I. Introduction

I refused the call of escape rooms for years, partially from a misplaced claustrophobic apprehension and a genuine belief that I was not intelligent enough for them. After a few humbling first experiences, I found both to be incorrect. I did not suddenly get smarter—instead, I caught onto how escape room logic works. 

Escape room logic is not a series of steps to check off mechanically, but rather a way of viewing the room. It relies on not overthinking surface-level connections while simultaneously requiring stretches of the imagination. In general, puzzle logic asks us to think outside the box and then stop thinking. It is movement, followed by restraint. 

Puzzle logic becomes even more captivating when looking at puzzles that cross genres and intercept other parts of our lives, like culture and politics. When we examine specific puzzle subgenres through their evolution, their rules and what they borrow from, we learn more about ourselves. We learn what we borrow from them.

Let’s take a deep dive into three subgenres of puzzles: cryptic crosswords, three-dimensional chess, and poem codes. Each has different threads of politics woven into it, each influences culture (or is influenced from culture) in their own way, and their logic can show us new ways of looking at the world. 

These puzzles stand alone as unique entry points into their genre, and are also inherently interconnected with culture and politics at large. 

II. Cryptic Crosswords

a. History

A true British novelty, cryptic crosswords first began running in UK newspapers around 1924 or 1925. They entered into a warm room; in the mid-1920s, people in the US and the UK were obsessed with crosswords generally. 

British crosswords began with straightforward clues, but when Edward Powys Mathers—a.k.a. Torquemada—began setting for the Observer in 1926, he became the cryptic crossword grandfather. Not only did he introduce more cryptic clues, he had fun with the form as well and often got inventive. This article explaining Torquemada’s full accomplishments highlights his true legacy.

The appeal and demand for cryptic crosswords gradually grew over the years, as more and more papers adopted them. Since they are fairly difficult, they did not catch on as quickly as traditional crosswords did. Torquemada’s successors, like setter Ximenes, helped streamline the medium; Ximenes principles, as summarized by Ximenes’ own successor Azed, codify clueing like so:

As for American audiences, cryptic crosswords did not appear in the U.S. until the mid-1930s. We can partially thank Steven Sondheim for creating frenzy for the puzzles in the States decades later; he created cryptic crosswords in New York Magazine in the late 1960s.

b. Politics

Crosswords require a deliberate choice of words that reflect political choices. As outlined in this Study Hall article on the New York Times and Palestine, the words that crossword editors choose to use in their clues and answers highlight what they deem as acceptable, approachable language. When it comes to political situations where precise language can affect our understanding and assessment of the situation, crossword editors’ choices become inherently political.

While crosswords are escapist pastimes, they can still shape (or at least reaffirm) our understanding of the world through our words. They force us to be in a relationship with words and their meaning from multiple angles. 

c. Rules 

Cryptic crosswords follow their own logic. Essentially, each clue has two parts – a normal definition, and then a wordplay clue with an indicator word and the word to dissect. The straight definition and wordplay are either at the beginning or end of the clue, which helps orient things. There are eight basic types of clues:

• Anagram: when you can rearrange the letters in one word to reveal the answer. Sample indicator words for anagrams are confused, upset, edited, out of sorts, or mishandled.
• Charade: when the answer is broken into two or more parts and then defined separately.
• Container: when specific letters have to be entered into another word to reveal the answer. Sample indicator words for containers are acquiring, devouring, hugging, or getting into.
• Deletion: when you remove some letters from a word to reveal the answer. Sample indicator words for deletions are absent, losing, dropped, or short.
• Double Definition: when you have an answer with two separate meanings, you can Frankenstein the definitions together.
• Hidden Word: when the answer is hidden inside of a longer word or phrase. Sample indicator words for hidden words are fragment, held in, part of, or sample of.
• Homophone: when the answer could sound like something else when said aloud. Sample indicator words for homophones are I heard, said, audibly, or sounds like.
• Reversal: when you can reverse the letters in one word to reveal the answer. Sample indicator words for reversals are around, come back, knocked over or reflected.

Seeing it in action can help. Let’s take this miniature crossword I’ve created:

Some may notice that it does not have rotational symmetry but for the sake of keeping it 4×4, we’re getting a little untraditional! We’ll start with 1-across, which I’ve clued as:

Prediction of clothing company

Since there are no indicator words, we can approach this as a double-meaning clue (there’s also no main definition word, steering us away from a charade clue). That means we’ll break this up into “prediction of” and “clothing company.” After a bit of chewing on it, that leads us to:

The answer is BODE—referencing its traditional meaning of “to indicate,” and the popular clothing brand. 

d. Your Turn

Try to finish the rest of the crossword! A hint—each clue uses a different clue type:

When you look out into the world, in what kinds of situations do you see inter-referential language informing best next steps? Could the true nature of something be hidden in plain sight in front of you, if you tweak the way you think about things? How much meaning is lost or gained when it circles its own tail?

e. Links

• “The Penny Drops”: Investigating Insight Through the Medium of Cryptic Crosswords
  • Frontiers in Psychology, the academic journal, looks at how cryptic crosswords are a form of insight problem-solving. 
• Less Elvis, more Taylor Swift: a clue for ‘dated’ cryptic crossword setters
  • This piece touches upon the idea that cryptic crosswords remain a niche hobby because the clues are often dated, to the point of possibly being antiquated.

III. Three-Dimensional Chess

a. History

Your first time hearing of three-dimensional chess might have come one of two ways: from Star Trek, or from a political headline. More on the political part later, as Star Trek is woven into the history of the game. 

Three-dimensional chess has been around since Lionel Kieseritzky developed Kubikschach in 1851, using eight 8×8 boards. It did not take off because of its complexity, and the next iteration was Ferdinand Maack’s Raumschach in 1907. He simplified things a bit using five 5×5 boards, to better mimic modern warfare—to him, additional boards represented attacks from different angles, like from the air or from the sea.

By comparison, the three-dimensional chess popularized by Star Trek is not nearly as complex—it was “created by mashing up 3D Checkers and 3D Tic-Tac-Toe sets available to the props department.” Unlike Kubikschach or Raumschach, it uses the same 64 squares divided up on different subareas. But this version was the version that took off, and is fondly known as three-dimensional chess.

b. Politics

Three-dimensional chess shows up an inordinate amount in the political media sphere, as headlines often liken any complex situation or daring political figure to the game. The puzzle has earned a shorthand definition to mean anything excessively complex, nuanced, and difficult. 

It’s used when describing political matters because politics can be genuinely complex. But even with a rudimentary understanding of three-dimensional chess, like the one outlined above, anyone—even you—can quickly see that three-dimensional chess is not excessively complex. 

Some people, like retired grandmaster Garry Kasparov, argue that even if a politician is in a complex situation, that does not mean they are playing metaphorical chess because the ethos of chess has to be present as well. Others, like former grandmaster Jonathan Rowson, say that there is a false equivalency with chess and genius—instead, it takes practice and experience rather than preternatural ability like the commonplace definition implies.

In our attempt to explain how multi-variable and delicate politics can be, we unintentionally further a narrative that three-dimensional chess—and chess in general—is as manipulative and cunning as politics is. While both rest on action and thought being in dialogue with each other, three-dimensional chess has ended up with a connotation that is misleading for both parties.

c. Rules

Below are some of the fundamental rules, identified from the tournament rules of three-dimensional chess (this is chess, after all; a thorough examination could be its own syllabus):

• There are three main boards and 4 movable attack boards.
• Any move possible in a standard chess game can be made here. The player can choose which level to put their pieces on.
• You cannot make a vertical move without horizontal movement.
• You can use more than one hand when moving pieces, due to the multilevel boards.

d. Your Turn

Have you come across anything in your life that was made out to be extremely complicated, only for you to find it relatively straightforward? How can you square a reputation that is discordant with its substance upon further inquiry? Does the true nature of something lie in what we understand them to be, or what they really are?

e. Links

• Does It Take A Genius To Play 3D Chess? We Asked The Masters (HBO)
  • This VICE video speaks with three-dimensional chess-heads to investigate if it’s really as difficult as it’s made out to be (it’s not).
• 5D Chess With Multiverse Time Travel
  • If you wanted to play another multi-dimensional form of chess, there is this version on Steam.

IV. Poem Codes

a. History

Poem codes are variations of column ciphers, using specific language in poems as keys. They gained popularity through the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in London during World War II. The SOE oversaw agents in Europe, especially in Nazi-occupied countries and needed a way for their agents to communicate with just paper and pencil through self-referential ciphers. 

Poem codes seemed to be an easy solution—they were easily remembered by agents and used minimal equipment. When Leo Marks joined the SOE around 1942, he quickly rose through the ranks and realized the weaknesses in poem codes—primarily that they were prone to errors, and often relied on well-known poems that made them easy to break. 

Marks’ approach to poem codes at SOE was two-fold: he tried to phase out poem codes for only emergency use, and also created original poems so that only agents knew what the key could be pulled from. In conjunction with these attempts, better ciphers were created and then used in place of poem codes for wartime needs.

b. Politics

The history of poem codes essentially begins and ends in the militaristic setting of wartime. Poem codes draw on cultural touchpoints that most soldiers would know, or at least easily remember, in service of an ultimately political goal. Most ciphers were originally used in high-stakes, non-civilian settings but poem codes are unique in the sense that they never left that context.

The general thesis of poem codes is to take what is widely known and privatize it for personal gain; with the addition of Marks’ private poems as keys, this ethos is only deepened. 

c. Rules

There are a few variations on poem codes—they are all column ciphers, but what is decided on as the key (if it’s one word from the poem, five randomly chosen words, etc) can vary. 

Poem codes are most easily understood after walking through an example, so we’ll do so here with a relatively straightforward key—you can read about how multi-word key encryption works in David Schuetz’s blog post here. 

Agents also often used double transposition to make the code extra difficult to solve, but in the spirit of teaching and not stumping, the below cipher is a block/single columnar transposition. 

For this example, we’ll use the beginning of a Borges’ poem, A Compass:

Let’s take the word LANGUAGE. In our case, if we wanted to encrypt the phrase “talk to you later tonight,” we would order it in rows under the word as such:

L	A	N	G	U	A	G	E
T	A	L	K	T	O	Y	O
U	L	A	T	E	R	T	O
N	I	G	H	T	X	X	X

Then we would rearrange LANGUAGE into alphabetical order: AAEGGLNU. In cases where you have multiple letters of the same kind, you would number them from left to right. The numeric ordering of LANGUAGE is 6-1-7-4-8-2-5-3.

From there, you’d move around the grid we made above to be:

A	A	E	G	G	L	N	U
A	O	O	K	Y	T	L	T
L	R	O	T	T	U	A	E
I	X	X	H	X	N	G	T

When we read out the code horizontally, this means our final code is: 

AOOKYTLTLROTTUAEIXXHXNGT

d. Your Turn

Using NIGHT as the code word, try to decode the following message!:

ICNAEYXADX

When you come across something in life that is bewitching, how could looking at their influences and source point reveal something new about them? How can something that we all understand, or at least know of, morph into a new form of being through personal use? Are pieces of art meant to be changed through engagement?

e. Links

• The Life That I Have
  • This is arguably the most famous poem code poem, created by Marks. He gave it to SOE agent Violette Szabo, who was tortured and killed in the field; a movie of her life (Carve Her Name With Pride, 1958) later made her, and this poem, famous.
• ./code –poetry
  • While categorically not a poem code, this came up during my investigation and charmed me. These are 16 poems written in the source code of a different programming language. Somewhat unrelated, yes, but also another way into how the concept of poems can be stretched to play with language. 

V. Epilogue 

While there is much more to be said on cryptic crosswords, three-dimensional chess, and poem codes, the above introductions hopefully show how these puzzles are unique ways into play and thought while drawing on fields much bigger than themselves. 

They have each been co-opted by the political sphere or exist within in, even if unintentionally. They all stem out of popular culture that, in turn, draws on them for entertainment or novelty. And their methodology of thought rests on undoing assumptions, stretching language to new extremes, and looking just a little bit closer at what’s in front of us.

If you have finished both the cryptic crossword and the poem code, there’s one more thing I can share with you. Take 3-across from the crossword and put it in front of the decoded poem cipher, to reveal a message from me to you!

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ʎɐp ǝɔᴉu ɐ

:sᴉ ǝpoɔ ɯǝod pǝʇdʎɹɔǝp ǝɥʇ puɐ

:sᴉ pɹoʍssoɹɔ ǝʇǝldɯoɔ ǝɥʇ