Analogy: The Word Game Move You're Already Making Without Realizing It
On October 1, 2026, at 7:17 in the morning, Mark Liberman filed a post on Language Log under Philosophy of Language. By midday, a French linguist named Jean Charconnet had referenced it in an email. The reason the post caught his attention? Analogy. Specifically, the same analogy that powers every good word game move you've ever made.
The Dissertation You've Never Read (But Already Understand)
In 2003, Charconnet published a doctoral dissertation called Analogie et logique naturelle. That's "Analogy and Natural Logic" in French. The work had roots in even earlier research by Jean-Blaise Grize, which tells you something: linguists have been taking analogy seriously for a long time.
You don't need to read it. You've already lived it.
Every time you look at a Wordle grid and think "well, if it's not TRACE, maybe GRADE," you're running an analogy. Every time you spot a Scrabble play because this word looks like that word, that's natural logic doing its thing. Linguists study it. You use it at 11 PM on your phone.
What "Natural Logic" Actually Means for Word Game Players
The title logique naturelle is doing some heavy lifting. "Natural" here doesn't mean easy. It means innate. The logic your brain runs on without being explicitly taught it.
Pattern recognition. Word families. The gut sense that THROUGH and THOROUGH are cousins even if you can't explain why. These aren't tricks you were handed. They're the operating system.
This could explain why some people seem to just get word games immediately while others have to grind. Analogy-sensitivity varies. But here's the good news: it improves with deliberate practice. Linguists have been saying so for decades.
Why Philosophers and Puzzle Players Keep Landing in the Same Place
It's not an accident that a post about analogy went up on Language Log and a linguist was emailing about it the same morning. Philosophy of language and word games share a border. Both are obsessed with the same question: how do words relate to each other?
Your crossword brain and Charconnet's 2003 dissertation are working the same territory. The dissertation just has more footnotes.
Use This
If analogy is the core skill, you can train it directly. Three ways to start:
- When you learn a new word, immediately find two related ones. Don't just add ZOEAE to your Scrabble list. Notice that it relates to ZOEA. See how the plural works. Build a cluster, not a card.
- When you get a Wordle wrong, spend 30 seconds figuring out why your guess failed. Your analogy engine runs on feedback. Feed it.
- Play with word families deliberately. Take GRAPH and run it forward: paragraph, biography, autograph, graphene. You're not memorizing a list. You're building a network. Networks win.
Philosophers have been writing dissertations about this since 2003. At least now you know why your instincts have been right all along.
Source: Languagelog