Tag Archives: New York Times

The Week in Puzzles and Games

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There’s so much going on in the intertwined worlds of puzzles and games, so let’s skip the intro and get to the good stuff!

Bryant Park Crossword Tournament This Weekend!

The summer crossword bonanza might have come to an end for another year, but tournament solving fans still have plenty to look forward to! Not only is Chicago’s Midwest Crossword Tournament looming in early October, but the 8th Bryant Park Crossword Tournament is this Saturday, September 19th!

Although you’re welcome to walk in and participate, things go much smoother if you register ahead of time. Click here to get started!

They’ve even borrowed Will Shortz’s clock for the tournament!

With three Mike Shenk puzzles waiting for competitors, you should absolutely make an effort to participate in this year’s event.

boswords new

The Boswords Fall Themeless League Returns Soon!

And speaking of crosswords, there’s still time to register for this year’s Fall Themeless League, which starts up on Monday, October 5 (though they have a preseason puzzle launching the week before on September 28th).

If you’re unfamiliar, the Boswords Fall Themeless League is a clever weekly spin on traditional crossword tournament-style solving. Instead of cracking through a number of puzzles in a single day (or two), the Fall Themeless League consists of one themeless / freestyle crossword each week, scored based on your accuracy and how fast you complete the grid.

Look at that lineup of talent!

Each week’s puzzle only has one grid, but there are three sets of clues, each representing a different difficulty level for solvers. Smooth is the least challenging, Choppy is the middle ground, and Stormy is the most challenging. (When you register to participate, you choose the difficulty level that suits you best.)

Each week’s puzzle is accompanied by a one-hour broadcast on Twitch, starting with a preseason puzzle and broadcast.

The Fall Themeless League then runs the next nine Monday nights starting at 9 PM.

Image courtesy of The Tyee / Michelle Gamage

Scrabble and the Canadian English Dictionary

The Tyee dropped an article recently about a group of Canadian linguists, the Society for Canadian English, that are working on a new Canadian English Dictionary.

And they’ve started with the letter Q.

“Q is a short fascicle, but not as trivially so as X, and it’s a favourite among Scrabble players,” its quintet of authors explained, in an article published in Dictionaries: The Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America.

“Q has plenty of quite quintessentially quirky and quotable words that are useful in attracting attention to our project.”

They wish to raise awareness of their undertaking, not just for public support, but to find a publisher and secure funding for the project.

Check out the full article here. It’s an in-depth and fascinating exploration of the intersection of language, culture, play, and politics.

Two Puzzle Games to Try Out!

One of the coolest things about running PuzzCulture is getting to learn about new puzzles and creators in the puzzle space. Several enterprising constructors have reached out to me recently, and I’m pleased to help spread the word about their puzzly endeavors.

The first is Esteban Martin’s daily decathlon of click-and-drag puzzles, Roughly.Is.

Each day, solvers are presented with ten minigames that pose a question for the reader. Some are simply trivia, others are guessing games or games of skill.

I’m a sucker for puzzles that teach me things, so the games of Roughly.Is are a delight. How big is a blue whale, compared to a Saturn V rocket? What did a steak cost in Zurich in 1970? Where do bison live?

The variety of topics means you’re sure to learn something new or find something to entertain you for a minute. What more can you ask for?

Check out Roughly.Is for all ten minigames, no ads and no login required.

But if you’re looking for a meatier daily challenge, consider Jeff Doka’s Morning Mystery.

Part of the BossFeed puzzle lineup, Morning Mystery is a logic puzzle that invites solvers to use the facts at hand to determine the puzzly truth.

The twist? You can’t trust all of the facts you’re presented with. Some are guaranteed to be genuine, but others could be the characters in the mystery misleading you.

Can you solve the puzzle and determine who is being truthful and who is lying? Give Morning Mystery a shot by clicking here.

Images courtesy of Apple TV / The New York Times

Widow’s Bay and Its Sinister Board Games

Let’s wrap up today’s post with some insight into Widow’s Bay, fresh off a record-setting bevy of wins at the Emmy Awards.

Widow’s Bay is a horror comedy that’s drawing all sorts of eyes, and for good reason. It’s brilliantly cast, well-paced, and razor-sharp.

And, if you’re a board game fan, there was a creepy treat for you in episode two, as the mayor visited a local inn and discovered a number of board games with unnerving art and unpleasant implications

The New York Times did a fantastic piece with the show’s creative team and the episode’s writer about the board games and fans’ fascination with them.

Check it out, it’s a great read about how visuals and prop production can enhance both humor and horror. (Who’s up for a round of RUN?)

Did I miss any puzzly news or fun board game stories from the last few weeks? Let me know in the comments section below! I’d love to hear from you.

Puzzly Mantras in Just Three Words!

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In a recent Gameplay newsletter, Sam Corbin wrote about three-word instructions / mottos (like “Eat, Drink and Be Merry” or “Live, Laugh, Love”), and pondered a slogan like that for puzzle solving.

It’s a definite challenge for sure, like trying to come up with a poignant six-word memoir. But I’ve never been one to turn down a challenge simply because I’ll probably fail. I WELCOME IT.

So, today, I thought I would pitch in and come up with some slogans (not all fitting the three-word formula) for various puzzle outlets.

Penny Press / Dell Magazines

I’ve always thought a great slogan for them would be “We’re As Puzzled As You Are.” It’s light, a little self-deprecating, and fosters a feeling of camaraderie between publisher and solver.

But a three-word instruction for them?

How about Sample, Savor, Solve? Sample a variety puzzle you’ve never tried. Savor the ones you know you like. And, as always, solve.

The New York Times

I mean, a good motto would obviously be “All the Clues That Are Fit to Print,” playing off the classic NYT slogan.

But for a later-week crossword, how about Determine, Decipher, Discover?

Determine what you know, decipher tricky clues, discover the gimmick.

The Los Angeles Times

Now, The LA Times has several mottos (like “Read the Paper,” which could easily be converted into “Read the Down Clues”), but my favorite is their historical slogan, “Stand Fast, Stand Firm, Stand Sure, Stand True.”

And when it comes to puzzles, that could be Stand Watch, Stand Pat, Stand Back.

Let your eyes go to the clues you know immediately, trust your instincts on ones you’ve filled in, and then stand back and survey your work to unravel the theme.

Doesn’t really work with the three-word motto, though.

Maybe Stop, Drop, and Roll!

Stop what you’re doing and solve a puzzle. Look at those down clues. And keep trying ’til you’ve solved it.

Fireball Crosswords (and other meta outlets)

For me, it was actually easy to come up with a three-word motto for solving these, because it’s what I do when I try to unravel a meta while completing the grid:

Pattern, Exception, Association.

Look for a pattern or rhythm outside the regular solve. Look for exceptions that feel intentional. Look for associations on a second read.

But what about for a general three-word instruction for crossword solving?

For solvers still getting used to crosswords, I would recommend Blanks, Bios, Back-and-forth or Fill, Famous, Flip, which both fit some of my solving advice for newbies.

Fill in the blank, scan clues for famous names, flip to the crossings once a word is filled in and work on that section.

Oh, and if you suspect a puzzle will be difficult, always remember:

Write Light, Alright!?

Hopefully one of these mottos works for you, fellow solver. Do you have any suggestions, leave them in the comment section below! We’d love to hear from you.

And now for my traditional three-word sendoff:

Happy puzzling, everyone!

The Peculiar, Particular Art of Palindromic Puzzling!

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Palindrome, written as an ambigram.

I’m a sucker for wordplay. I’m sure that comes as no surprise to you, gentle reader. You’re probably a fan of wordplay as well.

Two of my favorite forms of wordplay are the palindrome and the semordnilap.

For the uninitiated, palindromes are words, phrases, or sentences that can be read the same both backwards and forwards. KAYAK, RACECAR, etc.

A semordnilap (literally “palindromes” backwards) is a word or phrase that reads as one thing forwards and another thing backwards. STRESSED and DESSERTS, for instance.

It will come as no surprise to anyone who solved my Thisaway or Thataway crossword I shared a few weeks ago that I’ve had palindromes and semordnilaps on the brain.

My goal was to make every across entry above the center a palindrome (except for the entry PALINDROMES) and every across entry below the center a semordnilap (except for the entry SEMORDNILAP).

After trying several different layout and ideas, I finally got the puzzle to a place where I was happy with it. And now that it’s been shared with solvers, I’ve been wondering if anyone else had tackled the combination of palindromes / semordnilaps, and crosswords.

Thankfully, Xwordinfo made the searching for them easy.

I found this Joe Krozel puzzle from December 23rd, 2008, where the entire puzzle can be rotated 180 degrees and read out the same.

It’s an entire puzzle of semordnilaps!

Alex Eaton-Salners executed a similar idea on April 9th, 2019, creating a puzzle where every across entry is a semordnilap, cluing both the word reading forwards and the word reading backwards.

Leo Tsai managed the same trick as Krozel in a Puzzmo mini on May 20th of this year, offering two mini grids that reflect each other. (Solving this puzzle while constructing one in a similar vane was encouraging!)

On June 6th, 2023, Daniel Jaret’s crossword appeared in the New York Times, and executed the same trick managed by Joe Krozel 15 years earlier! Once again, the entire puzzle could be rotated 180 degrees.

He also managed to place two palindromes at the very center of the puzzle, RACECAR crossing STETS, which is a terrific extra touch.

That’s more puzzles than I expected when I started hunting for palindromic crosswords!

Of course, crosswords aren’t the only puzzles where you can see palindromes and semordnilaps.

Our friends at Penny/Dell Puzzles have several puzzles where words overlap and read backwards and forwards. Right of Way and Crozzle both come to mind.

But the best example in their puzzly library is undoubtedly Bull’s-Eye Spiral.

Bull’s-Eye Spiral challenges solvers to use the clues provided to create a chain of answer words that can be read both forwards and backwards.

Unlike a single semordnilap like STOP and POTS where one word can be reversed into a different word, the answers in Bull’s-Eye Spiral overlap, allowing the backwards words to bleed into the forwards words, creating a massive spiraling chain of words that’s actually two chains of words where the only common breaks are at the beginning and the end.

I’ve never tried to construct a Bull’s-Eye Spiral, though it does seem like a fun challenge to put on my ever-growing to-do / wish list.

I did, however, manage to construct a Framework puzzle years ago with only palindromes as answer words.

[Click here to download a PDF of this puzzle!]

It was challenging to construct, not because of the limited wordlist, but because all the common letter crossings made it difficult to ensure there was only one way to complete the grid. (No alternate solutions here!)

Happy solving!

Musician, parodist, and wordsmith “Weird Al” Yankovic once said that “the writing of a brilliant palindrome is a small miracle, and that, I think, deserves to be honored more than a lot of the stupid and inconsequential things we often celebrate in our culture.”

Do you agree with him? Are you a fan of palindromes and semordnilaps, in puzzles or otherwise? Let us know in the comments section below! We’d love to hear from you.

The Fastest Way to Wordle: By the Numbers!

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I’m a sucker for statistical analysis, especially when it comes to puzzles and games. In previous posts, I’ve looked at improved strategies for playing Guess Who, Hangman, and Monopoly.

And now, we’ve got solid data that might indicate the best method for tackling your daily Wordle solve.

Last week, as the world celebrated five years of Wordle solving, the New York Times posted an article analyzing 730 MILLION games of Wordle from the past year, and they came to an interesting conclusion:

Players in Hard Mode solve in fewer turns on average.

That seems like an contradiction in terms. Hard Mode limits letter choices and flexibility based on which letters are locked in (green), whereas Standard Mode allows you to play any letter at any time, which should offer a solving advantage.

But it doesn’t seem to, as Hard Mode solvers average more efficient solves than Standard Mode solvers.

While it’s possible this could be attributed to the pool of solvers — Hard Mode likely attracts better or more efficient solvers in general — the article theorizes that Hard Mode’s constraints push players to guess less wastefully.

This, combined with better starting-word selection — apparently vowel-heavy words like ADIEU and AUDIO are statistically less efficient! — leads to better results overall.

These are certainly helpful guidelines, but I do think an overall change in tactics can also help solvers in both Standard and Hard Mode.

The article mentions one of the dangers of Hard Mode solving, “the rhyming trap,” where you end up with most of a word in green, like _ATCH, but you’re left with all the rhyming possibilities, which could result in a worse score or even a failure to complete the day’s solve at all.

Standard Mode solvers can play a word like BLIMP, which would confirm or eliminate BATCH, LATCH, MATCH, and PATCH, covering most of the possible answers in one fell swoop.

This isn’t an option in Hard Mode, but it has led to players attacking the puzzle in reverse, trying to eliminate letters early, rather than trying to confirm letters early.

After all, if you go vowel-heavy and confirm, say, two letters, that’s two spots taken up in every single guess. But if you go one vowel at a time and burn through consonants with words like CHILD or MONTH, you whittle down the alphabet quicker. (I remember David Kwong writing about this technique in his email newsletter a while back.)

It’s interesting to have actual data to examine, even if the data seems counterintuitive at the start.

It’s certainly not as straightforward as the connection between the decrease in pirate populations and the rise of global warming…

Of course, if you want the answers the fastest way possible, you could just do what I did last week and get the next day’s Wordle spoiled for you by Google AI.

Yeah.

You see, my mother solves Wordle every day and keeps track of her results on her calendar. Every word, every number of guesses. It’s her ritual and I respect that.

But on Thursday of last week, she realized she hadn’t written down the previous few days’ words and results. And we are completionists, both of us, so around 8 PM that night, I did a quick Google search of the week’s answer words to help her out.

And lo and behold, the stupid Google AI told me Friday’s word ahead of time.

Yes, I suppose it is my fault for not typing “-AI” into the search bar. (And unfortunately, as entertaining as it is to type “shut the f*ck up bot” into the search bar and see the AI’s momentary contrition, that only lasts a few searches at most before it returns.)

But it also sucks that this was a possibility at all. I genuinely didn’t think I’d be spoiling the next day’s solve for myself with a casual search of the week’s words.

Hopefully WordleBot doesn’t figure out this trick. It’s smug enough already.

Did you learn anything from the NYT’s deep-dive into Wordle solving statistics, fellow solver, or do you already have your starting word of choice that you’ll be sticking with? Let me know in the comments section below! I’d love to hear from you.

An Amazing Opportunity for New Voices in the New York Times Crossword!

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Yes, I know this is the New Yorker’s iconography, but sadly this is also the default in some people’s minds for who constructs and who solves the NYT crossword, and it’s awesome we’re taking steps to change that…

It’s only a few days before submissions open for the fifth New York Times Diverse Crossword Constructor Fellowship!

At noon on June 15th, the Times will begin accepting applications for a fellowship. But what does that entail?

According to the Times from the announcement page:

The New York Times Diverse Crossword Constructor Fellowship provides mentorship and support for constructors whose backgrounds and perspectives could be better reflected in our puzzles. We want our puzzles to reflect the experiences of as many people as possible, which means publishing work that displays a wide range of cultural reference points, language usage and communities.

This mentorship gives aspiring constructors (ones who haven’t yet been published by NYT) the opportunity for three months of instruction, advice, and insight from one of the NYT puzzle editors. It’s an incredibly talented list of people to learn from: Sam Ezersky, Wyna Liu, Tracy Bennett, Christina Iverson, Joel Fagliano, and Ian Livengood.

It’s open to constructors seeking guidance on either themed or unthemed crosswords, with specific guidelines when you apply:

If you’d like to work on a themed puzzle during the fellowship, you will need a theme set with theme clues provided. A tentative grid with theme answers placed is helpful.

If you’d like to work on a themeless puzzle, you will need to provide one of the following: a 7×7 grid with clues, a 15×15 grid with clues or a partly filled 15×15 grid with clues.

You can check out the full announcement here, and you can click here for submission guidelines and some resources available to constructors already.

Good luck to everyone submitting! The world of crosswords is a more interesting, more immersive place when everyone is represented, and opportunities like this make both constructors AND outlets better.

A Criminal Crossword Conspiracy From 1959!

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During my extensive dive into crossword history in preparation for my Braille Crosswords post, I encountered all sorts of curious tidbits and trivia about crosswords. I tucked many of them away at the time, looking forward to digging into them properly later once the piece was completed.

So, with that post done and dusted, I had some time to pour through those tidbits and trivia for blog post ideas. And I knew I had to start with this snippet from The Omaha World-Herald on Sunday, July 22nd, 1979:

Portland: February 23, 1959. Two Oregon daily papers cry “Doublecross!” Charging that their crossword contests are being “fixed” by a “nation-wide ring” headquartered in Detroit, they discontinue the contests and call in the FBI

A criminal crossword ring? Tell me more about these cruciverbalist ne’er-do-wells!

I mean, we’ve discussed criminal activity and crosswords in previous posts, but those were strictly of the fictional variety. This story, on the other hand, is an honest-to-Shortz crossword criminal conspiracy, concocted nearly 70 years ago.

Our story begins in Oregon, where publisher William W. Knight of The Oregon Journal shared his suspicions in a front-page editorial piece on February 23rd, 1959.

The Oregon Journal and The Portland Oregonian were just two of the many newspapers around the United States who ran crossword contests with cash prizes. Subscribers would send their solutions to the paper in the hopes of being the first correct solver (or sometimes, the correct solver chosen at random) and winning some money.

But Mr. Knight reported that his sources at The Oregon Journal had uncovered something peculiar. They had learned about two previous Portland winners who only kept part of their money, the rest being forwarded to an intermediary, and after that to the suspected ringleader in Detroit, Michigan.

One woman won $2600 but retained only $300. $150 went to the intermediary, and $2150 to Detroit. Another winner received $2950 but he only kept $950 and sent the rest to a “tipster” in Detroit. (Geez, even when committing the same crimes, women are still getting paid less than men!)

Knight referred to this conspiracy as a “fix and tipping” scheme.

She’s got the acrosses, now she just needs the downs to really complete the crossword look.

“Fix” in this case means illegally rigging the outcome of the crossword contest, and “tipping” means that someone was informing the “contestants” of the solution in order to guarantee a win.

But the two primary distributing syndicates — Superior Features Syndicate, Inc. and General Features Syndicate — claimed this was impossible, calling their precautions “foolproof.”

These “foolproof” precautions basically meant that the puzzle grid and clues went to subscribing newspapers, but the puzzle solution went to an associated bank “or some other unimpeachable agency.” That bank/agency would hold the solution until the contest submission deadline had passed, and then release it to the subscribing newspapers.

(This is obviously pretty foreign to modern solvers, who are accustomed to seeing the previous day’s solution published alongside today’s new puzzle.)

Despite the reassurances of the distribution syndicates, Knight had already reached out to the FBI with his suspicions, and declared that The Oregon Journal would no longer be participating in crossword puzzle contests.

His editorial went out on February 23rd, and the next day, other papers began reporting on Knight’s alleged criminal crossword conspiracy.

But the Crossword Ring’s reign of terror would be short-lived.

One month to the day that Knight’s accusations hit the front page, J. Edgar Hoover himself announced the arrest of those responsible for the Crossword Ring conspiracy.

The headline in The New York Times the following morning read “12 SEIZED BY F.B.I. IN CONTEST FRAUD; 2 in Canada Also Accused of Being in a Ring That Got Puzzle Answers.“

Knight’s suspicions were correct, but the conspiracy ranged far wider than Portland and Detroit. The actual ringleaders were based in Ontario, Canada, and they telephoned answers to agents in Chicago, Philadelphia, Harrisburg, and Minneapolis as well.

So, how did the ringleaders get around those “foolproof” precautions we heard about before?

In staggeringly simple fashion.

The scam worked like this:

Step One: Set up a fictitious bank, Middlesex Trust Co., complete with a fake mailing address.

Step Two: Subscribe to the puzzle distributors in the name of a nonexistent newspaper company, Suburban Publishers, Ltd.

Step Three: Receive the puzzle solutions from the Syndicate via the fictitious bank’s P.O. Box, then contact agents in the United States to submit perfect solutions to their local papers before most other newspapers would’ve even published the contest puzzle.

All it took to circumvent the “foolproof” precautions was Step One.

The Crossword Ring had raked in $45,000, which is equivalent to over half a million dollars in 2026. And the FBI operation to arrest them all took only 86 minutes.

Amazingly, this wasn’t the end of crossword contests in the United States.

Despite further allegations of wrongdoing throughout the 1960s — including bribery and extortion — the contests remained popular, and prize amounts collected by contest entrants kept rising. One New York contest winner received a cash prize of $44,000, nearly the same amount that the Crossword Ring had scammed from newspapers over the course of weeks.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to my brand-new newspaper venture, The PuzzCulture Tribune Gazette Times-Herald-Daily. More about our crossword contests soon! *a-wink*

So, fellow puzzler, what’s your favorite crossword crime, fictional or otherwise? Let us know in the comment section below! We’d love to hear from you.