Information theory has been a really fascinating topic to get more acquainted with. Not really related to the crossword, but I highly recommend 3Blue1Brown's video "Compression is Intelligence", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6DKRf-fAAM
While intelligence and compression both may have similar goals (to optimize paths of information), intelligence negotiates probability (allowing multiple divergent outcomes) while compression requires an idempotent symbolic translation.