XWord Info: New York Times Crossword Answers and Insights

Crosswords

• Solutions from a calendar
• Enter a date:
• Sunday puzzles listed by date with titles
• Puzzles with circles or shaded squares
• Rebus puzzles (symbols or multiple letters in a single square)
• Grids with the fewest blocks and most blocks
• Grids with the fewest words and most words
• 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
• Schrödinger puzzles aka quantum crosswords
• Most wide open grids
• Answers that float outside the grid
• Connect the dots on grids
• Record stacks and some notable 15s
• Grids with unchecked squares
• Grids with no short answers or with very short answers
• Grids with repeated answer words
• Uniclue puzzles
• Oddly shaped or sized grids
• Freshness Factor™ Hall of Fame
• Most common grid patterns
• Patrick Berry's 2011 special six-part "Cross" word contest puzzles and solutions
• Eugene T. Maleska's stepquotes
• The six 1999 Millennium puzzles.
• Will Shortz picks his favorite puzzles and his favorite constructors
• Puzzles with comments from Will Shortz
• Will Shortz provides a clue-by-clue analysis of how he edits a crossword
• Puzzles with Notepads or Jim's personal notes
• Jeff Chen's Puzzles of the Week: solve them or view grids with comments or constructors
• The Misenko duplicates
• Stats about NYT Puzzle Editors
• Messages hidden in clues

Variety puzzles

• Acrostics Solve online!
• Cryptic, Diagramless, PandA, etc.
• PDF-only Variety puzzles
• Variety puzzle FAQ

Personal collections

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

Words and Letters

Shortz Era

• Most popular answer words
• Most popular words by length
• All Fifteen-letter words sorted alphabetically
• Even longer words sorted by length
• Debut words in the past month
• Debut words by year
• Most answers of each length
• Record setting letter counts
• Puzzles with both specified words
• Most frequently used clues
• Heat maps showing likely block locations

All Time

• Most popular words by length
• Missing words not found in any puzzles
• Random unique words

Constructors

• Enter a name:
• Most prolific authors (baseball cards)
• Constructors from the past month
• Celebrity Constructors
• Puzzle counts by day of week
• Puzzle counts by year
• Pangrams sorted by constructor
• Shortz Number and puzzle totals
• Highest lifetime Scrabble average
• Constructors with the most collaborators
• Constructor photos from the Shortz Era
• Debut words by constructor
• Constructor debuts by year
• Variety puzzle constructors
• Youngest constructors
• Stats about women constructors
• Puzzles by the JASA Crossword Class
• Alternate constructor names
• Constructor biographies

Collaborate & Compete

• To begin, read the FAQ
• Collaborate with a friend
• Compete against a friend

Contact us

Jeff Chen in The Seattle Times

XWord Info was created by Jim Horne.

It is now operated by Jeff Chen who provides commentary on each daily puzzle.

Stay up to date. Follow XWord Blog.

Crossword blogs

NYT PDF & Solver links

• nytimes.com links for recent puzzles
• Solver links organized by constructor
• Solver links from a calendar

About the Database

We have every daily crossword the NYT has ever published, going back to the to the first on Sunday, February 15, 1942.

There are 10,499 Shortz Era crosswords from Sunday, November 21, 1993 to Friday, August 19, 2022.

And 16,083 older ones.

Info for programmers

• Join our Open Source project on GitHub. AcrossLiteToText is a useful utility that demonstrates .puz parsing.
• Puzzles in JSON format with sample code
• Sample Python scripts
• XPF Universal Data Format (XML) defined

Other puzzle links

• The Crossword Puzzle Moment
• Garson Hampfield, Crossword Inker
• XWord Info Bar Game
• The Rachel Maddow crossword (our most viewed puzzle)
• Options for pop-up tooltips

Just for Fun

• The Fourth Ambit, award-winning sci-fi audio drama
• Who Did I Outlive? for the morbidly curious

Tips

• Click on any date to see that day's full puzzle including answers.
• This site updates its data daily. Bookmark this page for easy future access.
• See your account information or change your password.
• Questions? See the XWord Info FAQ list.
• Please help keep XWord Info alive and well. Support us today!