# The linguistics of crossword puzzles: orthography



## Kelly B

Please bear with me - I know the title sounds rather absurd, and yes, I thought of it in the shower. But isn't it a nice change from politics?

Crossword puzzles are designed so that horizontal and vertical words cross where they have letters in common. Looking at one made me curious about the orthography of different languages. 

I wonder in particular about languages like Japanese, in which words can be expressed with single characters, but which also have their own phonetic alphabets. Are literate adults who have memorized thousands of characters willing to use their phonetic alphabets to work puzzles in their native languages? 

Extending the question beyond puzzles, and beyond Japanese: do you use multiple writing systems, and how do you decide which to use? If your own language does not usually use a Western alphabet, are there serious problems when we attempt to transcribe it, or does it work fairly well?

I also wonder about the effect of accents in other languages. I know that è and é and ê are not simply the same letter with accents stuck on top; what about o and ö, or n and ñ? are they "close enough" that you could cross a word that includes n with one that includes ñ? If an adult would never dream of doing that, what about newly-literate children in your culture? Do they understand very early that é and ê are two very different entities, and that mistaking one for the other is as significant as mistaking a for e? Or perhaps, in your language, this is not the case at all. 

I hope you'll enlighten me.


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## Jana337

Kelly B said:


> I also wonder about the effect of accents in other languages. I know that è and é and ê are not simply the same letter with accents stuck on top; what about o and ö, or n and ñ? are they "close enough" that you could cross a word that includes n with one that includes ñ? If an adult would never dream of doing that, what about newly-literate children in your culture? Do they understand very early that é and ê are two very different entities, and that mistaking one for the other is as significant as mistaking a for e? Or perhaps, in your language, this is not the case at all.


In Czech, we have a lot of those: áéěíóúůýčďňřšťž (no, this is not a word  ). You can omit the accents in e-mails and SMS (the recipient will be able to read your message fluently) but never in crossword puzzles. 

On reflection, I think that during my career as an ardent puzzle lover, I have seen a few messed up vowels (the ´ lengthens the vowels but the sound remains the same). I'd say the puzzle authors resorted to the flawed crossing in desperation. It is certainly not a trick they are supposed to avail themselves of whenever it tickles their fancy. The ˇ changes the sound completely, and it would be most unusual to ignore it in crossword puzzles.

Jana


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## Hakro

I've seen French crossword puzzles where accents have been ignored but I don't know if it's a common usage.

In Finnish (and Swedish) 'ä' and 'ö' (and 'å') are considered separate letters, not letters with accents, so there can't be any confusion. Letters 'a' and 'ä' etc. are never interchangeable. I believe that this applies to German, too.


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## elroy

In Arabic, there's a curious letter: ة.

It is a variation of the letter ت (pronounced "t") and bears the name "taa marbuuta," which literally means "tied _t_" (it makes sense if you think about it; it looks like you took the ends of the U-shaped part of the _t_ and tied them together into a circular shape). This letter always comes at the end of a word and is not _pronounced_ like a "t" unless followed by a vowel (I know I just said it always comes at the end of a word, but remember that in Arabic short vowels aren't written out but can be represented with diacritics). Furthermore, it bears a physical resemblance with the letter ه - which looks exactly the same except that it doesn't have the two dots on top. In fact, many careless writers write ه instead of ة.

What all this has to do with crossword puzzles is that a ة will not always cross with another ة - rather, puzzle makers take the liberty of crossing it with a ة, a ه, or a ت , such that as a puzzle solver you don't even know what to fill in when the answer is a word containing this letter. Usually I write ة and modify the letter according to what the crossing word turns out to be. It's ok to change the ة to a ه or ت because ة isn't a "real" letter in that it's not one of the official 28 letters of the alphabet, and all it really is is a variation of ت - or ه in the written form. In a way, it's a cross between the two (no pun intended) and that's why it allows for some flexibility.

I'm not sure, but I think that most puzzle makers are at least consistent within the same puzzle regarding what letters they let cross with a ة - a consolation to us solvers.


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## Lemminkäinen

What Hakro already said goes for Norwegian too - you can't use an å for an a, or an ø for an o (or æ for that matter) as they're completely diffeent sounds.


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## elroy

Lemminkäinen said:


> What Hakro already said goes for Norwegian too - you can't use an å for an a, or an ø for an o (or æ for that matter) as they're completely diffeent sounds.


 But who in their right mind would want to use ø for æ?


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## Lemminkäinen

elroy said:


> But who in their right mind would want to use ø for æ?



My point exactly  While a and å might be orthographically pretty similar, they're as different as ø, æ, e, o - anything really. 'f' and 'v' have more in common than them, phonetically speaking


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## elroy

Lemminkäinen said:


> My point exactly  While a and å might be orthographically pretty similar, they're as different as ø, æ, e, o - anything really. 'f' and 'v' have more in common than them, phonetically speaking


 True, but without graphematic similarity I don't think even a foreigner would consider that crossing the two letters would be legal.  Not unless he grouped "all those weird Norwegian letters" together.


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## Hakro

Sometimes joking crossword makers mix numbers in the puzzle, especially Latin numbers (like George *V*) but also Arabian numbers where zero = *O* and 1 = *I*.


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## geve

Hakro said:


> I've seen French crossword puzzles where accents have been ignored but I don't know if it's a common usage.


Crosswords in French don't care about accents (or at least, I've never seen any that did - except maybe those meant as exercises in French methods for learners!), which means that pr*ê*t can happily cross with b*é*bé or tr*è*s.


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## elroy

geve said:


> Crosswords in French don't care about accents (or at least, I've never seen any that did - except maybe those meant as exercises in French methods for learners!), which means that pr*ê*t can happily cross with b*é*bé or tr*è*s.


 That's probably because in French they're not considered separate letters, right?

I mean, when you say your ABC's, you don't go _A, À, Â, B, C, D, E, É, È, Ê,..._ do you?

In Norwegian and some of the other languages that were mentioned, the "special characters" are considered separate letters.

This would also fit in with what I said about ة - it's not officially its own letter in the alphabet - so crossword puzzle makers feel free to treat it like a ت or a ه.


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## geve

elroy said:


> That's probably because in French they're not considered separate letters, right?


Yes.


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## amikama

Five of the Hebrew alphabet letters change their shape when they are the last letter of a word: 
ך <-- כ ; ם <--מ ; ן <-- נ ; ף <-- פ ; ץ <-- צ. 
But in crosswords they do not change, because the last letter of a horizontal word may be the first (or middle) letter of a vertical word.

It is also customary to add a tiny horizontal line to the letter י (so that the letter looks like a tiny upside-down T), to distinguish it from the letter ו.


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## werrr

Jana337 said:


> ...I'd say the puzzle authors resorted to the flawed crossing in desperation...


No, in desperation they resort to using Slovak words .


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## Jana337

werrr said:


> No, in desperation they resort to using Slovak words .


Good call.  

An explanation for the others: Slovak has a rhytmic rule that regulates the sequences of long and short vowels so that the number of long vowels is much lower than in Czech. Very convenient. 

Jana


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## elroy

Speaking of desperation, lousy Arabic puzzles boast such clues as 

1. blah blah blah spelled backwards
2. blah blah blah spelled scrambled
3. blah blah blah minus the last letter
4. blah blah blah minus *a* letter 
5. blah blah blah spelled backwards *and* minus the last letter

It can get pretty annoying when ever other clue is like that.  #5 is especially irking because you don't know if, say, "book" would be "oob" or "koo" (i.e. do you take out the last letter and then spell it backwards or vice versa?).

Does this phenomenon exist in other languages?


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## elroy

Jana337 said:


> An explanation for the others: Slovak has a rhytmic rule that regulates the sequences of long and short vowels so that the number of long vowels is much lower than in Czech. Very convenient.


 1. Why would that make things convenient?
2. Do they at least specify "Slovak"?
3. Are Czechs expected to know how to spell words in Slovak?


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## Jana337

elroy said:


> 1. Why would that make things convenient?
> 2. Do they at least specify "Slovak"?
> 3. Are Czechs expected to know how to spell words in Slovak?


1. If a Czech word has "á" where you would need "a" to cross it with another Czech word, the odds are that the corresponding Slovak word has "a" and is identical otherwise. And so on.
2. Sure.
3. Puzzle solvers are supposed to know everything.  Seriously, we often know and what we do not know, we can guess correctly with a high probability. If you really don't know, you take the Czech word, shorten everything, change "ř" to "r" and use your intuition for other small modifications if needed. This is a very pedestrian explanation. 

Jana


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## Hakro

elroy said:


> Speaking of desperation, lousy Arabic puzzles boast such clues as
> 
> 1. blah blah blah spelled backwards
> 2. blah blah blah spelled scrambled
> 3. blah blah blah minus the last letter
> 4. blah blah blah minus *a* letter
> 5. blah blah blah spelled backwards *and* minus the last letter
> 
> It can get pretty annoying when ever other clue is like that. #5 is especially irking because you don't know if, say, "book" would be "oob" or "koo" (i.e. do you take out the last letter and then spell it backwards or vice versa?).
> 
> Does this phenomenon exist in other languages?


In Finnish puzzles yes, but the result must always be a real existing word (so it's not too hard to guess whether it's "oob" or "koo").


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## elroy

Hakro said:


> In Finnish puzzles yes, but the result must always be a real existing word (so it's not too hard to guess whether it's "oob" or "koo").


 Ah, see in Arabic it doesn't have to be a real word.  

If it were they would probably just give you a clue for that word.

Remember that we're talking about desperate puzzle makers.


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## elroy

Jana337 said:


> 1. If a Czech word has "á" where you would need "a" to cross it with another Czech word, the odds are that the corresponding Slovak word has "a" and is identical otherwise. And so on.
> 2. Sure.
> 3. Puzzle solvers are supposed to know everything.  Seriously, we often know and what we do not know, we can guess correctly with a high probability. If you really don't know, you take the Czech word, shorten everything, change "ř" to "r" and use your intuition for other small modifications if needed. This is a very pedestrian explanation.
> 
> Jana


 This reminds me of clues like "Egyptian for blah blah blah."


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## prtzllife

elroy said:


> That's probably because in French they're not considered separate letters, right?



true, they're not the same letter, but that's not to say the sound is the same. in québec especially the accents over E's and circumflex accents, make big differences. other accents over A's, I's and U's not so much (except of course for tremas).

here too though accents are ignored in crosswords. poor accents...


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## mplsray

Kelly B said:


> I also wonder about the effect of accents in other languages. I know that è and é and ê are not simply the same letter with accents stuck on top; what about o and ö, or n and ñ? are they "close enough" that you could cross a word that includes n with one that includes ñ? If an adult would never dream of doing that, what about newly-literate children in your culture? Do they understand very early that é and ê are two very different entities, and that mistaking one for the other is as significant as mistaking a for e? Or perhaps, in your language, this is not the case at all.
> 
> I hope you'll enlighten me.


 
In Esperanto, the addition of an accent mark to a letter turns it into another letter, so that crossword puzzles and Scrabble-like games do not allow a _c,_ for example, to be used with the [ts] sound and then, at a word intersection, to be used with the [tS] ("ch") sound, the sound which the _c_ represents when it is topped by a circumflex.

You might also ask about what I call "crossword puzzle words." These are words which are rarely seen by the average person outside crossword puzzles. _Olio_ ("collection") is one such word in English-language crossword puzzles, as is _oleo_ ("margarine") in much of the US.


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## geve

elroy said:


> Speaking of desperation, lousy Arabic puzzles boast such clues as
> 
> 1. blah blah blah spelled backwards
> 2. blah blah blah spelled scrambled
> 3. blah blah blah minus the last letter
> 4. blah blah blah minus *a* letter
> 5. blah blah blah spelled backwards *and* minus the last letter
> 
> It can get pretty annoying when ever other clue is like that. #5 is especially irking because you don't know if, say, "book" would be "oob" or "koo" (i.e. do you take out the last letter and then spell it backwards or vice versa?).
> 
> Does this phenomenon exist in other languages?


It does in French - very annoying!  
There is one French "author" of crosswords* who uses that sort of definitions a lot. I make it a point to boycott him!  - which was difficult a few years ago when I did a lot of them... and there were times where this guy's crosswords book was the only one I hadn't done yet.  I'll gladly denounce him via PM if anyone's interested. 

I mean, it's ok to resort to this trick once in a grid because everything fits perfectly except for two letters; but if you can't fill a grid with actual words then you're not a very good crossword writer - IMVHO.


* Actually they're "mots fléchés"/arrow crosswords according to this thread? They look like this, the main difference being that the definitions have to be short to fit in the boxes.



mplsray said:


> You might also ask about what I call "crossword puzzle words." These are words which are rarely seen by the average person outside crossword puzzles. _Olio_ ("collection") is one such word in English-language crossword puzzles, as is _oleo_ ("margarine") in much of the US.


Oh yes, I know these words! It makes it difficult for beginners, but once you get familiar with crossword-speak it gets pretty easy - and you can boast with your knowledge of useless words!


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## Jana337

elroy said:


> It can get pretty annoying when ever other clue is like that.  #5 is especially irking because you don't know if, say, "book" would be "oob" or "koo" (i.e. do you take out the last letter and then spell it backwards or vice versa?).
> 
> Does this phenomenon exist in other languages?


 I never see it in Czech. I'd suspect that it is not widespread in highly inflected languages (what this means: take a Czech adjective and you can easily come up with more than 100 forms by varying number, gender, case, degree etc.).

Jana


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## Hakro

Jana337 said:


> I never see it in Czech. I'd suspect that it is not widespread in highly inflected languages (what this means: take a Czech adjective and you can easily come up with more than 100 forms by varying number, gender, case, degree etc.).
> 
> Jana


As I said, it's sometimes used in Finnish puzzles, but the solution must always be an actual word.

In Finnish puzzles the words are always in basic forms, nouns in nominative (singular or plural) and verbs in infinitive. No other cases or conjugation is allowed except if several words are forming a sentence.


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## Hakro

geve said:


> Actually they're "mots fléchés"/arrow crosswords according to this thread? They look like this, the main difference being that the definitions have to be short to fit in the boxes.


In Finnish we call them "picture crosswords" because most of the clues are pictures. Here's a typical example.

(The toned lines are for sentences or combinations of several words.)


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## jorge_val_ribera

The Spanish crosswords I know don't care about accents or tréma, but they always differentiate between "n" and "ñ" because they are separate letters.


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## Hakro

jorge_val_ribera said:


> The Spanish crosswords I know don't care about accents or tréma, but they always differentiate between "n" and "ñ" because they are separate letters.


Is the double-L written in one space, as it's considered a separate letter?


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## jorge_val_ribera

Separate letters. Each "L" takes up one space.


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## curly

May I ask if French crosswords must always make sense? In other words does every solution have to be a real word?


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## geve

curly said:


> May I ask if French crosswords must always make sense? In other words does every solution have to be a real word?


No, they don't - not in the case that Elroy mentioned. You could have for instance a definition like "une demi-blonde" (half a blonde), and the solution would be "nde" or "blo".


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## KaRiNe_Fr

geve said:


> [...]"une demi-blonde" (half a blonde), and the solution would be "nde" or "blo".


I never read such a trivial definition...  At least  the answer would be "ve" or "ge"


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## Hakro

In a Finnish puzzle the definition could be "two thirds of Karine", and the solution must be "kari" (a rock) or "arin" (most sensitive) because "rine" is not a Finnish word.

Also there could be a definition "Karine without head and tail" and the solution is "arin". 

But it always must be a real word.


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## lazarus1907

jorge_val_ribera said:


> The Spanish crosswords I know don't care about accents or tréma, but they always differentiate between "n" and "ñ" because they are separate letters.


I Agree. Many Spanish speakers don't care much about stress marks, but the ñ has to do with the n as much as the "l" has to do with the "t" (an "l" with a little stroke can become a "t") or the "p" with the "r", i.e. nothing.

A word like "coño" (in Spain) is a vulgar term to refer to the woman sexual organs (yes, starts with "c" in English too), but "cono " is a cone, a mathematical figure. "Cuna" is a craddle, whereas a "cuña" is a wedge. "Mono" is a monkey, whereas "moño" is a chignon. I don't think any Spanish speaker would consider regarding these two letters (or sounds) as similar at all. Stress marks and other symbols make slight modifications in the stress and the sounds, but that's it; the "ñ" is a letter on is own.


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## KaRiNe_Fr

Hakro said:


> [...] Also there could be a definition "Karine without head and tail" and the solution is "arin". [...]


Give my tail and head back, please! 
Good French crosswords too, aim in giving a solution which still makes a word.  Ok, in my example "ge" doesn't exist (while "vé" exists)... but if this kind of definition is given it's because the crosswords needs a trick to be completed instead of blacken boxes. Even though you have to find the whole solution _before _writing down part of it. It could be tricky too...


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## geve

KaRiNe_Fr said:


> ... Ok, in my example "ge" doesn't exist (while "vé" exists)...


Yes it does. It can be either the greek deity for Earth, the name of an indigenous Brazilian tribe or the symbol for Germanium. 

By the way, for those of you who said that solutions should always be existing words, can they be acronyms or symbols too?


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## Hakro

KaRiNe_Fr said:


> Give my tail and head back, please!


Sure, Karine! In fact it's a pun of words: "without head and tail" in Finnish means foolish, senseless, absurd etc. But I didn't mean you!

By the way, in Finnish puzzles two or three letter words are never used; only four letter (I don't mean those four letter words!) or longer words.


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## geve

Hakro said:


> By the way, in Finnish puzzles two or three letter words are never used; only four letter (I don't mean those four letter words!) or longer words.


Really?  Finnish crosswords writers must really have a hard time! Kudos to them. I don't think I've ever seen a crossword grid in French without a two-letter word (or even one-letter!).


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## KaRiNe_Fr

Hakro said:


> [...]"without head and tail" in Finnish means foolish, senseless, absurd etc. [...]


Ok, good pun then! 
How would you want me to know "arin" means foolish, senseless in Finnish? 
"Sans queue ni tête" has the same meaning in French.
It's not rare in French you have part of words in a crossword that means nothing itself. Often one or two in a crossword.
It seems that rules for crosswords designers are more strict in Finland. We must have to compare black boxes then... Are they numerous?
(am I asking off-topic questions?)


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