Frequently asked questions

Mostly for me, but crossword constructors will find it useful and enthusiasts will find it interesting.

When I started my crossword blog at www.xwordblog.com I started wondering what I could learn about NYT puzzles if I ran some statistical analysis on the puzzles themselves.

The best approach is to poke around and explore. You can view lists of puzzles that meet various criteria, click on a puzzle to see it displayed in full with the answers, click on an answer to see what clues have been used for it, click on the displayed date to see the answer word in context, etc.

The sites complement each other. Cruciverb includes data from many puzzles; this site focuses on the NYT. Where this site shines is in its faster and easier navigation through all the data and higher accuracy on odd puzzles such as rebus crosswords and puzzles with circled boxes. It also has data going back further in time.

No. There are some bugs. Some odd puzzles with answers going around corners or having boxes that must be interpreted in one way going across and another going down result in incorrect answer words. The extra-large so-called Millenium Puzzles in 1999 (here's one) have both Easy Clue and Hard Clue versions. Only the hard versions are included here. And so on.

One particular problem is that puzzles from 2004 or earlier used an old version of Across Lite which didn't correctly handle rebus puzzles. Those had to be fixed up by hand and I have probably missed some or made errors.

Puzzles from October 23, 1996 to the present comes from the Across Lite files on the nytimes.com website. Originally, that was all I thought I would ever be able to get but it turns out Barry Haldiman has been collecting crosswords in electronic form for a long time and he has graciously offered to share some of these with me.

Thanks to Mr. Haldiman, this site now includes NYT puzzles covering the entire Will Shortz era, i.e. going back to November 21, 1993. Mr. Haldiman's database is available online and it has all kinds of insights and analysis in areas I don't cover. Check it out.

Dates here match the publication dates in the New York Times. In syndication, the Sunday puzzle runs a week behind, and the dailies are six weeks behind. The easiest way to find the puzzle you want is to go to the Calendar page and count back the appropriate number of weeks.

I didn't. It's the work of Robin Troy who, as you can see from her blog, is a real artist. Thanks, Robin.