What that 'Epic Wheel of Fortune win' tells us about the mind

Recently, a video of Emil, a contestant in the bonus round of Wheel of Fortune went viral because the contestant got the answer to the following:

  NE_  _ _ _ _    _ _ _ _ _

with the clue "THING".

This was an amazing feat, and although not strictly crossword, is very much related.  One of the reasons this was amazing is because the answer was sort of obscure, yet blocked by a high-probability response, which is the basis for a line of research first studied by Roger Brown in the 1960s called the "Tip of the Tongue" phenomenon.

The TOT phenomenon or TOT state is one everyone has probably experienced.  It usually happens with names.  Let's try one:

Who was that guy who was in the Usual Suspects? (Not Kevin Spacey, the other guy)  Answer after the break.

March 14 Chronicle of Higher Education Crossword and the Einstellung effect

The recent Chronicle of Higher Ed crossword  by Jacob Stulberg  (Edited by Jeffrey Harris) entitled 'States of Matter' is a great example of a theme puzzle that nicely illustrates the problem solving phenomenon called Einstellung, which is a german word used to indicate getting stuck in a mental set and thus be unable to  solve a problem.

The canonical study about Einstellung was Luchin's water jug problem,
which was featured in Die Hard III:

Subjects in Luchin's studies (who did this in the 1940s, and presumably hadn't seen Die Hard)  first solved several easy problems that got them into the mindset of adding smaller amounts together to fill a larger jug.  So , they put a 1 gallon +  a 2 gallon jug to fill a 4 gallon jug with 3 gallons of water.  The test was something like trying to fill a 5 gallon jug with 4 gallons, given only a 1 gallon and a 2 gallon.  This is the crux of insight-based problems solving, and related to the 'thinking outside the box' problem

What does this have to do with the Chronicle crossword?

(spoilers below)

Interesting clues from March 16 2014 NYT

From the perspective of the psychology memory and knowledge, a hallmark of a great crossword clue is one that is obvious once you see the answer, but difficult or impossible if you see just the clue.    This highlights how our knowledge is both associative and content-addressable.  What this means is that we associate some concepts, words, phrases, etc. with other concepts, words, phrases, but not always in both directions.  A trick constructors use is to look for the second or third meaning of a clue, to send the solver down a garden path.

This week, I saw some great clues that worked like this, at least for me. For example, in Sunday March 16 NYT puzzle called ITS BETTER THIS WAY (by Jeremy Newton), there was: (spoilers below)

Sign up for our new study

We are preparing for a new study on memory and decision making in crossword players.  Sign up at:

http://xword.myketnas.net/

or by emailing:

xword-l@mtu.edu

ICCM Paper on a Computational Model of Crossword Play

This summer, we published a study in the proceeding of the International Conference on Cognitive Modeling (ICCM) about some of our crossword puzzle experiments and models.  In the study, we had crossword experts and novices solve individual crossword clues, and developed a computational model of performance based on the knowledge of crossword players.

The basic results are shown on the right. For crossword experts, if we gave them answers that were mostly filled in (only a few missing letters; the 'E' circles), they were on average above 80% correct on their first try.  Giving them an easy versus difficult clue had an impact, raising their accuracy to above 90%.  This  clue difficulty, however, had a large impact when we gave them difficult letter clues (only one or two letters were given; the 'D' circles), raising their accuracy from below 40% to close to 80%.  This indicates that both 'routes'; semantic and orthographic, are critical for solving puzzles.

We also developed a model that views crossword solving as a form of recognition-primed decision making.  According to this, cues (letter parts and semantics) activate possible answers, which then have to be modified and filtered to determine the 'correct' response.  The model does this by using Matt Ginsberg's clue database, which he develops for puzzle creators and which also forms a critical part of his 'Dr Fill' Bot.

Our basic model shows a few things.  large effects of semantic and orthographic difficulty can be accounted for by corpus statistics.  That is, one of the things that makes a hard clue more difficult is how infrequently it appears in crossword puzzles. This means that a tricky clue (like 'iron clothes=ARMOR') becomes easier the more it appears in puzzles. Also, the number of letters given to start with has a large impact. In our current study and model, we find little evidence that these two types of information work together.  Each is important, and neither can solve the problem on its own, but to a first approximation, people appear to solve the clue _either_ with a semantic or a orthographic route.


We are currently recruiting additional participants for a follow-up study. To sign up, go to http://xword.myketnas.net/

Current data received

As of 12:00 Noon Thurs Aug 2012, below are the data sets we have received:
 Note that  the numbers show raw responses--I haven't scored them for being real words or non-redundant answers.  Currently, we have no data from the crossword test that has been sent.

If you believe you have completed more tests than shown here, please let me know and I'll give you instructions on sending the data to us via email!
 

	Survey	Xword Practice	Xword Test	Stem Practice	Front stems	Back Stems	Additional Rounds
0000564592	X	-	-	19	114	102
0002310251	X	-	-
0003607288	X	-	-	35	176	177
0017813654	X	-	-
0024256111	X	-	-	16	96
0027546007	X	-	-	36	243	179	2
0081701102	X	-	-	20
0097488327	X	-	-	18	97	115

Note that our inexperienced participants who do not play crosswords average about 50 completions per stem completion block. Nice work!

Summer 2012 Study Launch

We are pleased to announce the launch of our Summer 2012 crossword study! Detailed instructions are available at: http://www.tech.mtu.edu/~shanem/xword

The goal of the study is to understand the visual, memory, and decision making components of crossword expertise.  We are interested in participants across the range of skill; both experts and novices. You may have been contacted directly or may have found out about the study some other way.  Everybody is welcome to participate (currently windows only).  The whole study takes less than an hour (a lot less if you are a good crossword player), and it does not have to be done all at the same time.

It involves downloading and running a piece of software that will let test your crossword puzzle ability as well as some related simple tasks.  Your data gets automatically sent back to our servers so we can record your performance.

The software includes a 'word stem completion' trainer that you can use to improve your ability to recognize what letter patterns form words.

Please post any questions or support requests at this blog posting.

Shane