couldn't think of before is now top of mind, as if it'd been there all along.
Of course, this trick doesn't always work. Sometimes, an answer just refuses to come into reach even after you've given your brain a much-needed break. In those cases, try to solve as many letters as you can using other connected words, and consider if you've been taking the clue too literally (i.e. thinking "bread" has to mean food instead of money) or missing any grammatical hints (i.e. not realizing it's in past tense, not present). But if you're still finding yourself stuck, put the puzzle down and take a breather. The clock will pause, and you'll come back refreshed and ready to hit that finish line.
Rachel Simon is the PLAY writer for USA TODAY, bringing you the inside scoop behind our crosswords, games, horoscopes, and comics. Have thoughts on this story, or want to share your own tips for solving puzzles faster? Email her at RSimon@USAToday.com andsubscribe to our PLAY newsletter to get more content like this in your inbox every week.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: A crossword puzzle expert's biggest tip for upping your solving speed
