New York Times Crossword

Published by: cfz 2009-01-08

How do they make the crossword puzzle that appears in the New York Times? Is there a computer program or just a guy who makes them up? If it's just a guy, does he do it every day by himself or is there a team of people who take turns writing them? How long does it take to construct one puzzle?

Hello lexi-ga You can access a database of New York Times daily and Sunday crosswords at http://nytxword.home.mindspring.com/, (a subscription is required to access any puzzles which appeared since late October, 1996). The puzzles are sorted by date or by author. As an example, the Sunday puzzles in the set from October 27, 1996 to today (actually until April 28, 2002) have been written by approximately 65 authors. In most cases, one author is responsible, but some puzzles have been created by two or three authors. The site gives statistics on the most prolific authors of Sunday crosswords at http://nytxword.home.mindspring.com/author.htm The current champion is Jack Luzzato with 119 puzzles to his credit. The site does not give any information about how the authors create their puzzles. However, some information on this topic can be found in the links listed by Ray Hamel at http://www.primate.wisc.edu/people/hamel/cp.html, which claims to have links to all known crossword-related web sites. There you will find links to various crossword software packages (http://www.primate.wisc.edu/people/hamel/cp.html#Soft). These packages will generate a crossword from their own word lists or lists put in by the author. It is possible to specify the type of crossword, the minimum and maximum number of letters per word, the percentage of black squares in the diagram, the overal size and the symmetry of the diagram. There is also a list of anagram-generating software. It appears that some of the crossword prgrams have clues databases as well, but I would guess that most authors generate their own clues, especially for cryptic crosswords (otherwise the readers would eventually get to know most of the clues used in their newspaper crosswords!). An article about New York Times daily crossword compiler Bob Klahn is available at http://www.magpage.com/~bobklahn/DelToday/index.html Klahn has constructed his own crossword software, however he maintains that constructing a crossword is always a matter of trail and error. Some puzzles are finished in one hour, but one took as long as 100 hours. In some cases, Klahn will start to work on a puzzle and then put it away and not return to it until several months later. I found these resouces by searching on Google with the terms: "New York Times crossword" author (search results at ://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF8&oe=UTF8&q=%22New+York+Times+crossword%22+author ) Hope this answers your question

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