The suffixes that unlock almost every grid

The endings -ING and -ED come first, followed by -ER, -ERS, -LY, -ION, -NESS, and -FUL. Between them, they explain how a surprising number of long words are put together.

Nobody has counted the Ninefold answers and published the results, so this is a rule of thumb, not a law. It is a good one, though, and it gives you a place to start when nine tiles look like noise.

Why do suffixes help so much with a nine-letter word?

A suffix lets you split one hard search into two easy ones. Instead of hunting for a nine-letter word, you hunt for a short ending and then a shorter stem.

Say you spot an ending that takes three tiles. The stem is now a six-letter problem, and six letters are far easier to rearrange than nine. This is the same reason people read long words by chunks: your eye recognizes the familiar piece and handles the rest separately. The trick is knowing which pieces are worth looking for, and that is what the rest of this list covers. For a full walkthrough of the method, see how to find the nine-letter word in under two minutes.

Which verb endings should you check first?

Check -ING and -ED before anything else. Regular English verbs form their past tense and past participle with -ED and their present participle with -ING, so these two endings attach to a very large number of words.

The pattern is steady enough to rely on. Regular verbs add -ed for the past tense and -ing for the present participle, with a few spelling adjustments. That gives nine-letter words like WANDERING, UNLOCKING, STRAINING, REPAINTED, UNWRAPPED, and BLOSSOMED.

Both endings are also easy to spot in a grid. For -ING, look for I, N, and G. For -ED, look for E and D. If you find the letters, set them aside and look at what is left. Often the leftovers jump out as a stem.

Two spelling changes are worth keeping in mind:

• A silent E usually drops before -ING. SPARKLE becomes SPARKLING, and the stem you are looking for has no E at all.
• A final consonant sometimes doubles. RUN becomes RUNNING, so a stem may use the same letter twice.

What about endings that make nouns and describers?

-ER, -ERS, -LY, -ION, -NESS, and -FUL do most of the remaining work. They turn verbs into people or things, adjectives into adverbs, and verbs into nouns.

-ER is the classic agent ending. English forms agent nouns with -er, as in driver from drive, and the same letters appear in words like GARDENERS, which is GARDENER plus -S. -LY changes an adjective into an adverb, so a word like CAREFULLY can hide in a grid that has L and Y. -ION makes nouns such as DIRECTION. -NESS gives HAPPINESS and GREATNESS. -FUL gives WONDERFUL.

A quick way to use this list is to match the leftover tiles. If your grid has two S tiles and an N and E, -NESS is worth a look. If it has F, U, and L, think -FUL. Each ending has a distinctive letter shape, and once you have seen it a few times, it starts to leap out.

How about the humble final S?

A final S is the fastest test of all. Pull it aside, and ask whether the other eight tiles spell a word.

S is a common letter, so it is a likely ending. Plurals and third-person verbs both use it, and so does the ending -ES. If the grid has an S, a nine-letter answer may well be an eight-letter word plus that S. It takes about five seconds to test, which makes it a bargain.

Do not stop there, though. Because S is so common, it often pairs with another ending, as in -ERS or -INGS. PAINTINGS is PAINT plus -INGS, and the S rides along with the suffix rather than standing alone.

Do prefixes work the same way?

Prefixes help, but they show up less often. RE-, UN-, MIS-, DIS-, and OVER- are the ones to try, and they pair well with suffixes.

REWARDING is RE- plus REWARD plus -ING. UNLOCKING is UN- plus LOCK plus -ING. When both a prefix and a suffix are present, the stem in the middle can be very short, which makes the puzzle quicker. Look for R and E together, or U and N together, then check whether an ending sits at the other side.

What does this look like on a real grid?

Take the letters K, A, P, G, L, S, R, I, and N, with L in the center. The letters I, N, and G are all present, so test -ING first. Setting them aside leaves K, A, P, L, S, and R.

Those six letters rearrange into SPARKL, which is SPARKLE without its final E. Add -ING and the result is SPARKLING, a nine-letter word that uses every tile, including the center L. Along the way, shorter finds such as LARK, LINK, and SNARL show that the grid is full of words built on those same letters. The whole process takes a minute or two once you know what to look for.

When should you ignore the suffix idea?

Drop it as soon as the leftovers refuse to form a stem. Some nine-letter words are a single root with no ending you can peel off.

The right habit is to try the likely endings briefly, one after another, and then change tactics. Look at rare letters, common letter clusters like ST and CH, and the center tile, since every word must use it. Short words you find along the way can also reveal what the long one is built from.

Keep a mental checklist, in this order: -ING, -ED, -S, -ER, -LY, -ION, -NESS, -FUL, then prefixes. It takes under a minute to run through, and it will catch a good share of grids.

To put the checklist to work, play today's puzzle and see which ending your grid is hiding.