Paper or app: tools, check and reveal, and good solving habits

The medium you solve in changes how you solve. Paper and an app are not the same puzzle with different lighting, and the check button is not a neutral feature. This lesson sets out what each one does to your solving, and offers a working rule for when help is help.

What paper still does better

On paper the whole clue list sits in front of you at once, which matters more than it sounds. Scanning fifty clues for a second foothold takes seconds on newsprint and a lot of scrolling on a phone. Paper also lets you write in the margin: circle the letters of an anagram, jot two candidate answers beside a slot, mark an enumeration you keep miscounting.

Use a pencil, and press lightly. A grid full of half-erased ink is a grid you stop trusting. Write small enough that a rebus square can hold three letters. If you solve British cryptics, copy the enumeration into the margin beside any clue you expect to return to.

What the app does better

An app highlights the crossing entry as you move, which is the single most useful thing it does, because it keeps you aware of the letters your answer is imposing on somebody else. It jumps between clues, holds rebus entries cleanly, and remembers your place. Most apps also have a pencil mode that marks tentative letters in grey, and using it honestly is a real skill: an answer entered in pencil mode is one you have agreed to doubt.

Check and reveal: three levels, one rule

Digital puzzles, including the New York Times crosswords, generally offer checking at three levels: square, word and whole puzzle. Reveal works the same way. Autocheck is a fourth setting that marks wrong letters as you type them.

The levels are not equivalent, and the difference matters. Checking a square tells you one letter is wrong and leaves the reasoning to you. Checking a puzzle tells you where all the damage is and ends the solve. Autocheck removes the possibility of being wrong for ten minutes, which is where most learning happens, because a corner that will not move teaches you to doubt your own confident answer. That habit is the whole subject of the lesson on pencil discipline.

Timers and streaks

A timer is useful on easy puzzles and harmful on hard ones. Solving the same weekday repeatedly and watching the time fall is honest feedback about fluency. Timing a puzzle at the edge of your ability just teaches you to guess. Turn the clock off for anything you expect to struggle with.

Streaks are worse. A streak rewards solving the shortest available puzzle at midnight, which is not practice. If you want a daily habit, make it a fixed slot rather than a number, and pick the puzzle by what you want to learn. Competitive solving is a different discipline again: entrants at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament work on paper, against a clock, with no reference material at all.

When to look something up

Reference works are part of the tradition, not a betrayal of it. British cryptic solvers have consulted Chambers for a century, and its word list is the standard for advanced cryptics. For American puzzles, Merriam-Webster is the reference most editors use.

The distinction worth keeping is between looking up a fact and looking up a pattern. Confirming that a river runs through a particular city is research, and you will remember it. Typing _ T E _ into a word finder produces the answer and teaches you nothing, because the pattern never becomes yours. Keep the finder for the last two squares of a puzzle you have otherwise finished, or for checking a completed grid.

When nothing is moving at all, work through the order of attack in the lesson on stalling before you reach for anything. If you want a second puzzle to work on afterwards rather than a hint for this one, CrosswordFeed lists the day's grids across the main papers. Autocheck, rebus and pencil mode are defined in the glossary.