Solving crossword puzzles is perhaps the most delightful of indoor games. It is inexpensive, intellectually stimulating, calls for no partner and, most importantly, helps one forget the stresses and tensions of modern living. Like Shakespeare’s sleep, it "unravels the sleeve of care." A crossword buff is sure that there would be much less of the diseases so rampant in the modern world—heart attacks, high blood pressure and diabetes—if more men and women took up crosswords as their hobby.

Of course, the crossword solver needs to be equipped with a wide vocabulary, considerable general knowledge and a modicum of imagination. Unless equipped with these, it is futile to attempt solving crossword puzzles. But then, intellectual stimulation is sought only by the intelligent and only the intelligent seem to need a release from mental tension. Let not the hopeful recruit to this game imagine that a crossword puzzle is a soporific. It is just the opposite. It can be as ‘aggravating’ as a contrary wife—seemingly unreasonable, deliberately difficult, provocatively perverse. But then these are what give the game its stimulation and yield the sense of triumph when you finally track down the elusive word you pursue through the black and white squares.

There is another point to be kept in mind in solving crossword puzzles. And that is, they range from the impossibly difficult ones in highly intellectual journals to the comparatively straightforward ones in the daily newspapers. In the latter, the clues are merely definitions of the word needed to fill the white squares—like ‘beverage’ (three letters—ale or tea) or ‘allow’ (six letters—permit). So these afford little of that intellectual excitement which a more complicated crossword does.

The first thing the beginner has to learn is that the setter gives the clue not to lead him to the solution but to mislead him away from it. That is where you enjoy the battle of wits, savour the triumph of piercing the smokescreen of cleverly deployed words. But however devious the clue, there is always, in a well-set crossword puzzle a logical link between the clue and the solution. This complex, complicated hunt for the appropriate word may frighten the newcomer away from any attempt at taking up this hobby, but practice makes solutions almost routine. And because the words are interlocked in the crossword, the letters of the vertical columns help you to find the horizontal, and vice versa. These letters act as pegs on which you can fix the word you are seeking.

Some of the clues are straightforward and only need a wide vocabulary. For example, for the clue "Let people know how good you are—blow it," the solution is obviously ‘trumpet’.

But the most stimulating are those which are deliberately fashioned to mislead you completely, to go running on a wrong scent. Then the crossword puzzle setter makes ample use of anagrams and telescope words. Anagrams are rearranging the letters of a word or a group of words to form another word. In the clue ‘Famous inn meet arranged’, you have to find a word meaning famous. Now re-arranging ‘inn meet’ gives you ‘eminent’, famous.

Telescope words are those that are telescoped inside two adjacent words. The solution therefore is hidden in the clue itself while you go off hunting for a word to suit the clue. The clue, for example, ‘well known in the role of a moustachioed villain’ leads you to think of all actors who are outstanding as stage or screen villains and of all the villains who sported an aggressive moustache. And while you are clutching at your hair or gnawing your own moustache, trying to remember, the word is coyly nestling inside the clue itself: ‘of a moustachioed’ contains the word ‘famous’, well known. So the seasoned crossword buff never takes the words of a clue at face value, never goes haring off chasing the wrong word on the strength of the straightforward meaning of the clue. More often than not, the obvious meaning is only a trap, a pitfall, a ploy to mislead. The obvious meaning is actually most often the wrong one.