Tag Archives: New York Times

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.

Deb Amlen, the Whimsical Wordnik of “Wordplay,” Announces Retirement

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damlen2

This morning, loyal readers of the Wordplay column in The New York Times were greeted by the news that Deb Amlen is retiring on January 2nd, 2026.

In case you somehow didn’t know, Deb is a talented crossword constructor, but these days, she’s better known for her role as the head writer and senior editor of Wordplay, the crossword blog and educational/humor column associated with The New York Times crossword puzzle.

You can read her thoughts in today’s Wordplay column, but please allow me to share a snippet of her thoughts from an accompanying Facebook post:

After more than 4,400 bylines and millions of words, mostly in the right order, I can honestly say that this has been the best job I’ve ever had. I’ve had the honor of working with some of the greatest journalists and editors in the business. It has been a wild ride, and as the great David Carr once advised, I have enjoyed every caper I’ve ever pulled at the company: the Trans-Atlantic cruise, the curling adventure, the rogue Crosswords Live. All of it.

…

Hopefully, after an extended period of drooling on myself to get over the deadlines, I can also continue to be part of the puzzle community in some way, because you all are the kindest, most generous, most funny people I know. Also extremely attractive.

damlen1

As an ambassador into the world of puzzles, Deb’s warmth and playfulness have been the perfect counterbalance for new and inexperienced solvers to the sometimes daunting prospect of tackling a New York Times crossword. Her columns are always funny, more than a little self-deprecating, and very complimentary to each day’s constructor.

I’ve interacted with Deb a few times over the years. I interviewed her for the blog back in 2020, and we had several friendly conversations at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. Her enthusiasm for not just puzzles, but for meeting other puzzle fans, is unmatched, and even during a quick “gotta run!” visit, you come away with a smile.

I’m sad to see her go, but I’m glad to know that she’ll be working on new passion projects, traveling, and leaving the Wordplay column in the very capable hands of Sam Corbin and Caitlin Lovinger.

As one of the public faces of The New York Times Crossword, Deb often found herself the recipient of public feeling toward the crossword. Over the years, she has become rather infamous for reminding people that SHE just writes about the puzzles. “I didn’t do it” has become a catchphrase.

Well, Deb, it was true the vast majority of the time, but allow me to say, when it comes to making puzzles more welcoming and accessible to solvers, you absolutely DID do it.

Thank you for everything, Deb.

Farewell, Tom Lehrer.

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The world of puzzles and games is larger than constructors and game designers. There are artists, writers, editors, wordsmiths, hosts, musicians, and influences that help shape puzzles and games in so many different ways. Their efforts enrich and popularize these beloved pastimes, contributing to the world by celebrating wordplay, creativity, and nerdy pursuits.

And sadly, the world grew a little less witty, a little less clever, and a lot less bold and outspoken about so many important topics when Tom Lehrer passed away a few days ago.

It’s hard to know where to begin.

How do you describe the cultural influence of a man whose songs still delight, inform, and push boundaries today, even though he wrote most of them over sixty years ago?

How do you describe a successful musician who walked away from public performance after three brilliant albums — thirty-seven songs, each an intricately-crafted dissection of some aspect of culture, science, or current events, often as poignant and sharp-tongued as they were hilarious — and spent the bulk of his life as a teacher and college professor instead?

How do you describe the genius of a man for whom wordplay flowed as easily as scientific lingo or political commentary, a man who could make you laugh (and think, really think) about nuclear annihilation, questionable post-war government programs, or even the Catholic Church itself?

His influence on pop culture can’t be overestimated. Across generations, his songs educated and inspired, and his legacy is bulletproof. He created songs for The Electric Company, Square One TV, and That Was The Week That Was. (Those shows were decades apart!)

He inspired performers like “Weird Al” Yankovic, and I think his fingerprints are unmistakable on other hilarious and educational projects, like the songs of Randy Rogel for Animaniacs. (Trust me, you can’t listen to “the Multiplication song” from Animaniacs and NOT think of Lehrer’s “New Math”.)

Tom retired from live performance in the late 1960s, having felt like he’d said everything he wanted to say with his music. (Plus, as he famously pointed out, “political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel peace prize.”)

But his songs wouldn’t be denied.

Dr. Demento’s radio show brought Lehrer’s work to new ears in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, and Honest2Betsy has brought him to yet another generation’s attention with her videos over the last few years.

His songs are timeless. “The Elements” alone has appeared in Better Call Saul, NCIS, Gilmore Girls, and The Big Bang Theory. (Not to mention Daniel Radcliffe’s famous rendition of the song on The Graham Norton Show, where he called Lehrer his hero. This actually led to Radcliffe starring in the film Weird: The Al Yankovic Story.)

Speaking of “Weird Al,” his New York Times crossword puzzle with constructor Eric Berlin namedropped Tom as part of the grid fill in this pun-heavy collaboration:

And it is a love of wordplay that sparked this tribute today.

Lehrer’s work is absolutely riddled with clever puns, comedic craftsmanship, and playing with the listener’s expectations: all things that great crossword cluing employs.

You can’t listen to songs like “Silent E” or “Without an S” and NOT imagine clues or themes that Lehrer’s linguistic legerdemain could inspire.

Not to mention this gem:

There’s a playfulness there, paired with technique, creativity, and an absolute willingness to bend conventions to their breaking point in order to make something new. How can you not love it?

But wordplay, commentary, and scientific and mathematical literacy weren’t Lehrer’s only gifts to the world.

He claimed to have invented the jello shot while in the military (to skirt rules about alcohol consumption). He wrote the song “Don’t Major in Physics,” which would have been good advice to me in freshman year of college, had I cared to listen.

Image courtesy of warhistoryonline.

And he also made the incredible gesture in 2022 of transferring the music and lyrics for all the songs he had ever written into the public domain. He relinquished the copyright and performing/recording rights for his songs as well, making his music and lyrics free for anyone to use. Downloadable lyric and music files are available on his website.

His statement releasing all his works into the public domain concluded with this note: “This website will be shut down at some date in the not too distant future, so if you want to download anything, don’t wait too long.”

For now, at least, the website remains online.

And it seems so apropos that the man who walked away from music decades ago to share his love of mathematics, science, and teaching with others is also the man who would happily sign away the rights to his music to enrich the lives of others once again.

The humanities and the STEM fields both owe Tom Lehrer a debt that can never be repaid.

The world was blessed with his presence for 97 years, and I have no doubt that his words, his music, and the forceful spirit that infused both will be around for many many years to come.

Farewell, Tom. Thanks for warning us about Shakespeare.

Oh, and for this lovely little ditty: