Humans are very adept at creating patterns, even when there isn’t a pattern in the data. A great example is the “man in the moon.” His appearance is nothing more than our taking random spots of light and shadow and creating facial features within them.

I love word puzzles, and I’ve found myself gravitating to two types in particular over the last few months. The first is ScrabbleGrams™, which appears in the print version of the newspaper every weekday (yes, I’m a dinosaur, I read a paper newspaper), and the second is cryptograms. Both require you to see patterns, but in very different ways. That’s why I’m very good at one and not so good at the other.

I find, with cryptograms, that if I get a few key letters in place, and if I see where the punctuation is placed, I can often solve the puzzle without having to decrypt the whole thing. I know a five-letter word that starts with “a” and ends with “t” is most likely going to be “about.” And, if it’s followed by a three-letter word, it’s most often going to be “the.”

I see the letters as part of the phrases they inhabit, so it becomes easier to see the pattern they fall into.

Now, contrast that with ScrabbleGrams. They give you seven letters in random order, and you have to decipher what the word is and how many letters it contains. The only clue you’re given is what the total amount of points can be for the puzzle as a whole.

This one I pore over, sometimes for a couple of hours, struggling to find patterns that make any sense. I usually get two or three of them, then my husband comes in, corrects any mistakes I’ve made, and finishes the puzzle off. I’m flabbergasted every time at how he can see the patterns in what appears to me to be random noise.

I bring this up not just because patterns are interesting, but also because I believe recognizing patterns is essential to the editing process. For copy editing, you need to see where a letter or word or phrase is off in the document and be able to correct it and move on. For developmental editing, you need to see where a paragraph or a thread is off and know where to move it or if the writer needs to delete or change it.

Developmental and line editing are definitely “big picture” types of editing, so they really fall in the cryptogram category. You can anticipate what’s coming, know when it’s off, and recognize what to do to correct the problem. You see words in context, so they’re almost intuitive.

Copy editing is partly in the cryptogram category, but also partly in the ScrabbleGrams category. Yes, each word is part of a sentence, so you can anticipate what should or shouldn’t be a part of that sentence. But, you also have to decide if another word fits better than what’s on the page, which punctuation mark is preferable, and how spelling differs across styles and dialects.

I find these two puzzle types to be good practice for when I’m editing, and I’m wondering how many others out there do something similar to hone their skills. Please leave me comments here and let me know. And if you have a particular puzzle you find is especially helpful, please, let me know that too! I’m always looking for new ways of approaching the work.