English With Crosswords (Crossword Puzzle Book 2)
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A crossword is a word puzzle that usually takes the form of a square or a rectangular grid of white- and black-shaded squares. The goal is to fill the white squares with letters, forming words or phrases that cross each other, by solving clues which lead to the answers. In languages that are written left-to-right, the answer words and phrases are placed in the grid from left to right (\"across\") and from top to bottom (\"down\"). The shaded squares are used to separate the words or phrases.
Crossword grids such as those appearing in most North American newspapers and magazines feature solid areas of white squares. Every letter is checked (i.e. is part of both an \"across\" word and a \"down\" word) and usually each answer must contain at least three letters. In such puzzles shaded squares are typically limited to about one-sixth of the total. Crossword grids elsewhere, such as in Britain, South Africa, India and Australia, have a lattice-like structure, with a higher percentage of shaded squares (around 25%), leaving about half the letters in an answer unchecked. For example, if the top row has an answer running all the way across, there will often be no across answers in the second row.
Substantial variants from the usual forms exist. Two of the common ones are barred crosswords, which use bold lines between squares (instead of shaded squares) to separate answers, and circular designs, with answers entered either radially or in concentric circles. \"Free form\" crosswords (\"criss-cross\" puzzles), which have simple, asymmetric designs, are often seen on school worksheets, children's menus, and other entertainment for children. Grids forming shapes other than squares are also occasionally used.
Puzzles are often one of several standard sizes. For example, many weekday newspaper puzzles (such as the American New York Times crossword puzzle) are 1515 squares, while weekend puzzles may be 2121, 2323, or 2525. The New York Times puzzles also set a common pattern for American crosswords by increasing in difficulty throughout the week: their Monday puzzles are the easiest and the puzzles get harder each day until Saturday. Their larger Sunday puzzle is about the same level of difficulty as a weekday-size Thursday puzzle.[1] This has led U.S. solvers to use the day of the week as a shorthand when describing how hard a puzzle is: e.g. an easy puzzle may be referred to as a \"Monday\" or a \"Tuesday\", a medium-difficulty puzzle as a \"Wednesday\", and a truly difficult puzzle as a \"Saturday\". One of the smallest crosswords in general distribution is a 44 crossword compiled daily by John Wilmes, distributed online by USA Today as \"QuickCross\" and by Universal Uclick as \"PlayFour\".
Typically clues appear outside the grid, divided into an across list and a down list; the first cell of each entry contains a number referenced by the clue lists. For example, the answer to a clue labeled \"17 Down\" is entered with the first letter in the cell numbered \"17\", proceeding down from there. Numbers are almost never repeated; numbered cells are numbered consecutively, usually from left to right across each row, starting with the top row and proceeding downward. Some Japanese crosswords are numbered from top to bottom down each column, starting with the leftmost column and proceeding right.
American-style crossword clues, called straight or quick clues by those more familiar with cryptic puzzles, are often simple definitions of the answers. Often, a straight clue is not in itself sufficient to distinguish between several possible answers, either because multiple synonymous answers may fit or because the clue itself is a homonym (e.g., \"Lead\" as in to be ahead in a contest or \"Lead\" as in the element), so the solver must make use of checks to establish the correct answer with certainty. For example, the answer to the clue \"PC key\" for a three-letter answer could be ESC, ALT, TAB, DEL, or INS, so until a check is filled in, giving at least one of the letters, the correct answer cannot be determined.
Capitalization of answer letters is conventionally ignored; crossword puzzles are typically filled in, and their answer sheets published, in all caps. This ensures a proper name can have its initial capital letter checked with a non-capitalizable letter in the intersecting clue.
Many puzzles feature clues involving wordplay which are to be taken metaphorically or in some sense other than their literal meaning, requiring some form of lateral thinking. Depending on the puzzle creator or the editor, this might be represented either with a question mark at the end of the clue or with a modifier such as \"maybe\" or \"perhaps\". In more difficult puzzles, the indicator may be omitted, increasing ambiguity between a literal meaning and a wordplay meaning. Examples:
Any type of puzzle may contain cross-references, where the answer to one clue forms part of another clue, in which it is referred to by number and direction. E.g., a puzzle might have 1-across clued as \"Central character in The Lord of the Rings\" = FRODO, with 17-down clued as \"Precious object for 1-Across\" = RING.
Some crossword designers have started including a metapuzzle, or \"meta\" for short: a second puzzle within the completed puzzle.[8] After the player has correctly solved the crossword puzzle in the usual fashion, the solution forms the basis of a second puzzle. The designer usually includes a hint to the metapuzzle. For instance, the puzzle Eight Isn't Enough by Matt Gaffney gives the clue \"This week's contest answer is a three-word phrase whose second word is 'or'.\"[9] The crossword solution includes the entries \"BROUGHT TO NAUGHT\", \"MIGHT MAKES RIGHT\", \"CAUGHT A STRAIGHT\", and \"HEIGHT AND WEIGHT\", which are all three-word phrases with two words ending in -ght. The solution to the meta is a similar phrase in which the middle word is \"or\": \"FIGHT OR FLIGHT\".
Some puzzle grids contain more than one correct answer for the same set of clues. These are called Schrödinger or quantum puzzles, alluding to the Schrödinger's Cat thought experiment in quantum physics.[10] Schrödinger puzzles have frequently been published in venues including Fireball Crosswords and The American Values Club Crosswords, and at least ten have appeared in The New York Times since the late 1980s.[11] The daily New York Times puzzle for November 5, 1996, by Jeremiah Farrell, had a clue for 39 across that read \"Lead story in tomorrow's newspaper, with 43 Across (!).\"[12] The answer for 43 across was ELECTED; depending on the outcome of that day's Presidential Election, the answer for 39 across would have been correct with either CLINTON or BOBDOLE, as would each of the corresponding down answers.[13] On September 1, 2016, the daily New York Times puzzle by Ben Tausig had four squares which led to correct answers reading both across and down if solvers entered either \"M\" or \"F\".[14] The puzzle's theme, GENDERFLUID, was revealed at 37 across in the center of the puzzle: \"Having a variable identity, as suggested by four squares in this puzzle.\"[15]
In cryptic crosswords, the clues are puzzles in themselves. A typical clue contains both a definition at the beginning or end of the clue and wordplay, which provides a way to manufacture the word indicated by the definition, and which may not parse logically. Cryptics usually give the length of their answers in parentheses after the clue, which is especially useful with multi-word answers. Certain signs indicate different forms of wordplay. Solving cryptics is harder to learn than standard crosswords, as learning to interpret the different types of cryptic clues can take some practice. In Great Britain and throughout much of the Commonwealth, cryptics of varying degrees of difficulty are featured in many newspapers.
The first crosswords with strictly cryptic clues appeared in the 1920s, pioneered by Edward Powys Mathers. He established the principle of cryptic crossword clues.[16] Cryptic crossword clues consist typically of a definition and some type of word play. Cryptic crossword clues need to be viewed two ways. One is a surface reading and one a hidden meaning.[17] The surface reading is the basic reading of the clue to look for key words and how those words are constructed in the clue. The second way is the hidden meaning. This can be a double definition, an anagram, homophone, or words backwards. There are eight main types of clues in cryptic crosswords.[17]
With the different types of wordplay and definition possibilities, the composer of a cryptic puzzle is presented with many different possible ways to clue a given answer. Most desirable are clues that are clean but deceptive, with a smooth surface reading (that is, the resulting clue looks as natural a phrase as possible). The Usenet newsgroup rec.puzzles.crosswords has a number of clueing competitions where contestants all submit clues for the same word and a judge picks the best one.
In a diagramless crossword, often called a diagramless for short or, in the UK, a skeleton crossword or carte blanche, the grid offers overall dimensions, but the locations of most of the clue numbers and shaded squares are unspecified. A solver must deduce not only the answers to individual clues, but how to fit together partially built-up clumps of answers into larger clumps with properly set shaded squares. Some of these puzzles follow the traditional symmetry rule, others have left-right mirror symmetry, and others have greater levels of symmetry or outlines suggesting other shapes. If the symmetry of the grid is given, the solver can use it to his/her advantage.
A fill-in crossword (also known as crusadex or cruzadex) features a grid and the full list of words to be entered in that grid, but does not give explicit clues for where each word goes. The challenge is figuring out how to integrate the list of words together within the grid so that all intersections of words are valid. Fill-in crosswords may often have longer word length than regular crosswords to make the crossword easier to solve, and symmetry is often disregarded. Fitting together several long words is easier than fitting together several short words because there are fewer possibilities for how the long words intersect together. These types of crosswords are also used to demonstrate artificial intelligence abilities, such as finding solutions to the puzzle based on a set of determined constraints.[18] 59ce067264