The New York Times crossword puzzle is a daily puzzle found in The New York Times and online at the paper's website. It is also syndicated to over 300 other newspapers and journals. The puzzle is created by various freelance writers and is edited by Will Shortz. The puzzle becomes increasingly difficult throughout the week, with the easiest puzzle on Monday and the most difficult puzzle on Saturday. The larger Sunday crossword, which appears in The New York Times Magazine , is an icon in American culture; it is typically intended to be as difficult as a Thursday puzzle. The standard daily crossword is 15 squares x 15 squares, while the Sunday crossword measures either 21 squares x 21 squares or 23 x 23 (a special set of 25 x 25 Sunday puzzles, with two sets of clues—easy and hard—was published in 1999 to commemorate the upcoming millennium).
History
While crosswords became popular in the early 1920s, it was not until 1942 that The New York Times (which initially regarded crosswords as frivolous, calling them "a primitive form of mental exercise") began running a crossword in its Sunday edition. The first puzzle, a Sunday, ran on February 15, 1942; the motivating impulse for the Times to finally run the puzzle (which took over 20 years despite the fact that its publisher, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, was a longtime crossword fan) appears to have been the bombing of Pearl Harbor; in a memo dated December 18, 1941, an editor conceded that the puzzle deserved space in the paper, considering what was happening elsewhere in the world and that readers might need something to occupy themselves during blackouts. The puzzle proved popular, and Sulzberger himself would author a Times puzzle before the year was out.. In 1950, the crossword became a daily feature. That first daily puzzle was published without an author line, and to this day the identity of the author of the first weekday Times crossword remains unknown. There have been four editors of the puzzle: Margaret Farrar, who edited the puzzle from its inception until 1969, Will Weng, former head of the Times's metropolitan copy desk, who edited the puzzle from 1969 to 1977, Eugene T. Maleska, who edited the puzzle until 1993, and the current editor, Will Shortz. Of the three former editors, Maleska alone held the position until his death. In addition to editing the Times crosswords, Shortz founded and runs the annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament as well as the World Puzzle Championship (where he remains captain of the US team), has published numerous books of crosswords, sudoku, and other puzzles, and serves as "Puzzlemaster" on the NPR show "Weekend Edition Sunday".
The popularity of the puzzle has grown over the years, until it came to be considered the most prestigious of the widely circulated crosswords in America; its popularity is attested to by the numerous celebrities and public figures who've publicly proclaimed their liking for the puzzle, including opera singer Beverly Sills, author Norman Mailer, baseball pitcher Mike Mussina, former President Bill Clinton, conductor Leonard Bernstein, TV host Jon Stewart and music duo the Indigo Girls.
The Times puzzles have been collected in hundreds of books over the years from various publishers, most notably Random House and St. Martin's Press, the current publisher of the series. In addition to their appearance in the printed newspaper, the Times puzzles also appear online at the paper's website, where they remain the only part of the paper's content for which users need to pay for online access (unless they already subscribe to the printed version of the paper for home delivery). In 2007, Majesco released The New York Times Crosswords game, a video game adaptation for the Nintendo DS handheld. The game includes over 1,000 Times crosswords from all days of the week. Various other forms of merchandise featuring the puzzle have been created over the years, including dedicated electronic crossword handhelds that just contain Times crosswords, as well as cookie jars, baseballs, coasters, mousepads, and other items.
Style and conventions
Will Shortz does not write the Times crossword himself. Instead the puzzles are submitted to him as the editor by a wide variety of contributors. A full specification sheet listing the paper's requirements for crossword puzzle submission can be found online (see "External Links") or by writing to the paper. Aside from the increasing difficulty throughout the week, the Monday-Thursday puzzles and the Sunday puzzle always contain a theme, some sort of connection between 3-5 long (usually Across) answers. The theme could consist of a similar type of pun in each theme entry, a similar type of letter substitution or alteration in each entry, or any of numerous other types. Notable dates, e.g., holidays or anniversaries of famous events, are often celebrated with an appropriately themed puzzle, although only two holidays are currently commemorated on a routine annual basis: Christmas and April Fool's Day. The Friday and Saturday puzzles, the most difficult in the paper, are routinely unthemed and are usually "wide-open", with fewer black squares, and more long words. The general maximum word count for a themed weekday puzzle is 78 words, while the maximum for an unthemed Friday or Saturday puzzle is only 72 words. Given the Times's perception as a paper for a generally literate, well-read, and somewhat arty audience, puzzles frequently reference works of literature, art, or classical music, as well as modern TV, movies, or other touchstones of popular culture. The puzzle follows a number of conventions, both for tradition's sake and to aid solvers in completing the crossword:
- Nearly all the Times crosswords have rotational symmetry: they can be rotated 180 degrees and still keep the same position of the white and black spaces. Rarely, puzzles with vertical or horizontal symmetry only can be found; yet more rare are asymmetrical puzzles, which usually indicate some sort of unusual theme is contained within the puzzle that requires breaking the symmetry rule. This rule has been part of the puzzle since the beginning; when asked why, initial editor Margaret Farrar is said to have responded "Because it is prettier."
- Any time a clue contains an abbreviation or the tag "abbr.", the answer will also be an abbreviation (e.g. M.D. org. = AMA).
- Any time a clue is a statement ending in a question mark, the answer is a play on words.
- Occasionally, themed puzzles will require certain squares to be filled in with a symbol, multiple letters, or a word, rather than one letter (so-called "rebus" puzzles). This symbol/letters/word will be repeated throughout in each themed entry.
- French-, Spanish-, or Latin-language answers, and more rarely answers from other languages are indicated either by a tag in the clue giving the answer language (e.g., 'Summer: Fr.' = ETE) or by the use in the clue of a word from that language, often a personal or place name(e.g. 'Friends of Pierre' = AMIS or 'The ocean, e.g., in Orleans' = EAU).
- Clues and answers must always match in part of speech, tense, number, and degree. Thus a plural clue always indicates a plural answer (and the same for singular), a clue in the past tense will always be matched by an answer in the same tense, and a clue containing a comparative or superlative will always be matched by an answer in the same degree. Similarly, slangy content in the answer will be indicated by a clue containing slang or informal speech.
- The answer word (or any of the answer words, if it consists of multiple words) will never appear in the clue itself. Unlike in some easier puzzles in other outlets, the number of words in the answer is not indicated in the clue itself--so a one-word clue can mean a multiple-word answer.
- The theme, if any, will be applied consistently throughout the puzzle. e.g., if one of the theme entries is a particular variety of pun, all the theme entries will be of that type.
- In general, any words that might appear elsewhere in the newspaper, such as well-known brand names, pop culture figures, or current phrases of the moment, are fair game.
- No entries involving profanity, sad or disturbing topics, or overly explicit answers should be expected, though some have snuck in. The April 3, 2006 puzzle, contained the word SCUMBAG (a slang term for a condom), which had previously appeared in a Times articles, quoting people using the word. Shortz apologized and said the term would not appear again. The word PENIS also appeared once in a Maleska-edited puzzle, clued as "The __ mightier than the sword."
- Spoken phrases are always indicated by enclosure in quotation marks, e.g., "Get out of here!" = LEAVE NOW.
- When the answer needs an additional word in order to fit the clue, it is indicated with a parenthetical phrase or the use of "with." For example, "Think (over)" = MULL, since "think" only means "mull" when paired with the word "over". Similarly, "Become understood, with in" = SINK, since "Sink in" means "to become understood."
- A good rule of thumb when in doubt of a given clue/answer is to apply the 'substitution test': Create a sentence featuring the clue word(s) and then see if you can substitute the answer and leave the parsing and meaning of the rest of the sentence unchanged. If not, the answer is almost certainly incorrect. For example, if you are unsure of the clue/answer combination "Approach, perhaps" = HIT ON, you could try substituting in the sentence "The shy man jealously watched the smooth talker effortlessly APPROACH women at the party"
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