New York Times Crossword Answers, Stats, Observations

XWord Info contains data about NYT puzzles dating back to November, 1993, covering the entire time that Will Shortz has been Puzzle Editor. The links below will be of most interest to constructors and serious solvers but occasional dabblers will be entertained too. Have fun exploring and you'll start seeing crosswords in a whole new light. (FAQ)

The Friday, September 03, 2010 crossword is by John Farmer. (Across Lite, Solution, blog)

About the Database

Puzzles

• Any puzzle from a calendar with answers
• Sunday puzzles by title
• Puzzles with circles or shaded squares
• Rebus puzzles (multiple letters or symbols in a single box)
• Puzzles with the fewest and most blocks
• Puzzles with Notepads or other special annotations
• Highest and lowest word count puzzles
• Puzzles with the longest avg. word length
• Unusual symmetry and asymmetry
• Pangrams and puzzles with the fewest letters used
• Scrabble scores: highest daily, lowest daily, highest Sunday, lowest Sunday
• Schizophrenic crosswords
• Most wide open grids
• Grids with unchecked squares
• Non-square or other oddly shaped grids
• Freshness Factor™ Hall of Fame
• Most common grid patterns

Personal collections

• Grid Art — puzzles that caught my eye
• Puzzles with interesting visual elements
• Nonlinear puzzles

Variety (Second Sunday)

• Acrostics (BETA)
• Cryptic, Diagramless, PandA, Vowelless
• Variety puzzle FAQ

Other puzzle links

• Garson Hampfield, Crossword Inker
• Mobile answers for your cell phone
• Options for pop-up tooltips

Clue and Answer Finder

• The Finder page displays clues for any word, or words that match any pattern

Twitter — New!

• Latest tweets about crosswords

Across Lite links

• Links to recent puzzles
• Across Lite files by constructor

Words and Letters

• Most popular answer words
• Most popular words by length
• All Fifteen-letter words sorted alphabetically
• Even longer words sorted by length
• Random or Recent unique words
• Most answers of each length
• Record setting letter counts

Constructors

• Most prodigious authors
• Puzzle counts by day of week
• Puzzle counts by year
• Shortz Number and other info
• Highest lifetime Scrabble average
• Value
• 133 Constructor photos
• Constructors: you can analyze your own puzzles here

Info for programmers

• XPF Universal Data Format (XML) defined
• Puzzles in JSON format with sample code

Search both Wordplay & XWord Info:

Click on any date to see that day's full puzzle including answers.

This site continuously updates its data. Bookmark this page for easy future access.

Questions? See the XWord Info FAQ list.

Please visit XWord Info's companion site: It's the official New York Times crossword blog. Come join the conversation about today's puzzle and all things crossword-related.