Healthy brains are only one benefit for crossword-solvers

Researchers at the University of Exeter and King’s College London have calculated that people who engage in word puzzles have a brain function 10 years younger than their age, with tests showing benefits in grammatical reasoning and short-term memory.

Clued up: John Mckie, the man behind The Wee Stinker crossword

“This research supports previous findings that indicate regular use of word and number puzzles helps keep our brains working better for longer,” says Dr Anne Corbett of Exeter University’s Exeter Medical School.

The study did not draw conclusions about the oft-claimed benefits of crosswords in staving off dementia. And some may query the value of ‘grammatical reasoning’ in this age of text-speak.

What use is grammar when my son communicates with me in the briefest of acronyms such as “idk” and “np” and teen coinages such as “aw, rip” and “yeet”?

But that is not why those of us addicted to crosswords do them in any case. If I analyse it, I realise I do crosswords for several reasons, aside from habit.

It began with bonding, particularly with my mother and my late grandfather, over the Guardian’s cryptic crossword.

Come the holidays there is usually a special crossword, often with a double grid and a mysterious hidden theme and a part of family gatherings at Christmas and Easter has always been a collaborative engagement with that season’s poser.

The three of us shared the challenge and the delight of finding an answer – usually with the help of a glass of something from Speyside or Islay, and ideally in front of an open fire. Mum and I still share in this ritual.

But it isn’t just about engaging with family, it is about engaging with a complete stranger, too.

The best crosswords, such as the Herald’s fabulous, but often perplexing Wee Stinker require an empathetic connection with the compiler.

The man behind the Stinker, John McKie – or Myops, to use the essential pseudonym – admits his clueing style is very personal. “That’s the way it ought to be,” he says. And it is certainly easier for the cruciverbalist (the term for a solver of crosswords) if they can get on the same wavelength as the setter.

Clued up: John Mckie, the man behind The Wee Stinker crossword

Myops’ concoctions might rely on classical allusion ( McKie is a former classics teacher) or Scottish geography. The Observer’s Azed is characterised by obscure and archaic words, leaving you often reliant on the dictionary to confirm a solution. (Compiler Jonathan Crowther is also keen on the careful deployment of Scots words).

Private Eye’s Cyclops features clues which are often seasoned with gleeful and quite unnecessary vulgarity. Depending on who has set them, crosswords have an individual character which is part of the charm.

Then there is the simple joy of widening your vocabulary. Apart from the mental exercise in spotting the hints within a clue that it is an anagram, or an &lit (a superior type of clue in which the word is clued with a phrase that in total provides a satisfying definition of the answer) there is the sheer delight of discovering new words.

Crosswords make you realise just how gloriously redundant the English language is with its needlessly specialised terms and its smorgasbord of synonyms. (Though I couldn’t find one for “smorgasbord”, obviously).

It may mark me out as somewhat obsessive, but I keep a list of the best words I’ve uncovered over years of solving. I see this as something like a box of widgets stowed away in the understairs cupboard in the hope something in there might come in useful one day.

In the case of the more obscure words, that hope is probably unrealistic. But there is a pleasure in just knowing that a katabothron is an underground stream, or that a Shakespearean word for dotage is “chairdays”. (It appears in Henry VI part II, but I first encountered it in a crossword).

Lopers always come in pairs, but they are not a kind of wolf. They are the sliding rails that support a fold down writing desk. What about Hemipygic (one-buttocked), or nikhedonia (gloriously: “the pleasurable anticipation of success before any work has actually been done”)?

Isn’t it worth knowing that an ailurophobe is a cat-hater – if only so you can avoid them?

You could learn these words by ploughing through Chambers at bedtime, but where’s the fun in that? Far better to uncover them like a prodnose (detective) homing in on a suspect.

There’s also the chance of winning prizes. Most newspaper cryptic crosswords offer rewards for completed entries drawn from a hat. In four decades my only success has been a £30 book token, far less in value I’m sure than I have spent on stamps.

Azed regularly asks entrants to submit a clue of their own as a form of tie-breaker. To my great frustration I am a serial failure at this – I spend all week crafting my own clue only to have it completely overlooked. Plainly the art of the crossword compiler is harder than it looks. I did once get a ‘commended’, the very lowest level of acclaim.

But I will carry on doing crosswords until I reach, and then on into my chairdays. Not because academics tell me to. Neither will I take up Sudoku, the tedious number puzzles so lacking in poetry or variety. (The latest study says the number puzzles are as good as crosswords for the brain, some previous studies say they may be better).

Those who dislike crosswords are probably misologists (haters of reason and reasoning). And it appears their brains are blunter. It’s good to know that while I have wasted hours on crosswords, they have never been a waste of time.