Talk:Crosswordese

Untitled section
"Crosswordese" seems like someone's own term for words that get used a lot. I don't think it's used by enough people to merit an entry of its own. ---
 * To the contrary, it's the term for it as described in several books, on the Cruciverb puzzle construction site and mail list, and by editors such as Will Shortz and etc... It's the industry standard term for it. DreamGuy 00:04, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Frequently used crosswordese?
Anybody who works in IT uses USB on almost a daily basis. Anybody in the San Francisco metropolitan would hear BART used everyday. Anybody in the food business is likely to hear and use words such as penne, Ramen and MSG. Gold, Omaha, Utah and Sword are used everyday although not necessarily in the context of D-Day. There is no evidence that most of these words are "seldom" found in everyday conversation nor "frequently" used in crosswords. 203.7.140.3 (talk) 03:33, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
 * "Ramen" is certainly known to the vast majority of Americans who ever attended college. I also question the inclusion of "Oslo" here. Kansan (talk) 19:05, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Americocentric
Of course, this article largely applies to the sort of crosswords seen in US crosswords. British crosswords have a greater tendency to use black squares so the answers are rarely abbreviations (although abbreviations may well be clued to build up an answer) and the answers are more varied. Half the answers in Times Crossword 24,760 are words I have rarely seen in crosswords as a regular solver like "sainthood", "nostalgia", "saleslady", "timesaver" and "shillyshallying". Gmackematix (talk) 02:22, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

The traditional definition of crosswordese
Crosswordese is not a synonym for "jargon" or "technical abbreviations", nor is it simply another term for "repeater words that show up in puzzles often because constructors find them easy to work with." Crosswordese refers to a vaguely bounded set of words that no one needs to use except to solve a puzzle. The quintessential example may be ESNE, which, in all its appearances in major crossword puzzle markets has been clued only as "Anglo-Saxon serf" or some minor variation. I think the major thrust of this article is, therefore, flawed. Quiprosen (talk) 00:51, 19 April 2012 (UTC)


 * I agree with Quiprosen. This article looks like some peoples' opinions. There are tons of items in this list that are certainly in common usage or are extremely well known and are not one actual solvers consider to be crosswordese. A few quick examples: PHO, COM/EDU/ORG, AGRA, CBS, ... And the omission of ESNE is ridiculous. I'd edit this page, but really I think most of it should go away. RoyLeban (talk) 10:15, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Rarely used?
Some of these entries seem like they only meet the first half of the definition given: frequently found in US crossword puzzles but seldom found in everyday conversation. OREO, EURO, PHO, DAMN, these all hardly seem to be "seldom found in everyday conversation". I believe these should be removed, though I know what is "seldom" found is fairly subjective. --Cerebral726 (talk) 13:27, 12 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Adding onto this a few years late: the current list includes "ORE" in its normal list of words, even though that word has definitely seen a significant boom thanks to the best-selling game of all time. In stark contrast, "ADE"--a contraction of Lemonade that I have encountered plenty of times only via Crosswords, but rarely, if ever, seen used in normal conversation--goes completely unacknowledged on the current article, despite feeling like a rather obvious inclusion. (In full transparency, this might be skewed; the set of Crosswords where I've been encountering "ADE" so frequently happens to have originally been released in around 2002.) In any case, I'm curious what the thought process is behind the words listed here. Camwoodstock (talk) 18:13, 18 July 2024 (UTC)