Code Words: 100 of the best Code Words Puzzles: Volume 1

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In my current example puzzle, this annoyingly still doesn't make anything super-obvious, but we now have -A-L-R as a word.

That is occasionally possible by simple inspection, with one or generally no more Qs, with their following U. Technique: spot a word with an unusual letter or letter-combination in it, think what possibilities there are for it, and try out some that seem likely.It does, and at this point in fact there are enough fairly obvious words that I'm pretty sure my guesses so far are good and I can solve the puzzle from here. Technique: the ends of words are sometimes more stereotyped than their beginnings, and may be useful places to look. We’ve got you going with a couple of combinations, so all you need to do is start linking the other letters and corresponding numbers and your words will start flowing. You can always use the Notes option to provisionally place letters in the puzzle or the Check option to see how you’re doing. This is really helpful not just for ensuring that letters are the same when they should be but also that they are different when they should be!

In particular, short words can reveal possibilities, while longer words are useful for checking and eliminating the possibilities (since, while it is harder to think of words that fit, it is easier to verify that no word matches -n-at-e-n.Every letter is used at least once in the puzzle and there are no proper nouns or hyphenated words to be found. Also, when checking a word, remember that double letters will be discernible since they are both clued with the same letter. I don't think there's much I can do to help improve those :-), but solving Codeword puzzles probably helps at least a little bit with both. In any case, I understand that developers have to make a living, but would be nice to know more about available options.

I think usually there is at least one word in the grid that (1) has one or more letters that are already known at the start and (2) has repeated instances of some other letter or letters that narrow down its options. What I don't adore is when they don't include a sentence to go along that spells out some qoute, what my brain gets dopamine from since I figured out the alphabet. Medium puzzles generally have fewer repeated words throughout the pack, and some puzzles don't have all 26 letters represented, so for example Q, X and Z are often crossed off because they don't appear in that puzzle.Harder puzzles have less common words, names, abbreviations, initials, multi-words, plurals, US and UK spellings, and often less starter letters. Try to forget about the uncommon letters until you have gotten a large chunk of the puzzle out of the way. I am fairly sure it would be possible to make one that was solvable in principle but really hard to find one's way into, but the people who make them aren't aiming for that. For several reasons, undertaking an analysis of letter frequency is not very useful as an approach to solving these puzzles.