6 tips that will help you become a crossword puzzle master (2024)

• More than 50 million Americans tackle a crossword puzzle everyday.
• A crossword pro shared his tips for how the average person can improve his crossword skills.
• Get started with easier puzzles and look for fill-in-the-blank clues first, he says.

For more than 50 million Americans, solving a crossword puzzle is a part of life.

But only one can claim to be the best in the country.

That distinction goes to Howard Barkin, a New Jersey software analyst who won the American Crossword Puzzle TournamentApril 2016.

In an interview with Business Insider, Barkin broke down how the average person can improve their crossword skills.

1. Start off with easier puzzles

The New York Times crossword puzzle — the gold standard of crosswords in the United States — increases in difficulty each day of the week. The easiest puzzles comeon Mondays, and get progressively harder through Saturday.

(Sunday puzzles, while bigger in size, are about the same level of difficulty as a Thursday puzzle.)

Don't get discouraged trying to doa puzzle that's out of your league, Barkin told Business Insider. Start on a Monday and work your way up.

2.Try to learn a little of everything

Decades ago, crossword clues were generally limited to dictionary definitions, Barkin said. However, modern puzzlesrequiresolvers to catch references to pop culture, sports, current events, geography, and history.

"You don’t have to learn them very deeply, you just have to be aware of certain things," Barkin said. "Anything they could possibly ask on Jeopardy.You have to have an open mind to learn just about anything."

Barkin reads as much as possible to stay on top of his game.

His preparation paid off at the tournament, whenone of the puzzles called for a seven-letter word for "Talkative Windows assistant." The clue tripped up a number of competitors. Barkin recalled a tech article he had read about Cortana, Microsoft's voice-recognition software that debuted in 2014, allowing him to finish the puzzle and stay on his championship pace.

3. Google is your friend

Purists may disagree, but there's nothing wrong with looking upan unfamiliar word or name you come across.

"If you don’t know something,don’t be ashamed to Google it. That’s how you learn," Barkin told Business Insider.

"Who is that? What are they famous for?" he said. "Don’t just say, 'I don’t like opera.' I’m not an opera fan, but if I see a clue about it, I’ll look it up and read about it."

4. Start with the blanks

In every crossword, there are a few clues that are simple fill-in-the-blanks. You want to knock those out first, Barkin said. The clues are usually on the easier side, and they'll give you aconfidence boost.

At the national championship this month, even some of the trickiest puzzles had a handful ofstraightforward fill-in-the-blank clues, including "Eeny meeny _____ moe" and "Beethoven's 'Moonlight ______.'"

5. Recognize words that appear over and over

Do enough crosswords and you'll notice that some words seem to appear in puzzle after puzzle. These are usually short words that use common lettersand have an unusual ratio of vowels to consonants, like "era," "idea" and "Oreo."

"I think I've seeneverypossible way you can clue that cookie," Barkin said.

The unique compositions of these words make them a godsend for puzzle makers, who can plug them into tight corners of the grid.

But some of the most crossword-friendlywords are obscure to the average person. Unless you're an opera fan, you probably don't know whatan "aria" is, and it's unlikely forsomeone who isn't a baseball diehard to be familiar with the name "Ott." Andeven fewer people have heard of an "ogee," an S-shaped curve used in architecture.

"In my entire life I’ve seen [ogee]come up maybe once in the wild," New York Times crossword editor Will Shortz told Business Insider.

Flickr Creative Commons/Chip Griffin

6. Stay cool

It can be frustrating when you get stuck on a clue, but you'll never finish the puzzle if you lose your composure. Try moving to another corner of the grid, and coming back to the troublesomecluelater.

"You're really competing against yourself," Barkinsaid. "It's not a chess game where somebody's move affects you. The pressure you put on is on yourself, because you're competing against a puzzle."

That holds true whether you're solving a puzzle on your coffee break or competing against 600 other people in a tournament.

"I can’t control what the person next to me does. It’s kind of a cool mental test like that," he said.