What Builds a Better Prompt? Try a Completed Crossword

Prompting isn’t about asking questions. It’s about presenting a completed puzzle. More specifically, a crossword—where the answers are already known, and the task is to infer the clues.

When you prompt an AI, you provide the answer grid. The AI, trained to recognize patterns, reconstructs the clues that could plausibly lead to that result. This isn’t human deduction. It is statistical pattern completion.

A well-crafted prompt defines a precise target within a vast possibility space. That structure enables the AI to infer a pathway toward the intended outcome.

To write better prompts, we must write better puzzles. That requires clarity in three dimensions:

Intent
In a crossword, every clue serves a purpose. The same applies here. With AI, your intent is the purpose. Ambiguous intent yields unfocused output. A strong prompt clearly signals the topic, tone, format, and objective.

Context
Clues rely on intersecting answers to reduce ambiguity. Prompts work the same way. The more constraints, references, and interlocking details you provide, the more you narrow the AI's interpretive field.

Nuance
A single word can shift a clue’s meaning. Prompts are no different. If the output lacks subtlety, the input likely did too. AI doesn’t invent nuance. It mirrors yours.

AI can complete any sentence. Only you can define what it means and why it matters.

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If this analogy helps clarify how you think about prompting, it’s one of many in my new book, Practical AI Style, launching June 24.

This isn’t a collection of tips or tool hacks. It is a framework for working with AI using the clarity, constraint, and coherence that define good style. Inspired by Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style, the book identifies the irreducible components of effective prompting and AI interaction. These are elements that apply across platforms and tools.

You’ll learn how to:
- Define AI roles, voices, and guardrails
- Assemble prompts that are structured, purposeful, and consistent
- Encode brand tone and organizational knowledge
- Augment human capability without surrendering authenticity
- Build a scalable AI Style Guide for yourself or your organization