Is It Cheating?
Last week I picked up an old Games Magazine and found that I'd already done the crossword puzzles in it, but the Double Cross, where you work the puzzle clues and then put the letters of the answers into numbered spaces to spell out a quotation, I hadn't done. I had stopped trying to do those puzzles because I know so little of the answers to fill in the blanks. The neat thing about this kind of puzzle is that if you get about half of the clues correct, you can figure out the answers to the clues by doing cryptogram like judgments in filling in words and letters in the quote. But you have to have lots of letters in the quote before you can get very far with that.
I decided that before I throw the old magazine out, I should give the Double Cross a try. It had questions about R&B and Higher and Higher, where the G8 Summit was held, who wrote a book I'd never heard of or what movie was the first that someone directed. I know none of those things. But, since I was doing some recreational down time and the computer was right here, I googled. And I found answers! But it felt like cheating. Was it?
It was just my own little game so I guess it wasn't cheating. It helped me figure out answers that weren't easy to google, like--"saw red" is "seethed".
Then in one of his skits, Garrison Keilor mentioned a person who bought crossword puzzle software and could finish the New York Times Sunday puzzle in seven minutes. I know it was a joke, but it made me question again, Is that cheating? I loved being able to finish the Double Cross without looking at the answer page! It was just "research," wasn't it!
Submitted by
NJ
at 8/23/2004 6:41:36 AM- That's helpful to know. I do enjoy doing those puzzles and I am learning how to look up information on the Internet, so that's good. And yes, it's just personal, not a competition. Last night I learned about Gene Krupa being a swing band drummer and that Shemp Howard was the oldest of the Howard brothers, think Three Stooges, and that he died of a heart attack very suddenly when he was 60. His real name was Samuel but when his mom said "Sam" it sounded like Shemp because of her thick accent and Shemp stuck with him all his life. I haven't finished the new puzzle yet, but I'm almost there! Now I have "other fish to fry." I'll finish the puzzle later.
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Cheating! How can learning how to actually finish one of those puzzles be cheating? Unless it is a competition with rules you are simply doing it for personal benefit. Things like learning, and probably more importantly thinking skills and strategies. No. Finding a better way to learn isn't cheating.