Solving Tips

[afulton]

Do you have an interesting solving tip you'd be willing to share for folks new to the site? I have two -

Check your Recent Games every so often in case you somehow missed a puzzle (if you care about getting 100% right).

You can hit the Enter key to have a puzzle checked, but don't hit it and then wander off to get a cup of coffee, or you may come back in 10 minutes and realize you've got one letter wrong and now you can get (yippee ) the new longest time (if you care about how fast you solve).

Anyone else?

[opallady]

Check out "Help for newcomers" in the forum, currently on page 7.

[fishbum]

I find that I delete letters if I am pretty sure they are wrong, which is often. I have a programmable mouse and have programmed one of the buttons to "Delete". Saves having to move my hand from mouse to keyboard and back. Time is not my goal.

[fishbum]

I always start by looking for letter occurances that fit certain patterns like a three letter word with a pattern like 5-2-7. This often leads to 'the'. Also 4 letter word that starts and ends with the same letter is usually 'that' or possibly ''else' or 'dead'. I also try the endings of longer words like 'ing' or 'ion. Also in many quotes words like 'never' or 'people' show up.
I am not a speed solver but do like a high solving percentage.

[locodad]

Y O S Y = About 95% of the time it will be T H A T in other words a four letter word that starts and ends with the same letter is probably T H A T. I also use a lot of author's quotes when I am really stuck. Your solving time might go very high so you don't want to use them unless you are stuck and are more worried about your solving percentage.

[afulton]

I also like "there are" and "there is". And "it is" is common too. What I hate are proper names. Damn you, Jerry Cole and your sports quotes!