1. Eschew words with lots of consonants.

2. Don.';t worry about the definitions. At least not until you are finished building.

3. Have a huge vocabulary.

4. Do a LOT of crossword puzzles.

5. Be willing to starve to death because you can't make a living doing it.

I sometimes find myself completing small parts of crosswords without looking at the clues just to see if I get the same results or if i can do "better" than the builder.

Often during the week I will complete two puzzles that come in one of the two papers I take, and I have found something very interesting. It is actually a rare day when the two puzzles are completely mutually exclusive. On most days (probably approaching 95 percent,) at least one word is the same in both puzzles. This doesn't mean much, other than that there are words that tend to recur because they fit together so well with other words.

Also there are trends in words used. Even five years ago I would never run into iatric, and then it started appearing two or three times a week.




TEd