The Family Way

I was 15 when my father taught me how to solve cryptic crosswords. It's been a process that has taken 35 years and is still going on! The process is now two-way with me filling in some of the gaps in his awareness of modern culture (although he refuses to consider pop music or soap operas worthy of being called cultural). Every Saturday we compete to finish the Jumbo crossword in The Times, resorting to desperate phone calls by the evening to ask each other for help. It's how we communicate, since my dad is not of the generation that believes in talking about feelings or emotions.

And now I'm doing the same with my daughter. Freya is 12 and has loved puzzle magazines since she was 4. She started with Silhouette, Spot the Difference and Dot-to-Dot in Puzzler Collection but became a fanatical convert to sudoku when it arrived on the scene. Junior Puzzles and Quiz Kids introduced her to crosswords – my favourite moment was when she was confronted with the clue 'The day after today' and complained that there was obviously a mistake in the magazine because the answer was surely 'Wednesday' (since it was Tuesday when she did the crossword) and this didn't fit! Even now, she still has the tendency to adjust the spelling of a word to fit a grid rather than accept that her answer might be wrong…

As she moved through primary school I noticed how much of her work was puzzle-based and what an asset it was that she was used to using different methods of thought to apply to each new exercise. But it was when she was 11 that the advantages really made themselves clear. If your children are applying to a selective school, then they will be confronted with tests called Verbal and Non-Verbal Reasoning. This all sounded very specialised to me and I wondered if we were going to have to follow the lead of many other parents and pay for a private tutor to teach Freya how to succeed at these tests. But then I got hold of some papers and found that they were basically… puzzles! The Verbal Reasoning papers contained word puzzles and the Non-Verbal Reasoning consisted of picture puzzles. With a bit of parental help, Freya just approached these papers using the same solving skills she used for Quiz Kids. No stress at all.

My dad has taken huge pleasure in watching Freya become as passionate about puzzles as we both are. He taught her how to do logic puzzles and she showed him how to do sudoku. As she comes up to the dreaded teens, I'm reassured that she recently got very excited when her grandad started to teach her some of the basic principles behind cryptic clues. She likes being part of that special bond I have with my dad and, like most children, she loves the sense of continuity and the passing on of family traditions. I've left it to her dad to teach her how to catch peanuts in her mouth, how to make Lego rockets and how to play the drums (!) but I'll stick to teaching her something that will bring her a lifetime of pleasure.