Stuck on a Codeword? These tips will help you
If you are struggling with a Codeword, our puzzle expert shares four simple techniques to help you crack the code and complete the grid.
Getty
If you are struggling with a Codeword, our puzzle expert shares four simple techniques to help you crack the code and complete the grid.
You know this feeling: you’ve made a coffee and cleared 15 minutes of your day to play Codeword. You’ve got the grid in front of you, and you were initially feeling pretty good about your chances. But now, just five minutes in, you don’t have an idea of how to progress. Those blank spaces are mocking you. None of the letters you’ve already revealed seem to give you anything to work with. You’ve run out of ideas. What do you do?
Well, in this article we’re going to go over a few techniques to get you solving again. Remember: Codeword can be maddening, but it’s there to be solved, and the harder the puzzle, the greater the feeling when you’ve finally finished it.
Read on and you’ll soon be having fun with Codeword again.
Codeword may look a bit like a crossword puzzle, but, as the name suggests, it’s actually closer to cracking a code. Each puzzle assigns a number to each letter of the alphabet, and then numbers the grid accordingly. Your job is to fill the grid with words by correctly working out which letter corresponds to each number.
This can sound daunting, but remember this up front: you only need to work out the letters that match 26 numbers. And furthermore, each puzzle will give you a few letters to get started.
Have faith: the game may seem challenging, but the odds are in your favour from the very beginning.
With a game like Codeword, it’s always worth going back over a few basic tips before we dig into any new techniques.
The first thing to understand is that you’ll be doing a lot of your solving using a technique called Frequency Analysis. All this means is that the letters of the alphabet actually have a degree of predictability to them in terms of how often they’re used in words. If you know a few of the most common letters, you can try matching them to the numbers you’re seeing pop up most often on a Codeword grid, and you can take things from there.
E is by far the most common letter of the alphabet in the spelling of English words. So that’s often a good place to start. It’s followed by A, R, I, O and T. After that, you’ll probably have other techniques you can reply upon to fill in more of the grid. But if you’re stuck very early on in a game, try to find numbers that stand in for these five letters.
On top of this, incidentally, you can work backwards and look for the least common letters. Can you crack the code for Z, Q, J or X? Every little things helps!
Codeword clearly displays the lengths of the words you’re trying to uncover, even if it doesn’t tell you which letters are in them.
Short words are a good place to start with a grid, because with short words, having just a single letter visible will give you a good chance at guessing the others.
Remember: almost every word needs at least one vowel, so that can narrow down your guesses even further. Get a few short words in the bag, and you’ll be on your way to victory.
This is a tip that it’s worth being a little sparing with, because it can lead you astray if you use it too much. That said, the English language is filled with patterns of letter placements that can help you with Codeword.
The most famous example is Q, which is almost always followed by a U. If you’ve cracked the code for U, then, you can look around for instances in which it follows on from a very uncommonly used number, and that gives you a potential answer for Q. If you’ve already solved Q, that’s even better, because the number that follows it will almost definitely stand in for U.
Elsewhere, keep an eye out for numbers that commonly come at the ends of words – statistically speaking, there’s a good chance one of these is an S. Then there are numbers that come in pairs.
These can help you get a sense for a word based on where the pair of repeated letters turns up. And then there’s the sheer number of words that end with “ing”. If you find an I with only two numbers coming after it, try putting an N and a G in those spots.
This is a wonderful way to keep your brain working. As you play, keep an eye on the letters that you’ve already solved.
More importantly, try to remember a few of the letters that you haven’t solved yet, because if you keep these letters in your mind as you cast your eye around the grid, you may find you’re better at guessing words just by filling in the blanks.
This last clue is actually really helpful, even if it initially sounds anything but. Filling in parts of the grid now and then with a guess word can help you pin down letters and can also get your brain thinking about other words that might fit in elsewhere.
There’s no shame in being wrong about something in Codeword. In fact, every wrong answer just gets you closer to the right one. Happy solving!
Exclusively for Saga Magazine subscribers – Save up to £4,300 per person for a limited time.
Join us for the voyage of a lifetime aboard Spirit of Adventure as she embarks on an all-inclusive 73-night cruise around South America in January 2027.
Try these simple tips and fixes for Saga’s crossword, sudoku and codeword puzzles.
With the start of the new financial year on 6 April, our money expert explains the changes to your pension, benefits and taxes.
