Analyzing...
Analysis
There are 21 rows and 21 columns, with 0 rebus squares, and 20 cheater squares (marked with "+" in the colorized grid below.)
The grid uses 24 of 26 letters, missing JQ.
It has normal rotational symmetry.
Average word length: 4.94, Scrabble score: 542, Scrabble average: 1.52.
Puzzle has 13 fill-in-the-blank clues and 0 cross-reference clues.
Duplicate clues: One of the blanks in the cereal slogan "___ are for ___" — Tinker, for one, in olden days — Certain blade — Spread dirt, in a way — Legendary Egyptian queen — Run off — Stick together — Liberal arts college in the Keystone State — Like many a lot — Hood lead-in — Caterpillar product — Dud — Historical period — One of Frank's wives — Member of the cat family — Father, familiarly — Japanese auto make — Court concern — Big Australian export — One of five on a starfish — Set of clubs in a bag — These could amount to fortunes — Dead follower — Where to find grooms — Vingt-___ (multiple de trois) — This does not fly — Anagram of the letters O-N-D — State with part of I-81: Abbr. — What you might call a dog — Instrument for an angel — Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar, e.g. — Something you can do with flies — First name of an Oscar-nominated actress of 1957 — Time in ads — Square ___ — Animal in an Aesop fable — White House sight
This puzzle has 9 unique answer words.
It has 0 words that debuted in this puzzle and
were later reused:
These words are unique to the Shortz Era but have appeared in pre-Shortz puzzles:
These 39 answer words are not legal Scrabble™ entries, which sometimes means they are interesting:
Day of week comparisons
Distribution of answer words by length
Letter distribution
Scrabble Score: 1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
8 |
10 |
Thumbnails
Various thumbnail views are shown:
- Standard view shows the grid pattern most clearly
- Open Squares (those which don't touch any block, even diagonally) are blue
- Vowel distribution
- Scrabble score uses the same color key as above
- Freshness view shows unique answers in red (see colorized grid below)
With answers
Puzzles that may be similar to this one
Crosswords that share the most words with this one:
Unusual or long words that appear elsewhere:
Identical grids
Other puzzles with the same block pattern as this one:
Topologically similar grids
Other crosswords with exactly 85 blocks, 144 words, 116 open squares, and an average word length of 4.94:
Colorized grid for Sun Dec 18, 2016
The next two sections attempt to show how fresh the grid entries are.
In this view, unusual answers are colored depending on how often they have appeared in other puzzles.
Unique answers are in red, red overwrites orange which overwrites yellow, etc.
Cheater squares are indicated with a + sign.
Unique |
1 other |
2 others |
3 others |
4 others |
Freshness Factor
Freshness score: 42.3 – 70.1 overall percentile, 67.2 Sunday percentile
Freshness Factor is a calculation that compares the number of times words in this puzzle have appeared
in other Shortz Era puzzles.
Click here for an explanation.
The chart below shows how many times each word has been used across all NYT puzzles, old and modern including Variety.