I’m not exactly sure how I’ll do this, given that the NYT Saturday is supposed to be the “hardest puzzle around”, but it’s something to look into. At lunch time, I gave a Saturday puzzle another try, but my brain still wasn’t working and I decided it was best not to push too hard. Only four answers would have been automatic or nearly automatic. Every other answer was clued in a completely different, unrecognizable manner. In other words, the same answer with very different clues is far from being an “automatic” fill-in. Thus, with perfect recall of every answer from my training set, 45% of the grid would theoretically be “automatic”.

Most cryptic crosswords have an enumeration at the end of each clue, which gives you the number of letters in the answer. Enumerations also tell you which entries are more than one word or where the answer has punctuation. For example, WON TON would have the enumeration , meaning a three-letter word followed by another three-letter word, while SELF-AWARE would have the enumeration (4-5).

Beer Parties Nyt Crossword

I proceed to move around the rest of the puzzle in this way until I can’t solve anything more. First, I usually work through all the Across clues and all the Down clues, in order, filling in all the words that I know right away. It seems a tired brain is just not-well-suited for wordplay, puns, and aggressive misdirection. The July 8, 2017 https://accountingcoaching.online/ puzzleI then allowed myself to use the “Checking” functionality on the NYT website, which enabled me to to complete the entire puzzle in a little over 53 minutes. Then, when prompted, it displays the answer and an explanation of the answer. Finally, with one more Enter, the program displays a new, random clue, starting the process over.

• “Snow White” is a traditional German fairy tale that was published in 1812 in the collection of the Brothers Grimm.
• « I’m not really competitive, » says the 64-year-old marketing representative, « but I want to see how I stack up.
• I now have a reasonably clear end-to-end picture of my training process, which will help me prioritize my next 13 days of training more effectively and holistically.
• Over the years, he’s seen some changes with crosswords, as younger people become interested in the puzzles.
• Typically, the clue contains indicator words such as « use, » « take, » or « implement » to signal that a letter bank is being employed.
• Eventually, I can’t solve any more of the puzzle and will “Check” again, erasing everything that I’ve gotten wrong.

« Remembering Admiral Katari, the first crossword setter of The Hindu ». Roger Squires and the late Ruth Crisp set at various times in their careers for all 5 of the broadsheets.

By creating this loop of anticipation, my brain became much more receptive to finding the right answers in the crossword puzzle. Yesterday, I described the Expanding & Contracting (E&C) method for pushing a “stuck” crossword puzzle forward. The technique uses low-probability guesses, specifically related to letter frequencies and statistics. Thus, the greater my knowledge of the most common crossword vocabulary and types of wordplay, the better prepared I am to make a dent in a Saturday puzzle. Crossword puzzles are basically a test in vocabulary, general knowledge, wordplay, and letter-proximity statistics.

How Do I Create A Crossword Template?

And, it forces the solver to solve every one of the mini-puzzles in order to finish the puzzle. In a block cryptic, every entry in the grid will have at least one unchecked letter. On the first day of the month, I explained that solving crossword puzzles is considered one of the few activities that doesn’t have a standard training approach. As a result, part of this month’s challenge was uncovering a standardizable approach to crossword puzzles that can be reproduced by others. At the beginning of this month, I remarked that “crossword puzzles can theoretically contain clues and answers from an infinite knowledge base”. Almost one week ago, I built my Crossword Trainer, a computer program that helps me memorize past crossword clues and answers. After only briefly using the program and seeing encouraging results, I realized that the Crossword Trainer would play a major role in my practice regiment during this month.

As part of my crossword training, I memorized 6,000 pairs of clues and answers from previous crossword puzzles. To select these 6,000 pairs, I aggregated all NYT crossword data from 2009–2016, and then sorted this data based on the frequency of the entries.

__ Baba Arabian Nights Guy Crossword Clue

Anyway, I will continue training a little bit over the next week, but it seems like I’m at the point where I just need to run through the remaining 2017 puzzles and see if I can perfectly crack one of them. From a skill standpoint, I’m apparently ready for the final sprint. However, until then, I will continue to strive to crack a Saturday puzzle this month, even if it means temporarily sacrificing my Thursday-solving abilities.

The word boiled might be an indicator that you should anagram, while the word returned might just be part of the definition. Here’s the same puzzle, but I’ve highlighted all the words that I memorized as part of my training with the Crossword Trainer. I’ve also included “As Ever” and “In Toto” because these are answers I remember seeing from other crosswords (even though they weren’t in my dataset). Yesterday, I successfully solved a Saturday NYT crossword puzzle, officially completing this month’s challenge.

Crossword Information

The « c » is « to come between » DES and ANT (a worker; note that compilers also use « worker » to stand for BEE or HAND), giving DESCANT, which means « discourse ».Compilers use many of these crossword abbreviations. « Lager » (i.e., « beer ») is « returned » to make regal, i.e. fit for a king. Words that indicate initialisms also include « firstly » and « to start ». Possible indicators of a hidden clue are « in part », « partially », « in », « within », « hides », « conceals », « some », and « held by ».

This Expanding & Contracting approach seems to be the best way to overcome a loss in momentum. In fact, in many cases, all I’ve needed was one more letter to unlock sizable areas of the puzzle. Then, I would erase the dead-end guesses, try to proceed with the puzzle, and, once I got stuck again, revert back to more letter-based guesses. Therefore, it’s important that I specifically focus my training on overcoming these points of low momentum, and maintaining the necessary mindset. While I didn’t actually feel like I got better this week , now that I’ve compared today’s performance to my performances on July 1 and July 8, my progress is undeniable.

If you ignore the punctuation, a book is a « read », and book « endlessly » is boo, a « shout ». Bird is cowardly, about to fly away The answer is RAVEN, which means « bird » and is craven, or « cowardly », without the first letter (in this case c, the abbreviation for circa or « about »). Deletions consist of beheadments, curtailments, and internal deletions. In curtailments, it loses its last letter, and internal deletions remove an inner letter, such as the middle one. Lap dancing friend uses dancing as the indicator as it fits cohesively with lap to give the solution, PAL. Of these examples, « flower » is an invented meaning (using the verb flow and the suffix -er), and cannot be confirmed in a standard dictionary. A similar trick is played in the old clue « A wicked thing » for CANDLE, where the -ed suffix must be understood in its « equipped with a … » meaning.

After setting everything up, I clicked the “Scrape” button and let the computer do it’s thing. This honestly still seems like fairly low volume, but it’s a step in the right direction, assuming this method is engaging enough (which I’m not so sure it is). And, if you Break-even Point Crossword Puzzle want, here’s an 18-minute screencast where I commentate as I try to solve the puzzle. Yes, it does have that; but, the theme is that the broken EVEN has to be at the beginning and end of the answer. Edmonton is the capital city of the Canadian province of Alberta.

P&l Crossword Puzzle

In the context of the word, it’s much more easily recognized as the letter E, and yet, it’s the same exact squiggle. However, if you watch the video of my solve, you’ll see that, with the exception of DESADE and AFI, all these other answers came to me almost instantly. Two weeks ago, my original assumption was that most of these words wouldn’t be automatic . In other words, it wouldn’t materially help me to memorize them.

• In India the Telugu publication Sakshi carries a « Tenglish » (Telugu-English, bilingual) cryptic crossword; the Prajavani and Vijaya Karnataka crossword also employs cryptic wordplay.
• Anyway, I will continue training a little bit over the next week, but it seems like I’m at the point where I just need to run through the remaining 2017 puzzles and see if I can perfectly crack one of them.
• So, I realized the there was something beneficial about the Crossword Trainer — I just didn’t know what.
• Our word “brunch” is a portmanteau of “breakfast” and “lunch”.
• « I come from a family where words are a big deal. They used to debate the meaning and pronunciation of words. It made for some really interesting dinner conversation. »
• Yesterday, I built the Letter Trainer, which is a computer program that theoretically helps me improve my mental representations of common crossword letter patterns.
• ‘Hetman’, a senior commander, and also the name for a queen in Chess, emphasises their importance over other crosswords.

If you don’t know how to accomplish this with Task Manager (CTRL+ALT+DEL on Windows), then you will need to reboot the computer to accomplish the re-allocation of memory. I’m not surprised though — I definitely felt like I put in twice as much work this month, which the challenge seemed to require. This is important to remember, since rote memorization can feel quite productive and often simulate the feeling of effective learning. And yet, if we’re not conscious of what we’re choosing to memorize, we might not be learning as effectively as we hope. We traditionally think about memorization in the context of a 7th grade student memorizing a stack of flash cards in order to reproduce this information on a test. In most cases, the ability to memorize information doesn’t distinguish one learner from another.

The city was founded as Fort Edmonton in 1795, with the name taken from the area in London called Edmonton. Edmonton, London was the home of pioneer John Peter Pruden who suggested the name. London’s Edmonton was also home for deputy governor Sir James Winter Lake of the Hudson’s Bay Company. It is believed that our word “barbecue” comes from the Taíno people of the Caribbean in whose language “barbacoa” means “sacred fire pit”.

That should be all the information you need to finish the crossword clue you were working on! Be sure to check out the Crossword section of our website to find more answers and solutions.

There are several common techniques used in Hidden Word clues. Found ermine, deer hides damaged gives UNDERMINED, which means « damaged » and can be found as part of « Found ermine deer ». The word « hides » is used to mean « contains, » but in the surface sense suggests « pelts ».

As of today, I’ve memorized 3,200 out of the 12,707 clue-answer pairs. Yesterday, I aggregated 100,000 lines of crossword puzzle data off the internet, which include the clues, answers, and explanations for all NYT puzzles between 2009–2016. In India the Telugu publication Sakshi carries a « Tenglish » (Telugu-English, bilingual) cryptic crossword; the Prajavani and Vijaya Karnataka crossword also employs cryptic wordplay. Enthusiasts have also created cryptic crosswords in Hindi. Since 1994, enigmista Ennio Peres has challenged Italians annually with Il cruciverba più difficile del mondo (The World’s Most Difficult Crossword), which has many features in common with English-style cryptics. There’s no limit to the imagination of cryptic crossword constructors, so you’ll always find new tricks employed in puzzles, particularly in British cryptics. You may never see these types of clues, but a few examples will help you see how wild things can get.

With this new smaller dataset, I’ll need to memorize 800 lines per day, which still seems like a lot, but is much more doable. The next step is to extract all this crossword data from Bill’s site using a technique called web scraping.

Origin Of Break

This is the most time that I’ve spent on any of my M2M challenges so far. In fact, the average time for my past challenges is about 21 hours, so this is more than double my average. By using this data-driven approach, I was able to quantitatively ensure that I optimally sequenced my training, prioritized by the highest impact activities.

At the TOP of this menu click on « Answer KEY » to get the answers. It’s the last day of July, which means it’s time to look back and see just how much time I spent on this month’s challenge. Instead, it seems that there is some kind of physics that governs what can and cannot find its way into a crossword puzzle, resulting in grids with contents that are heavily correlated. In other words, I was assuming that the contents of any given crossword puzzle are barely correlated to the contents of any other crossword puzzle. I reasoned that every puzzle would contain its own nearly unique set of trivia pulled from some infinite pool of crossword-eligible knowledge.

I will need to train my brain’s crossword abilities in a very analogous way. I’ve largely figured out how to train for this part of my approach, as I’ve described in my past posts about the programatic Crossword Trainer. In other words, as you consider learning something new or while you are in the process of learning something new, it’s important to observe the stories you tell yourself and the beliefs you hold. Recognizing when these beliefs are unfounded is an important step towards more effective learning. Often, we don’t believe that we are the kind people that are good at math, or are good at learning foreign languages, or are artistic/creative/musical, or whatever it might be.

The word “logbook” dates back to the days when the captain of a ship kept a daily record of the vessel’s speed, progress etc. using a “log”. A log was a wooden float on a knotted line that was dropped overboard to measure speed through the water. Therefore, in total, I spent 46 hours on this month’s challenge. I mostly used the Letter Trainer as a twice-daily 15-minute warm-up activity during my last week of training. In total, I spent 3.5 hours on this activity — plus 0.5 hours building the Letter Trainer. Additionally, I spent 1.5 hours aggregating the crossword data and building the Crossword Trainer.

Where the differences matter, it is noted in this guide. Indian cryptic conventions are very close to British conventions. Sometimes, between the two parts of the clue there is a connector.