A message from Kathryn Friedlander:
Philip Fine and I have just published a second article on cryptic crosswords – this time on the ‘PDM’, and how cryptics might help us, as psychologists, to understand the processes behind insight moments. The article is free to read on-line, or to download as a pdf, and can be found here.
The article outlines current psychological knowledge about the Aha! moment, and then takes a tour through various types of crossword clue to explain how insight is triggered in each case. There are also some more results from the crossword survey which many of you took part in, and a chance to see how advanced cryptics fit into the picture (thanks to the generous support of the Magpie crossword team, whose grids we feature).
Please do take a look and feed back any comments – either here, or to my Buckingham address given in the paper.
True story. Quite a while ago I was stuck on a couple of clues in the Guardian crossword and, thinking a change of context might bring inspiration, I leapt at my wife’s suggestion to do the weekly shop in our local supermarket. I was stocking up on my favourite pasta (rather like giant macaroni) and, just at the moment I popped them in the trolley, the answer to one of the clues (can’t remember what it was) struck me out of the blue. Simultaneously I realised “this is definitely a penne drop moment”.
I suppose we should have also bought a new teatray.
Perhaps you pasta clue without realising it, Blaise.
Nice story! 🙂
I am happy to see my TITANIC clue quoted, even though the reference was from a secondary source (quoted by Tim Moorey). However, PDMs for crossword solvers are only a small part of PDMs in general, and it would be good to see them palced in the much wider context of the pDMs experienced by scientists and artists. Nice bit of crossword publicity though
I was a late participant in the previous project (solving a test crossword remotely and giving feedback), and at that time I started to develop a keen interest in the analysis of cryptic crossword solving. I enjoyed reading the report of that project and have re-read parts of it from time to time.
I have started to read the new report by the same researchers, and when I have finished I will be glad to give my feedback.
I found it to be a very interesting paper.
One question arises in my mind. There are now programs that can solve crosswords. They use the same techniques as human solvers, such as looking for unusual wordplay or anagram indicators, and of course have access to dictionaries etc.
If the program can solve the clues, then there can be no AHA moment for the computer. Does this mean that expert crossword solvers (who consciously or not) follow the methodical approach to get the answer instantly, do not get the AHA moment?