CROSSWORDS -SHOULD YOU CHEAT
I am sure that I do not have to define a crossword puzzle. For people not long in this country, I would guess that doing a crossword puzzle is a waste of time as there are too many deviations, or plays on words, that an immigrant would not even know about, let alone answer. So essentially I am writing for Canadian or American born people, or at least people whose first language is English. I have a cousin who I believe is very good at arriving at answers, but she stops short at using help when she cannot answer. She calls that cheating. Who she is cheating is beyond me. I have in my possession the following aids. A Roget’s Thesaurus, a dictionary of synonyms and antonyms, a concise 21st century crossword puzzle dictionary, The New York Times Crossword Puzzle Dictionary and of course an Oxford English dictionary. And it doesn’t end there. When all my tries fail I am not adverse to using Yahoo and Google. I might add that when I use the computer and put in the wording of the crossword author, yahoo comes out with the exact wording that I looked up, so it appears to me that the author of the crossword puzzle uses Google or Yahoo as well. In our household my wife at breakfast starts her day with the “Canadian Crisscross” from the National Post and immediately exclaims it is too hard to-day, but as she goes further and further it begins to fill up. My wife is excellent at the tricky words needed where when the clue is read the first time you are completely thrown off track. The answer to the clue “instruction” is “say so”, and the answer to “put in place” is “holed”, as in golf. In other words she does not get thrown off track by words that are put in to do just that. The clue “does well” of course is “nailed”. They cannot catch her with “live for free” which is “mooch”. When my wife gives up then I am the finisher and go to all my resources. How would I know what is a “Japanese pearl diver”, an African bamboo”, the “fourth highest mountain” and “Australasian parrot”. On occasion my wife can fill in the unknowns by working around them, but that is only on occasion.
The point of this entry is to tell my readers that crosswords are for learning and for passing time. Do as much as you can without help and after that you can fill in the blanks as millions of people do. You can tell by the success of the sales of all the books mentioned that you will not be alone and Yahoo and Google are ready and able. The use of the computer in my opinion has changed the development of crossword puzzles throughout the world as it has with taxis and “Uber” and hotels with “AirBnB”.
Name of author
Name: Murray Rubin
Short Bio: I was born in Toronto in 1931 to a wonderful mother who divorced shortly before my birth. I owe a great deal of my success to her. I am Jewish but not at all religious, yet my culture plays an important part of my personality. I attended Harbord Collegiate and U. of T. Faculty of Pharmacy. A unique mail-order pharmacy was the first of my endeavours in the profession, followed by many stores throughout Ontario. I have a loving wife, 3 children and grand-children and I am now retired from pharmacy. But what do I write about? Everything! My topics are funny, serious, whimsical, timely, outrageous, inspiring, and inventive. I promise that if you take the time to read any one of these topics – you will not be sorry.
I agree, looking for answers to crosswords should be looked at as learning and not cheating. Its a great way to keep your brain sharp by discovering what something means.
Thank you for reading and agreeing Murray
Your wrong, that is straight up cheating… you are looking up the answers instead of figuring it out. Maybe you are learning something new, but you only learned it so you could cheat on the crossword.
Thank you for your response . Here is the way my wife and I do it. She starts it off and fills in what she can. But there are so many clues that only very few people would know the answer. I look up one of these clues and sometimes they are so obscure they are not even on yahoo. When I get an answer we both continue because the extra fill-ins helps. Doing it this way we continue and learn. Again thanks for responding. My cousin does it your way and just as a matter of interest can you finish most of the crosswords you attempt.
Murray