Cryptic Crossword Research by Kathryn Friedlander and Philip Fine

Author   linxitPosted on Categories Announcement
I received this from Kathryn Friedlander yesterday.

Many of you kindly helped us in our research by completing a very detailed survey of personal background and solving habits, advertised via this board in 2007 and/or 2010. We’ve just published some of the results from this large-scale survey in the Open Access international journal ‘Frontiers’, and a link is available here for anyone who is interested in downloading and reading the findings (click on the Download Article button for a pdf).

The article itself has two purposes: first to explain what cryptic crosswords are to a US audience (which always assumes that any reference to crosswords refers to their own definitional puzzle!); and secondly to try to establish a new methodological approach in the performance/expertise field. We’re suggesting that a good place to start is by characterizing the people engaged in a performance area, so you really get to know what ‘floats their boat’; surprisingly, this isn’t the normal approach.

Thanks to your help, we gathered a great deal of information about people who solve cryptic crosswords across the whole spectrum of solving achievement (whether casual hobbyist, speed solver, Listener solver or professional setter). The questions we asked covered a wide range of topics such as education, degree subject, occupation, hobbies and motivation for solving, so there’s lots to ponder.

We do hope that you enjoy reading the findings: the plan now is to bring forward a number of papers which have been ‘waiting in the wings’, so we will be interested to follow any discussion on the board. Or do get back to us directly with comments if you would prefer: my email address is given in the paper itself (corresponding author).

Many thanks again for taking part

Kathryn Friedlander and Philip Fine
University of Buckingham

Full article reference: Friedlander, K. J., & Fine, P. A. (2016). The Grounded Expertise Components Approach in the novel area of cryptic crossword solving. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 567. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00567

12 comments on “Cryptic Crossword Research by Kathryn Friedlander and Philip Fine”

  1. So, who else went up to the University of Buckingham to subject themselves to the full test? I know a lot of us took the survey, but I also accepted an invitation from Kathryn to undergo more rigorous testing at the University.

    I drove up there on a Sunday morning, nice day, very pretty town with a wall (you drive through an archway to enter the town after miles of countryside). It started off with a Times-style cryptic compiled by Richard Rogan, where I had to solve it while being filmed and give a stream-of-consciousness description of my thought processes while solving. I hope they could hear me okay, as I tend to mumble a bit! There was also another test where some cards were placed on the table in front of me and I had to form as many words as I could from them. I’m sure there was more that I’ve forgotten, but it was a worthwhile and enjoyable day.

  2. A longish read, with the interesting stuff IMO buried in the Discussion section: “…capturing a wide range of strategically important ancillary factors such as: chosen solving order of clues; length of time spent in impasse on each clue before moving onto another; frequency of return to an obstinately resistant item; perseveration with an incorrect solution pathway; the antecedents of “Aha!” solution moments; and the use of cross-checking letters as solution prompts. The approach also permitted data capture on the clarity of understanding of clue architecture, frequency of dictionary use, handwritten jottings (such as candidate anagram letters) and the shifting emotional state of our participants (e.g., frustration, triumph, laughter).”

    Very interesting to identify these factors (all sound familiar). Trouble is, having been identified, no more information.

    1. Well, they do mention some follow-up papers “waiting in the wings” (or that may have been in Kathryn’s email asking me to post this one). Anyway, as I understand it, more details will be forthcoming.
      1. Yes, I didn’t mean to be critical, it’s exciting that this is being investigated. Well done for your efforts and for promulgating.
      2. Yes, this is absolutely the case – we haven’t managed to complete the full transcription and analysis of all the VPA recordings yet – the complete set will take about 150 hours just to transcribe – but they are looking very interesting already!

        I’m afraid that – because we wanted to set out the full grounded methodology up front – we have had to point towards later research which we are still working to write up. In places these gives a rather unfortunate ‘movie trailer’ feeling: just enough to whet the appetite, but not not enough to satisfy! We’ll just have to redouble our efforts to bring the papers out double-quick. Bear with us meanwhile!

        Kathryn

      3. I’ve just read in Alan Connor’s 2014 book “The Crossword Century” mention of a regular gathering in an Oxford pub of cryptic crossword solvers and constructors. Do you know anything about this?
        Colin, an Aussie who’ll in Oxford in May
  3. Having written, read and reviewed academic papers, the norm is for the stuff you can understand to be axiomatic, while the stuff you can’t isn’t worth bothering with.
  4. Been exchanging a few words with Alan Connor on Twitter about this article of his: https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/crossword-blog/2016/may/09/crossword-blog-how-clever-are-cryptic-solvers?CMP=share_btn_tw

    Going to be asking for a show of hands for non-STEM solvers on Friday… speaking as a Lit Hum man myself. I seems to me that general/literary knowledge does provide a leg up, in addition to a mathematically-slanted brain; though of course there’s a sad trend away from such things, in the direction of pure logic-chopping, in recent years. Not on my watch, though…

    1. Ah – and I’m another Lit Hum person, too – as indeed were so many of the setters and solvers in the pre-computer age (not that I’m suggesting that this applies to either of us….). But don’t you think that the construction of Latin and Greek is in itself algebraic, and lends itself to a code-cracking approach? Certainly, when I eventually left University to get a ‘real job’ in my 20s, I was told that Lit Hum graduates made excellent programmers… (and I worked as an ORACLE database designer/manager for some years).

      Kathryn

      1. An excellent point – about 25 years ago a friend and I were considering using Latin to develop a natural language processing system for AI. It came to nothing unfortunately, but we were drawn to the logic of Latin grammar.

        Now I can’t even finish the Times Latin crossword…

        1. There’s a clue in the fact that they call them “computer languages”, isn’t there? You’d think linguists would be quite good at handling them. Especially linguists untrammelled by the burden of actually having to be sociable, speak to people, etc, because the people who spoke their languages died ~2000 years ago…

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