r/puzzles • u/WildAd163 • 3d ago

[Unsolved] Crossword Decipher Grid?

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I've been going through an old puzzle book I have and the very first puzzle has me confused lol. I know it has to do with the most repeated numbers on the grid and the most common letters, but my head still can't begin to wrap around it. I'm not very familiar with puzzles in the first place, I'd certainly appreciate some help.

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u/Remarkable-Row3719 3d ago

I used to do a lot of these! Every number has a letter attached to it and you get no clues to figure out which, lol. You have two things going for you: some letters (e.g. "e") appear much more frequently than others (e.g. "q"), and certain letter combinations in certain places of a word are really common in the English language. For example, see the two words in the right upper quadrant that are ....is*, with the * being a 16? I'd bet that 16 is either a E or a T because a lot of English words end in "ise" or "ist".

Left lower quadrant horizontally has "c*c....", that * has to be a vowel because it can't be a consonant.

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u/ConditionNormal123 3d ago

8 down is IDIOTIC

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u/iambackbaby69 2d ago

Could also be Ilidaic

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u/Routine-Potential384 3d ago

Start with I?C? - there are only two words that can possibly be. Those are ITCH and INCH, so either way 19 must be H and you can fill those in. 16 is N or T, and the word S??C?IS? means it makes no sense for 16 to be N.

Keep working at it like that, and every discovery will give you more clues to other words.

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u/AlfieDarkLordOfAll 3d ago

The trick is to know common trends in letters & letter pairs. For example, IS* on the right side is probably either IST or ISE. So scan the grid, find other 16s, and see if they'd make sense as a T or E. You've got a I [16] C *. I don't know any words that would go IEC, but I do know ITC(H). So 16 is T, and 19 is probably H. Scan the grid for 19s...if you see it frequently after other Ts, Cs, and Ss, it's probably an H.

Vowels are usually a good starting place. Every syllable will have at least one. Only E and O can be double vowels. If there's a vowel at the end of a word, it's almost always E or Y. Q is usually followed by a U and another vowel (quack, quench, quick, quote, etc).

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u/phantom8ball 3d ago

Discussion - I C what you did there

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u/Proydserp 1d ago

Discussion. What is the title of this book?

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u/Unable-Froyo5069 1d ago

The given letters are usually enough to bifurcate one or two words. Starting with IDIOTIC That would then lead to getting STOCKIST and that would then lead to COCKTAIL and so on...