Easy wins: fill-in-the-blank and proper-noun clues

Every puzzle contains a few answers you can write without solving anything. They are crossing letters, handed over cheaply, and spending them well is the difference between a slow grid and a fast one.

Why the blanks come first

A fill-in-the-blank clue, written with a run of underscores, asks you to complete a phrase rather than define a word. There is no misdirection in it. Either the phrase is in your head or it is not, and you find out in under a second. That speed is the point: on a first pass you are not solving the puzzle, you are finding out which parts of it you already own.

Read the clue list once and answer only the blanks, the proper nouns and anything else that arrives instantly. Leave anything that needs thought. You return to those with four or five letters in place, which changes them completely.

How to read a fill-in-the-blank clue

The blank marks the answer's position in the phrase, and position matters. ___ we there yet wants the opening word, ARE. Neither here ___ there wants the hinge, NOR. ___ Lanka wants half a country name, SRI. The surrounding words are the constraint, not decoration.

Two details matter. A blank inside quotation marks signals speech, so the answer is conversational. And the number of underscores means nothing. Trust the grid for the letter count, never the typography.

Partials, and the five letter rule

A partial is a phrase fragment that is not a standalone expression: the answer to A ___ of the action is PIECE, a word that only makes sense inside that phrase. Editors restrict partials because they are inelegant, and the New York Times specifications limit them to five letters. That restriction helps you. A partial means a short slot, and a short slot resolves from one crossing letter. A pattern like P _ E _ E has very few candidates.

Proper nouns and the capital letter tell

Every clue begins with a capital letter, so the first word tells you nothing. A capital in the middle tells you a great deal: it marks a proper noun, and proper nouns anchor a grid because they cannot be reasoned around. Either you know the capital of Peru is LIMA or you do not.

Three habits help. Learn the short capitals, since four letter city names appear constantly: LIMA, OSLO, ROME, RIGA, BERN, SUVA. Learn the NATO alphabet, because LIMA, ECHO, OSCAR, TANGO and DELTA are clued both ways. And treat an abbreviated name as a proper noun, so the signals in the lesson on abbreviations apply to places and organisations too.

Unfamiliar names are worth checking afterwards in Merriam-Webster, the reference most American editors use. In the grid, do not guess at one in isolation. Take the crossings and let it assemble itself. A half-known name with three checked letters is usually recoverable. The same name with none is a coin toss.

Foreign words and the language flag

American puzzles use a small stock of short foreign words, and the clue always names the language. The flag is a place name, a language, or a foreign word in the clue itself. Summer, in Provence wants the French. Water, in Oaxaca wants the Spanish. Gold, in Toledo is ORO, and the same clue with Rome attached would want the Italian.

The words themselves are a short list, mostly three and four letters, because that is where a constructor needs them: ETE, AMI, EAU, ILE, ORO, AGUA, UNA, ISLA. They belong to the same family as the English crosswordese covered in the lesson on fill words, and they are learned the same way, by repetition rather than study. Watch the grammar too: a plural in the clue means a plural answer, and a feminine clue wants the feminine form.

Turning easy wins into crossings

The point of a first pass is geometry, not score. When it is done, look at where the answers landed. If three cluster in one corner, start there: it now has the highest density of checked letters in the grid. If they are scattered, take the longest entry you are sure of and work outward from both ends.

Patterns do the rest. A four letter slot reading _ L E _ or E _ _ E narrows to a handful of options, most of them from the standard stock listed in the reference on common four letter answers. Testing a pattern against a shortlist is faster than rereading a clue you have already failed twice.

One caution. Easy wins are written in ink in your head, which makes them dangerous. A confident LIMA where the answer was RIGA blocks a corner for ten minutes, and you will blame the hard clues instead. If a corner refuses to move, doubt your most certain answer first. Checked square, partial and crosswordese are in the glossary, and more grids to practise on are indexed in a daily crossword feed.