Imagine a tea bag: physicist develops theory of crossword puzzle solving

Alexander Hartmann, a physicist at the University of Oldenburg in Germany, presented a new model for solving word puzzles, including crossword puzzles. He compared certain aspects of his theory to a tea bag.

The scientist explains that when a person finds solutions that seemed to be hidden in a puzzle, it is similar to a type of percolation, i.e. filtration, when water seeps out after a certain delay. The researcher came up with this technique unexpectedly while solving a crossword puzzle, Phys.org reports.

Alexander Hartmann notes that when he reached a certain point in the puzzle, he found that he could not go any further. He left for a while, and when he returned, he realized that some solutions had become obvious, so he easily solved the puzzle to the end.

The physicist was intrigued by the idea of such a "breakthrough," similar to the way water suddenly breaks through a tea bag. So he started studying previous theories of percolation to see if they could be applied to word puzzles.

The scientist noted that there are similarities, but such theories only deal with percolation in a certain direction, usually downward, due to gravity.

The German researcher also noted that if you look at a crossword puzzle correctly, it can be seen as a kind of network in which connections are created until a turning point occurs. So Hartman developed his own model to describe sudden insights while solving word puzzles.

In his model, he noted that individual letters are associated with white squares that need to be filled in, and words are chains of such squares. As some white squares are filled with letters, more knowledge is gained about the remaining ones, such as partial words.

This, according to the physicist, leaves the possibility of a kind of phase transition, when the acquired knowledge suddenly comes to the fore, allowing you to make associations that you hadn't seen before.

Alexander Hartmann compares subsequent decisions to an avalanche: the search for one answer leads to another, and then another, and so on. The scientist concludes that additional work can lead to further understanding of the connections between abstractions and physical structures of the real world.

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