He illustrates this with a simple puzzle: quickly think of four-letter words ending in -any, -iny, -ony, -uny and -eny. As written language is only a recent reflection of the long-evolved spoken word, Nickerson suspects that sounds are important. Pre-conscious processing is hidden from us, so it is not clear how the mind sifts through our mental lexicon to answer a clue. Or just move on to the next clue.ġ down: Sounds like… sounds like Umberto’s (6) So if 1 across has you flummoxed, you could leave it and take a nice bath, or better still read a novel. For verbal problems, a break from the clue seems to be more fruitful if you occupy yourself with another task, such as drawing a picture or reading ( Psychological Bulletin, vol 135, p 94). Studies back up our everyday experience that a period of incubation can lead you to the eventual “aha” moment.
Should your powers of deduction fail you, it may help to let your mind chew over the clue while your conscious attention is elsewhere. The words tended to be associated in meaning with the eventual answer, hinting that the pre-conscious mind solves a problem in steps. While his volunteers attempted to work out the target, they were asked to give any other word that occurred to them in the meantime. Nickerson points to work in the 1990s by Peter Farvolden at the University of Toronto in Canada, who gave his subjects four-letter fragments of seven-letter target words (as may happen in some crossword layouts, especially in the US, where many words overlap). Indeed, sometimes your pre-conscious mind may be so quick that it produces the goods instantly.Īt other times, you might need to take a more methodical approach and consider possible solutions one by one, perhaps listing synonyms of a word in the clue.Įven if your list doesn’t seem to make much sense, it might reflect the way your pre-conscious mind is homing in on the solution. Intuition plays a big role in solving a crossword, Nickerson observes. Most of our mental machinations take place pre-consciously, with the results dropping into our conscious minds only after they have been decided elsewhere in the brain. In a paper published earlier this year, he brought profession and hobby together by analysing the mental processes of crossword solving ( Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, vol 18, p 217).ġ across: “You stinker!” – audible cry that allegedly marked displacement activity (6) “What’s fascinating about a crossword is that it involves many aspects of cognition that we normally study piecemeal, such as memory search and problem solving, all rolled into one ball,” says Raymond Nickerson, a psychologist at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. Crosswords can reflect the nature of intuition, hint at the way we retrieve words from our memory, and reveal a surprising connection between puzzle solving and our ability to recognise a human face. The processes leading to that flash of insight can illuminate many of the human mind’s curious characteristics. The elusive answer suddenly occurs to you, crystal clear. Then, when you’ve given up and moved on to another clue, comes blessed relief. You know that you know the answers to 3 down and 5 across, but the words just won’t come out.
#Crosswordpuzzles readwrite think code#
ReadWriteThink cannot recover a game code should it become misplaced or not be working.TACKLING a crossword can crowd the tip of your tongue. For security reasons, it is important that students enter their first name only in the Name field. To continue a game already in progress, simply click the Open tab and enter the save code provided. Clicking the Save tab at the top will provide a special code that can be written down or e-mailed to a parent or teacher. Note that the saved game will be available for only 30 days. Advanced-This level is more challenging because all twenty-six letters of the alphabet are presented as letter choices and more words are needed to finish each round before winning the prize puzzle.īuilt-in save capability allows students to exit but return to their game before they have earned their final prize puzzle.Beginner-This level limits the choices to eight letters and requires three correct words per round three rounds are needed to win the prize puzzle.As students complete each round, they earn a new puzzle piece toward their prize puzzle: a coloring sheet that they can print, color, and display proudly at home or in school. Scootie, a talking school bus, reads the words aloud, further reinforcing the letter sounds. The game reinforces letter sounds by having students combine letters to form words for the pictures they see (e.g., pig and hat). Puzzle Me Words is a fun, educational game designed for kindergarten and first-grade students.
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