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The humorous noun crosswordese designates the style of language considered characteristic of crossword clues or solutions.
This noun particularly refers to words, especially short words, that are uncommon in everyday use but frequently appear as crossword solutions, usually because of their useful letter combinations within the constraints of a grid—as explained, for example, by John Governale in What I’ve Learned, published in the Advertiser Democrat (Norway, Maine, USA) of Thursday 7th December 2017 [page 1B, column 1]:
There are certain three-, four- and five-letter words that appear in crossword puzzles much more often than their equal-length cousins.
This is because of the difficulty of getting answers in a puzzle to intersect with other answers. No matter how clever a puzzle constructor is and how unique the selection of words is, there are places where aloe or alee or oleo or aria or eerie or other such vowel-heavy fillers must be called on to complete the grid.
These oft-used words are referred to as crosswordese. Because they appear in so many puzzles, the challenge is to give them interesting, not so easy to guess clues.
Here are some bits of crosswordese and examples of clues that might accompany them.
Aloe is a common plant that many people have in pots on their window sills. Because aloe stems are often broken and their slimy juice spread on burns, obvious crossword clues would be burn plant, burn balm, burn ointment, burn healer, etc.
Would you guess the answer to be aloe, though, if you came across these clues: lotion additive, medicinal plant, soother, lily relative, or plant with spiny-edged leaves? How about yucca cousin, potted ornamental, or vera preceder (as in aloe vera, which stands for true aloe)?
The noun crosswordese is composed of:
– the noun crossword, attested in 1922, which designates a puzzle consisting of a patterned grid and a set of numbered clues, with blank squares to be filled in with letters forming words that intersect horizontally and vertically;
– the suffix -ese, which is used to form nouns designating the style of language considered characteristic of the first element—as in the noun journalese, designating the style of language considered characteristic of newspapers and magazines, and in the noun headlinese, designating the condensed, elliptical or sensationalist style of language characteristic of newspaper headlines.
These are, in chronological order, the earliest occurrences of the noun crosswordese that I have found:
1-: From the San Antonio Evening News (San Antonio, Texas, USA) of Friday 16th January 1925 [page 17 (Magazine Page), column 4]:
WUXTRY! WUXTRY! READ ALLABOUT [sic] UT—THE X-WORD MAIDEN’S PRAYER, WILD RUSH BATTERS BOOK DEALERS
The X-word maiden’s prayer:
“Prithee, sir, convey me a lexicon ere I detonate,” is cross-wordese for much yowling at local bookstores.
That’s the way they talk after they have stumbled mentally through a hundred or so of the alphabetical checkerboards.
It’s just their way of saying, “Gimme a dictionary before I bust.”
2-: From The Anaconda Standard (Anaconda, Montana, USA) of Friday 27th March 1925 [page 4, column 5]:
DAILY CROSS-WORD PUZZLE
RUTH VON PHUL
Cross-Word Puzzle Champion, solved this puzzle in a “bogey” time of eight minutes.
By MARION R. HARTFrom the Golden Gate—which is crosswordese for San Francisco—comes this pattern built around six long words. Which shows how far a craze can go when it gets started.
3-: From The Observer (London, England) of Sunday 20th October 1935 [page 31, column 4]:
—Note: In its issue of Sunday 6th October 1935, under the title “COMPETITION. No. 498.—CROSSWORD ENGLISH.” [page 30, column 5], this newspaper had announced: “We offer a Prize of Three Guineas for a letter of not more than 100 words written by a foreigner who has picked up his English largely from a study of crosswords.”:
REPORT ON No. 498.
CROSSWORD ENGLISH.The problem was to write a letter as from a foreigner who had acquired his knowledge of English largely from the study of crosswords. Competitors adopt two lines of approach. One is to choose mainly such words as form the crossword itself […].
[…]
The alternative, and more popular, method is to parody the style of the clues. One consequence is that the letters tend to a Torquemada-like obscurity. This style of thing, though logical enough in view of the premisses, is not easy reading […].
[…]
What one correspondent describes as “the fold unwonted to the English speech” makes good play with the styles of address. They include “Revered Pal,” “Expensive Acquaintance,” “Costly Mister,” “Unmarried Female,” “High-priced Gentleman,” “Deer Title,” and “Expensive Grand Inquisitor.” The final gestures are no less varied:—
Veritably not mine.
Many blesses
I stay behind, beloved form of address.
Genuinely belonging to you.
Yours leally.
How is your weal? I aspire to lo you soon.
Be satisfied to donate to your spouse my most felicitous looks, and credit me to exist . . . .
It is the sender of this last (A. N. A.), who proposes to arrive “on mixed professor in flower nearest” (crosswordese for “next Monday”).
4-: From Cross Words Butter No Root Vegetables, a satirical text by the Canadian author Alan Palmer Morley (1905-1982), published in The Windsor Daily Star (Windsor, Ontario, Canada) of Wednesday 8th October 1947 [page 4, column 4]:
The British crossword puzzle is designed to encourage a defeatist attitude, just as the American or Canadian crossword puzzle is designed to produce a race of victorious individuals, to whom defeat is unthinkable.
No American or Canadian who has got past the third grade in school ever puts down a crossword puzzle without filling it in to the last square. On his first day in kindergarten, the American or Canadian child begins to learn his three-letter words—Era, Eon, Ata, Ute, Sal, Sob, Sap, Ito and Dal, having already been taught Ra, Ut, Ur, and So, Fa, Mi, Do at home.
By the time he is ready for high school, no puzzle can stop him. He knows his dictionary from Agave to Zoster—at least all the six-letter words. If his vocabulary consists of only 500 words, at least 350 of them are Basic Crossword, and no puzzle ever published (on this side of the Atlantic, anyway) can stop him.
He’s a winner.
And, of course, he possesses all the attendant cultural advantages. He knows foreign languages (French—Cream is Creme; Latin—And is Et; the Greek alphabet—it consists of Eta, Tau and Mu). This gives his conversation a certain “je ne sais quoi” which he doesn’t, either. He’s up to the mark in science (it consists of Ru, Fe, Au and Ester). Also in elocution (exclamations are Ha, Eh, Ho and sometimes Aha). In zoology he knows how a chick cries and what a hyena does.
Of course, there are certain obvious limits to education via crosswords; a conversation entirely in crosswordese is likely to have a slightly exotic overtone, it is a bit difficult to apply to the ordinary affairs of life and once past the seven-letter word class, the addict is a trifle handicapped.
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