Are you struggling to solve a crossword puzzle?

If you’ve never solved a crossword before my advice is to start on a Monday. New York Times on Monday has the easiest puzzle of the week and it build up to very hard on Friday and Saturday. If you start on a Friday or Saturday you’re likely to be smashed and come away frustrated. But start on a Monday, fill in what you know, look through the clues, find something you are positive of and then build up from there. Use the more unusual letters of the alphabet to help you. A K or a Z letter will be more useful to you in a crossing answer than an A or an E. Wherever you are build out from what you know. If you get stuck don’t be afraid to guess or to erase if your guess isn’t working out. If you really stuck, put the puzzle aside and come back later. It is amazing how often that trick works, you’ll get one new answer in the grid and you’ll be off and running again. Fill in the blank clues are often the best ones to start with because they’re easy to spot in a list of clues and they often have unique answers. So if the clue was one blank customer, you know the phrase is one to a customer. If you’ve been solving crossword for a while you know crossword ease. Crossword ease are those short vowel heavy answers that show up in crossword way more often than they do in everyday life.