11 of 16

Write now Article Tools

Crossword Puzzles and Ambiguities

Anyone who loves crossword puzzles can tell you that figuring out the intentional ambiguities when solving clues is part of the fun of working a puzzle. When trying to solve the clues with ambiguities the help of the answers from crossing clues is usually sufficient enough to allow a puzzle solver to solve almost any puzzle in its entirety. Usually, being the key word. There are exceptions to even this rule as Will Shortz can attest. On November 5, Election Day, 1996 the New York Times ran what Will Shortz called, "the most amazing crossword I've ever seen."

The theme of the puzzle was built around the following four clues:
17A: Forecast
39A: Lead story in tomorrow's newspaper, with 43A
43A: See 39A
68A: Title for 39A next year
The correct answers for these four clues were as follows:
17A PROGNOSTICATION
39A CLINTON or 39A BOBDOLE
43A ELECTED
68A MISTERPRESIDENT

Because of the intentional ambiguities in the down clues that crossed 39A either CLINTON or BOBDOLE would have been acceptable.

The down clues and possible answers were as follows:
39D Black Halloween animal CAT or BAT
40D French 101 word LUI or OUI
41D Provider of support, for short IRA or BRA
23D Sewing shop purchase YARN or YARD
27D Short writings BITS or BIOS
35D Trumpet BOAST or BLAST
42D Much-debated political inits. NRA or ERA

After this puzzle appeared in the paper, Will Shortz said he received numerous calls from people either saying, "How dare you presume that Clinton will win," or "You made a whopper of a mistake thinking Bob Dole will win." The reason Shortz found this puzzle to be one of the most amazing was because of the role that ambiguities played in allowing for the different possible answers.

"Ambiguity is the crossword constructor's best friend."
Dan Katz (2002) representative of the One Down Crossword Puzzle Web Site

To be sure, the use of ambiguous words in the clues or as the answer to the clues is a highly encouraged practice in constructing crossword puzzles. In semantics polysemes are very closely related to ambiguities so they are also some of the most called upon semantic tools used in constructing a puzzle. A polyseme is a single word with different senses (that are etymological related) of the same basic meaning. Polysemy has also been defined as the ambiguity of an individual word or phrase that can be used (in different contexts) to express two or more different meanings. Some definitions of polysemy have even gone so far as to state that it is basically just another name for ambiguity.

There are approximately 60,000 word entries in Webster's Seventh Dictionary and 21,488 of these words (almost 40 percent) have two or more senses. Based on the tremendous number of polysemous words, it seems logical that polysemy would be used frequently to create intentional ambiguities.

Another look at the clues from the Election Day puzzle shows how polysemy is used to create ambiguities. For example: with the clue trumpet both possible answers, boast and blast, are different senses of trumpet with an etymological relation as can be seen by one of the definitions of boast: to toot ones own horn. Similarly, in the clue provider of support, for short, the word support is polysemous. Clearly, financial support and bodily support are different senses of the word support and this is what causes the ambiguity.

So keep having fun solving crossword puzzles and figuring out all of those intentional ambiguities.

Learn more about this author, Laura Payne.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.

Add your voice

Know something about The joys of crossword puzzles?
We want to hear your view. Write now!