I'm not sure this is news. We've known for years that most languages, and English in particular, has a lot of redundancy - not just in the word itself, but in the context of the words. English is particularly well-adapted for building crossword puzzles - or maybe those particular puzzles are well-adapted for English. (Well, I read that somewhere. I don't *know* that it's true. I don't recall the reference, but it was in a book discussing cryptography and information theory.)
There's a difference between reading "PxxxE" and "PALCE" and "PCALE." In the first place there are numerous choices ("POISE," "PRISE," "PRIME" to list a few), but in the second it seems clear that either A & L have been transposed or an A has been dropped beteween L and C (PLACE or PALACE). PCALE could be SCALE or PLACE, and I'd probably opt to believe the first letter was a typo if there were no context.
To me this is exactly analogous to other tricks the brain plays on us - where the brain fills in the gaps because that's what brains do - fill in the gaps, put things in order, add structure to apparent chaos.
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