HALLIE EPHRON: Pop quiz. What do these words have in common?
ACAI
ISLE
YOKO
ONO
EDEN
EMU
ERA
AREA
ALOE
EEL
ETA
OBOE
OREO
If you know the answer, you probably do crossword puzzles.
These are words that contain the letters most common in English. The letter E, for example, shows up in about 11% of the words in the Oxford English Dictionary. These words show up frequently in crossword puzzles -- far more frequently than we actually use them to express ourselves to one another.
They help crossword puzzle makers connect longer words using the most common letters in English: E, T, A, O, I, N, S, H, R.
My Jerry was the crossword puzzle maven in our house. We get two newspapers delivered daily -- the New York Times and the Boston Globe. And he'd commandeer the puzzle pages and *TIME HIMSELF* solving the puzzles (about 10 minutes for the New York Times. Snarling at me if I interrupted him.
When he was in the hospital for treatment. the doctors during rounds would compare notes with him on the day's Pangrams (Spelllng Bee), congratulating themselves if they'd found as many 7-letter words as he did.
I always assumed I couldn't do crossword puzzles, but since I now have the papers to myself, I do the Globe's crossword daily and the Times Monday through Wednesday. (After that the Times is too hard.) I also do Spelling Bee. Connections, Tiles, Pips... and more.
And, I'm embarrassed to say I watch Wheel of Fortune nightly. If you think you're good at word puzzles, it's a humbling experience. (Love Ryan Seacrest - what a cutie pie. And Vanna is lovely ...it boggles the mind to imagine how old she must be.)
Doing puzzles is a perfectly lovely way to
Are you a puzzle-doer? Which ones have captured your fancy?
Count me in the puzzle-lovers group. I enjoy doing crossword puzzles . . . Spelling Bee, Wordle, Connections, Strands, Pips are all on my daily to-do list . . . and we watch Wheel of Fortune every evening, too.
ReplyDeleteWheel of Fortune: yes!
ReplyDeleteWord puzzles: never.
I would rather put together the right words in my writing, not fiddle around with letters. Anyone else feel this way?
I'm with you Anon on words first, then an occasional Wordle or Connections. But no WofF for me either...
DeleteI think writing a book and watching a tv show scratch different itches... And sometimes you need to give your mind a break.
DeleteYes! Clues by Sam dot com is my latest obsession.
ReplyDeleteDebating whether to check it out...
DeleteI love puzzles! Crosswords, Word search, Jumble, Wordle, Spelling Bee(only as far as I can go with the free version) Connections, Strands, Sudoku, Pips, Wordscapes, ZenWords…
ReplyDeleteGrowing up my dad always commandeered the crossword puzzles. He did them in ink. Doing puzzles is one thing my sister-in-law and I have in common.
I haven’t watched Wheel of Fortune for a long time, but I have yelled out the answer many a time, like that would help the clueless TV contestant.
Vanna White is 68 and makes $10 million dollars a year.
In our house growing up it was my mother who did the crossword puzzles. And double crosstics. In ink.
DeleteWe always have a NYT Sunday crossword (Hugh gets big books of 250 and tears out one at a time) going on a clipboard that we pass back and forth - but never in pen! We also each do Wordle on separate computers and then compare our results when I go downstairs for my second coffee. Hugh breaks his brain on cryptic crosswords, but I can't do those, or the occasional Puns and Anagrams.
ReplyDeleteNo Wheel of Fortune here, and I don't do the other daily puzzles. Wordle is enough in the morning. When I'm with my older son, we usually play Scrabble, but he's way, way better than I am. He goes to a weekly club and plays with rated masters. Gah!
I'm terrible at scrabble. I refused to play with my husband because he was scary-good.
DeleteYes, a puzzle lover but also games with others ... scrabble, boggle, bannagrams. An introvert, it is so much easier than a free-floating conversation.
ReplyDeleteYou're right about that... No discussions of politics with people who are otherwise perfectly nice.!
DeleteMy son times himself doing the NYT crosswords. I used to do them (republished in the Oregonian) The Friday and Saturday ones were hard, but I would call my dad and we would work on it together. Since I stopped getting a physical paper, I have stopped doing crosswords. I've also stopped doing Sudoku. I loved the Sunday Monster Sudoku. The hard ones would take me weeks of careful erasing and re-trying. I've found the on-line Sudokus (at least from the Washington Post) not very challenging.
ReplyDeleteI do Connections, Strands, and am back to Wordle every day. I play quite a bit of solitaire on World of Solitaire website. I watch Jeopardy but not Wheel of Fortune.
I no longer get the physical ny times but I print out the crossword. I'm terrible at doing it online, especially on the cell phone
DeleteI do a lot of different kinds of puzzles. Lately my grandson has got me doing Wordle, but the pressure has made me anxious. Although for the last 2 days I've got the word on the second try - maybe my brain is getting the hang of it. I do the Jumble everyday, and many Sudoku puzzles, which doesn't involve math, even though it uses numbers. When my kids were younger a favorite car game was I am thinking of a ... Maybe that's 21 questions but we didn't call it that, nor did we count the questions. A fondly remembered question: is it something you blow up?
ReplyDeleteHa ha! We called it "20 questions," but who's counting?
DeleteI'm sure you are right; it goes without saying I am bad at numbers. In any case, that wasn't what we called it. Someone just started in saying 'I am thinking of' and it took off from there.
DeleteMy puzzles are jig saw, not word, but we both do love Jeopardy (taped) every day during lunch. That means that you have to empty your mouth, think of the answer and shout it out BEFORE the contestant. That is the excuse that I am giving for my (our) brains not functioning as quickly as it should. It is also the excuse for why the answer is on the tip of the tongue – you know, word that starts with a. I knew that!
ReplyDeleteApparently, we are not allowed to watch Wheel of Fortune in this house in spite of the beautiful Vanna – where does she get all those long gowns?, though I will admit the game is a little slow. However my father loved it, and many a night was spent watching it together.
I do think you have to be an old fart to enjoy WOF. Jeopardy is wicked hard these days, and it's been fun to watch the "second chance" contestants compete with each other. They are SO GOOD!
DeleteNo regular TV here, so no WoF, but my BIL and sister watch it every night and have for many years. I do Wordle, Strands, Spelling Bee (free versions only), and Sudoku every night as a way to wind down. Then I can read or write, as the case may be.
ReplyDeleteBrilliant - such a good way to "wind down"
DeleteI do Wordle, Connections and Strands daily. If I'm bored or wasting time in a line or something, I will also do Quordle, Octordle, and/or Blossom. Hubby is a crossword lover and I kind of miss the days when we used to tag-team on them. (We were REALLY good as a team.) But now instead of solving them on paper he has an app on his phone, so it isn't as convenient to pass it back and forth. Hmm, maybe I'll pull out some of the books of crossword puzzles we still have and initiate a shared one today!
ReplyDeleteGood idea!
DeleteI love puzzles. I do the NYT crossword online and always feel a great sense of achievement on the rare occasions when I can finish a Friday or Saturday puzzle without clicking on the little "check" button to tell me which letters are wrong. Otherwise I love logic puzzles. Murdle.com is a daily favorite and I've recently started playing zebrapuzzles.com when I have time.
ReplyDeleteI like Crossword Puzzles but I only ever get about half of the answers.
ReplyDeleteI do Wordle and Jumble daily. I love Jumble because of the "punny" answers!
I used to do Sudoku but stopped a few years back.
Above ^ I also love NPR's Sunday Puzzle with Will Shortz.
DeleteOh, me too!
DeleteOh I love Connections —that moment when you get the really weird one is so very rewarding. And Spelling Bee—I never stop before I get to genius. ( I know, it is ridiculous.)
ReplyDeleteI always do the NYT on Sunday but I don’t always care if I finish—at some point I decide I can’t use up the time. I do it in pen, too.
Wordle— at some point I kind of figured out a system which always seemed to work so and then I stopped doing it.
I’m a big Jeopardy fan—but I never watch it now. It was fun to call out the answers, though.
I love Connections, too, but sometimes even when they reveal the last group of four and SAY why they're connected, I do not get it.
Deleteoh, I so agree! “Emo rock groups with the first letter changed.” Whatever.
DeleteI'm hopeless at crosswords, unfortunately; I hate that I'm hopeless at it, but I've learned to live with it. My husband does the NY Times puzzles quickly, and does the puzzles in the New Yorker, and now the Atlantic; he does Spelling Bee. I used to do a similar puzzle to Spelling Bee in the London Times - maybe I'll get back to that. When in Italy my husband buys a puzzle magazine (Settimana Enigmistica) and does all sorts of puzzles in there; I find that rather amazing. I do Wordle, Quordle, sometimes Octordle, Strands, Connections, and Keyword in the Washington Post. My great love is the Double Crostic. I've been doing them since I was in junior high. I subscribed to XWordInfo so I can do the puzzles online when we don't have a paper copy, and I much prefer to do the Double Crostics on the computer, as I can avoid making the inevitable "transferring" mistakes.
ReplyDeleteI confess I've never done a double crostic. Ever. The format alone is daunting.
DeleteMy husband's doing it right now. (We finally got our Sunday paper delivered.) He does them without cheating. I don't mind looking up a clue or two if it means the difference between being able to do the puzzle, and not being able to do it. It's such a magical thing when the quote begins to make sense. As I said, I find the electronic version so much easier regarding the format, etc. Until the most recent years, one could do the D-C and the other special puzzles online. Then they stopped making those available. Luckily I found this website I mentioned.
DeleteI have become hooked on Outspell, a scrabble-like online game where I play against AI, not someone I know like Words with Friends. You can choose Easy, Medium, or Hard, whatever you are feeling at the moment. I used to choose Hard all the time, and I sometimes still do, but I also take pleasure in seeing how fast I can complete the Easy puzzles using my ever-increasing vocabulary. Who knew EDH, QUA, and XIS were words? I'm a big reader, and I think that's a definite plus because of the words I encounter and somehow remember, although I don't always know what they mean. And sometimes I learn new words just by trying out the letters I have left. Tip: playing online allows the player to use some extra tools, but I usually play on my phone.
ReplyDeleteThis may not qualify as a puzzle, but I know it's good for my brain and enjoyable.
OUTSPELL? Writing it down...
DeleteI am a great fan of NYT Spelling Bee, Wordle and Mini-Crosswords. Not at all fond of Sudoku, enjoy cryptograms and such and jigsaw puzzles. There is something about the challenge that I really enjoy. Also a good way to keep my brain working. Thank goodness the library has a link to the NYT! -- Victoria
ReplyDeleteI think some of us are just better at word challenges (as opposed to logic or numbers or visual...)
DeleteAgreed. I tell folks that is just the way my brain is wired. I excelled at math (except geometry, ick!) in school, but math puzzles just torture me. -- Victoria
DeleteI’ve loved word games since I was a child. I have an online subscription to the NYTimes, and I do Spelling Bee(must get to Genius!), Wordle, Strands, Connections, and the mini crossword. I don’t do the regular crossword because it’s too hard on my eyes.(I do the puzzles on my phone.)
ReplyDeleteMy sister and I often compare our results with each other.
Off to the Spelling Bee now!
DebRo
Confession: I never get to Genius. Oh, maybe once or twice.
DeleteI watch Jeopardy and play Word Wiz on my phone.
ReplyDeleteAnd isn't it great when there's a mystery novel question on Jeopardy?! I get those. And Broadway musicals. And word-related questions. History and geography: zilch.
DeleteI love when they do Broadway, TV shows, and novels. I sometimes surprise myself when I know the answers and the contestants don't.
DeleteI play Spelling Bee every day. Love it. Recently took a memory test for Alz. Research , was told to name words starting with “s” in one minute. Went on and on and on beyond the minute before the research assist. Stopped me. I credit Spelling Bee. Of course “s” was an easy one.
ReplyDeleteThere was recently an article--can't remember where--on a technique for falling asleep. Think of a word, then starting with the first letter, list words beginning with it. When you run out, move to the next letter. It's astonishing how freely completely unrelated words pop into your mind.
DeleteI do that. And math puzzles in my head if I wake up and can't sleep.
DeleteKaren, I read the same article and have been using this technique for the week or so since I read it with great success! — Pat S
DeleteI will try this. I have been coping with jet lag by listening to the audio Murderbot Diaries, but the stories are so good they don’t make me sleepy.
DeleteI will also try that trick, Karen. Recently counting backwards from 1000 hasn't been as successful for me.
DeleteLisa, I adore the Murderbot books. I think she will have a new one out in the spring.
DeleteI have been trying that, Karen! So interesting.
DeleteHave loved word puzzles since childhood. No one else in the family had time to do the crossword or the Jumble in our daily paper except me. When the Scholastic book fairs came to school I would look for puzzle books to do.
ReplyDeleteNow I work Wordle, Connections (which has often been, er, puzzling lately), Strands, and Spelling Bee in the NYT--all the free versions, which means limited access to Spelling Bee. So I try for the anagrams, rather than lots of short words. My brother-in-law is absolutely obnoxious about getting the genius level every day, but I can't be bothered by high scores, just the long words. I like some of their other puzzles, too, but these are my everyday ones. For awhile I was doing Blossom every day, and Sudoku for awhile, but I got out of the habit.
We have subscribed to The New Yorker for decades, and I love doing their crosswords, and really enjoy their annual puzzle issues. Their latest fun puzzle is Shuffalo, which I think is free to nonsubscribers. You get four letters to make a word, then each turn adds another letter, up to nine words.
My mother, who turns 96 on Tuesday, and is half blind, also loves word puzzles. She likes the Find-a-Word ones with a grid of letters that contain words backwards and forwards, up/down, and diagonally all four ways. But her favorite, which is getting harder to find, are the word Fill-Ins books. These are like crosswords, but with no clues. All you have is the grid and a list of words, longest to shortest. She admits that she gets hints from the back, but we all would need a hint, these things are HARD.
OMG she sounds brilliant! And at 96?!?!
DeleteMy mom also loved the Find-a-Word puzzle books.
DeleteShe is sharp as a tack, and I think doing the puzzles, and reading novels every day (in gigantic ebook fonts), along with living among my brother's chaotic and busy family, has made an enormous difference. Taking notes!!
DeleteLove puzzles. Crossword puzzles can be challenging. Our teachers included crossword puzzles in our lessons.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the answers to these questions, I was going to say that all of these words and names have vowels in common then I figured they had something to do with crossword puzzles?
This reminded me of my visits to my great uncle and great aunt about 30 years ago. I remember they loved to do crossword puzzles.
I can only imagine what it must be like to CREATE a crossword puzzle. I only just learned that the grids are SYMMETRICAL. Go figure!
DeleteReaders, I was lucky enough to be a guest at Hallie's house during the Crime Bake conference, and we watched Wheel of Fortune together and it was SO much fun! It's amazing how invested you can get in solving the puzzle (and critiquing the guesses of the contestants.)
ReplyDeleteI'm a long-time NY Times Sunday crossword puzzles, and I've also noticed some of the same words showing up again and again. 'Elver' is a perennial favorite. Honestly, it never occurred to me puzzle authors needed those words because of the linking letters!
ELVER???
DeleteAnd watching WOF is so much more fun with a friend!
DeleteLove this. Wordle, Spelling Bee, and Connections for me. Sometimes I'll do Strands. I never understood dominos so pips is out. Maybe someday I'll watch a YouTube. I don't enjoy crosswords online. Strange but true. I lament living in an area where I can't get the Sunday New York Times. I've been away from it so long that I think I'd have to work my way up to finishing it again. Clues are cyclical, and topical.
ReplyDeleteMy daughter just turned me onto PIPS. It's logic and I'm terrible at it- takes me several tries to get even the easiest ones.
DeleteKait, I went back to the beginning of the Mini Crossword archive and have been working them in chronological order. You’re completely right about the clues being topical. I am “up to” 2018; I don’t remember who was in the Super Bowl or won Best Picture that year! (My husband doesn’t do crosswords, but would actually know both those answers!) And Hallie, I just did a trial game of Pips that was in an article about playing games to keep your brain active. It was at the Easy level and took me forever, it seemed. — Pat S
DeleteHallelujah! I thought I was just losing it because I struggled with PIPS. Thanks for making me feel much better! -- Victoria
DeleteYes to puzzles! Wordle, Spelling Bee (only the free edition) Connections and Strands. I used to buy books of Sunday crosswords but do more Sudoku (16 grid and other variations) now. The Atlantic has an interesting puzzle in its Games section called Bracket City that I've been solving for several weeks now. It's not surprising to me that mystery readers also love other types of puzzles. Annette
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't think of starting my day without Wordle, Spelling Bee, and the NY Time crossword. Every day. One of the saddest things about moving four years ago is that I lost the people I play Scrabble and Upwards with. People in LA play Mah Jong and Canasta. Not word games.
ReplyDeleteI used to do a themed crossword puzzle in the LA Times that I loved. I bought a book of them, but the most recent edition was 1999, I think. I bought it about ten years ago, but it still was too topical for me to remember what was popular that far back. Currently I play Connections, Strands and the Mini. I have not been playing any of them for about four months and when I started playing again, I was rusty. Obviously I need to get back into playing. — Pat S
ReplyDeleteI do a crossword puzzle everyday. Since I switched my newspaper to the online version I purchase a Simon and Schuster Mega crossword book so they are always on hand.
ReplyDeleteI also do the daily Wordle, Canuckle( Canadian version of Wordle) and the SpellBee.
Dianne Mahoney
I do love crosswords! I used to enjoy the WSJ puzzle, but I don't get the paper anymore. And the LA Times puzzle. I can usually find that one online. Pat D
ReplyDeleteOh, I love Wheel of Fortune. My parents watched it every day at cocktail hour and it reminds me so much of them. I should get back in the habit but I'm usually still at my desk.
ReplyDeleteI did Wordle for while but I was competing with my friend Gigi and when she died it took the fun out of it. I do crosswords in spurts, but I get obsessive if I can't get a clue. My daughter is a huge crossword fan!
Whoa! Wait a minute! I was just reading today’s New York Times, and opened to the first inside paige, and there was a whole column that was HINTS about how to do the crossword puzzle in the magazine! WHAT? I don’t want to see any hints. I close the paper real real fast. What is the deal with that?
ReplyDeleteMy husband loves doing complicated Sudokus. I look forward to my New York Times Wordle every morning and then that's it for me with puzzles. I'm just not very good at them. But I can do the daily Wordle! Yay me.
ReplyDelete