Kaidoku #66 & Even More on Double Letters

Kaidoku #66 (PDF) | Java applet | JPZ (get Crossword Solver)

Friend of the show Joon left an extremely helpful comment on this blog a while back – one that has helped me immensely in solving Kaidoku. So, very belatedly, here it is front-paged:

one thing that really helps in narrowing down vowels is the idea that if there is a double-consonant, there will pretty much always be a vowel right before and right after, unless it’s the middle of a compound word, or a terminal S (e.g. HILLS)*.

*: other exceptions i have found: onomatopoetic words like AARRGHH, BRR, HMM, PSST, PFFT, SHH, and ZZZ; JOHNNY; MARKKA (don’t know this word, but some sort of finnish coin, i’d bet); and BREMSSTRAHLUNG. plus one more that i’m going to put into a kaidoku in the near future, so i won’t spoil it here.

How helpful is this? Ridiculously so. Take today’s grid (which admittedly, is approachable in several different ways). Look for a word with a double letter in it. Look at the two surrounding letters. Do they look like vowels in the rest of the grid? All right, you’ve spotted two vowels. If not, your double letter is probably a vowel, which is helpful too!

I pretty much approach all my crosswords Kaidoku these days with the approach of trying to find the vowels first. This is a great way to get started doing that. So thanks, Joon! Try out this technique on today’s puzzle and see where it gets you. Then we’ll see you Thursday!