If you've been solving crosswords for any length of time, you've almost certainly developed a default approach: start at 1-Across, work through the Acrosses in order, then tackle the Downs. It feels logical. It feels systematic. And it's almost certainly the reason you're slower than you could be.
The solvers who dominate competitive crossword events — the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament (ACPT), the Indie 500, the Boswords Fall Themeless League — don't solve sequentially. They use a spatial, anchor-based approach that treats the grid as a network of intersecting possibilities rather than a numbered list of questions. The most reliable version of this approach is what practitioners call the Corner Method.
Why Sequential Solving Fails You
Sequential solving has a fundamental flaw: it forces you to attempt clues in isolation. When you're working through 1-Across, 2-Down, 3-Across in order, you often have zero crossing letters to help you. You're relying entirely on your ability to recall the answer from the clue alone.
But crossword construction is a web. Every answer intersects with others. The letter in square 14 of your Across answer is also the first letter of some Down answer. If you fill in that Down answer first, you suddenly have a confirmed letter to anchor your Across. Multiply this effect across the entire grid and you can see why sequential solving ignores an enormous amount of available information.
Research into expert solving behavior shows that top solvers constantly scan the entire grid for "confirmed" letters — squares where they have high confidence in the answer. They then use those confirmed letters as launch points for adjacent entries. Sequential solvers, by contrast, often reach the final quarter of the grid having "locked in" an incorrect early answer, and spend considerable time undoing that damage.
The Information Problem
Sequential solvers use, on average, 0.4 crossing letters when first attempting an answer. Corner Method solvers use 2.1 crossing letters on their first attempt. That's a 5x increase in available information — which directly translates to higher first-attempt accuracy and less backtracking.
The Corner Method Explained
The Corner Method is built on a simple observation: the four corners of a crossword grid are where the most important anchor points live. Corner entries typically have long Across answers crossing long Down answers. If you can crack even one corner entry with confidence, you get multiple confirmed letters that radiate outward into adjacent entries.
Here's the key insight: corner long entries are often thematic answers (in a themed puzzle) or especially vivid, unusual fill (in a themeless). Constructors often put their most interesting material in the corners precisely because the corners are harder to fill — so the clues for those long corner entries are frequently the most memorable, the most solvable-from-the-clue-alone.
The Corner Method proceeds in four phases:
Scan all clues, answer none
Before writing a single letter, read every clue. Don't solve — just scan. Your brain will flag the ones you know immediately. These are your anchor candidates.
Fill your four corner quadrants first
Identify one confident answer in each corner of the grid (or as close to each corner as possible). Write those in. Now you have 4 anchor clusters radiating confirmed letters inward.
Bridge the corners
Work the long Across and Down entries that span the grid's center. With corner letters already confirmed, these become dramatically easier. You're no longer guessing — you're confirming.
Fill in the middle
By the time you reach the center short fill, you typically have 3-4 confirmed letters in each entry. What looked like impossible clues become obvious answers.
Step-by-Step Implementation
Let's walk through the method on a typical 15x15 Thursday NYT-style puzzle.
The Initial Scan (60 seconds max)
Set a mental timer. You have 60 seconds to scan every clue. Don't agonize over any single clue. You're looking for entries where you have immediate, confident recall. Circle those clue numbers in your mind (or on paper if you're printing the puzzle).
Good anchor candidates are:
- Pop culture references you know cold (band names, actors, show titles)
- Factual answers with only one possible response (capitals, dates, definitions)
- Theme entries — once you crack the theme, these become easy
- Short fill that you know from crossword habit (ERA, ORE, ALE, OAR)
Building Your Corner Anchors
Look at the four corners of the grid. In each corner, identify the longest entry that starts or ends there. Now scan your "confident" clue list. Does any confident answer fall in or near a corner? Start there.
If you have a confident 7-letter Across that crosses a confident 6-letter Down in the upper-left corner, fill both in. You've just generated up to 6 confirmed letters that will help you solve 3-4 adjacent entries without even reading their clues — you'll simply pattern-match from the confirmed letters.
Pro Tip: Pencil-in Partials
If you're 80% confident in an answer (not 100%), write it lightly in pencil and mark a small dot in the corner of the square. This tells your brain "this is a hypothesis, not a fact." You'll use those letters for crossing clues but remain alert for contradictions. When contradictions arise, you erase the hypothesis — which is far less costly than erasing a deeply embedded "certain" answer.
Pattern Recognition: Your Secret Weapon
Speed solvers don't just know words — they know patterns. After a few hundred crosswords, your brain starts to recognize letter sequences that recur constantly in grid fill. This pattern library dramatically accelerates solving because you're often recognizing a word before you've finished reading the clue.
Some of the most valuable patterns to internalize:
- -ING endings: Any 4+ letter entry with -ING almost certainly ends in those letters. Eliminate half the possible answers instantly.
- TION vs SION: For 6+ letter entries ending in these suffixes, the clue's part of speech is definitive. Nouns take -TION or -SION; very few other endings apply.
- Double vowels: Entries with two adjacent vowels (OO, EE, AI, OA) have a very small vocabulary. When you have the vowel pair confirmed from crossing answers, you've often solved it.
- Common crossword words: Learn the 50 words that appear most in NYT crosswords (see our full list). When a confirmed letter matches the known pattern for one of these words, your brain should fire immediately.
The Skip-and-Return Rule
One of the most damaging habits in crossword solving is staring at a clue you can't answer. Competitive solvers have an internal timer: if they can't crack a clue in roughly 8-10 seconds, they move on immediately. Every second spent stuck on one clue is a second not spent building the crossing letter network that will make that clue solvable.
The rule is simple: skip hard clues; let the grid solve them for you. Return to skipped clues only after you've filled in their neighbors. You'll be stunned how often a clue that had you completely stumped becomes obvious once you have 3 of its crossing letters confirmed.
The 8-Second Rule
If you can't begin forming an answer within 8 seconds, skip it. Write a small dash next to the clue number to mark it for return. The dash is important — it prevents you from accidentally re-reading a skipped clue and wasting time you've already spent on it.
Timing Yourself: A Practice Protocol
The Corner Method requires deliberate practice before it becomes automatic. Here's a four-week protocol for internalizing the approach:
Week 1: Observation
Solve your normal puzzles, but after finishing each one, go back and annotate: which entries did you solve first? Which were solved primarily from crossing letters? How many did you approach sequentially vs. spatially? Just building awareness of your current habits is transformative.
Week 2: Forced Corners
Actively refuse to solve any entries in the center until you have at least two confirmed entries in each corner. This will feel artificial and slow at first. That's expected. You're rewiring a habit.
Week 3: Timed Runs with Splits
Use the stopwatch function on your phone. Record three split times: the time to complete the first corner cluster, the time to bridge the corners, and the total completion time. Watch how your splits change over the week as the method becomes more fluent.
Week 4: Full Speed
Stop consciously thinking about the method. Let it run on autopilot. Review your times against Week 1 baselines. Most solvers see a 25-40% improvement in average completion time by the end of this week.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Over-committing to uncertain answers. The Corner Method works only if your anchors are reliable. If you're not at least 85% confident in an answer, don't use it as an anchor. Mark it as a hypothesis and stay alert.
- Ignoring the theme too long. In themed puzzles, the theme reveals itself in the first few long Across entries. Cracking the theme often unlocks 4-6 answers instantly. Prioritize understanding the theme before diving into corners.
- Corner fixation. Don't spend three minutes trying to crack a corner if no anchor presents itself. Move to a different area where you have confident answers and let the crossing letters come to you.
- Neglecting short fill. Three- and four-letter entries are the connective tissue of the grid. Having a strong personal vocabulary of common short crossword fill — ERA, OAR, ALE, IRE, ORE, AEON, ARIA — is as important as the Corner Method itself.
Putting It All Together
The Corner Method is not a rigid algorithm — it's a framework for thinking spatially about the grid rather than linearly. The core insight it encodes is that every letter you confirm makes every adjacent entry easier, and the fastest path to maximum confirmed letters is to build from the outside in, using long corner entries as your anchors.
Begin practicing today with our daily crossword puzzle. Start your solve by scanning the entire clue list, identify two or three entries you know cold, check whether any of them are near a corner, and build from there. Even in your first attempt, you'll notice how much easier the center entries become once you've established those four anchor points.
Most importantly: be patient with the transition. Your brain has years of sequential-solving muscle memory to overcome. Give it four weeks. The results will speak for themselves.