Well, you can safely ignore this post. Now that Jeff has stopped doling out POWs, I’ve gone back to counting pangrams on the baseball cards.
Every NYT constructor gets what we call a Baseball Card on XWord Info. Like real baseball cards, there’s a photo and a bunch of stats only nerds care about.
Until recently, those stats included the number of pangrams, that is puzzles that include every letter of the alphabet. Pangrams used to be a thing but haven’t been for at least a decade. Some constructors went out of their way to make sure they included even the rare letters. William Lutwiniak had at least 70 pangrams and likely many more. (His prime time was back when constructor bylines were rarely included.)
Fashions change, in part driven by bloggers who disparage pangrams, claiming they detract from the joy of solving.
So, to demonstrate that XWord Info is right on top of ten-year-old fashion updates, we’ve removed the Pangram count from the baseball cards and replaced them with Puzzle of the Week (POW) counts. Each week, Jeff Chen selects his favorite crossword and attaches a colorful sticker to its puzzle page. We thought it would be nice to acknowledge constructors who were so awarded.
POW Problems
There are several problems here. To start with, POW counts is one of the few stats on XWord Info not derived from objective data. (My list of grids I think are pretty is another one.) POWs reflect Jeff’s personal opinion. My list would be different than Jeff’s. So would yours.
Further, Jeff only started awarding POWs in August 2013. Many great constructors whose careers preceded that date never got POW recognition.
In other words, this list of POWs sorted by constructor is arbitrary.
Fun Fact
Q. What do Joy Behar, Neil Patrick Harris, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Weird Al Yankovic have that Jeff Chen does not?
A. They’ve each been awarded a Puzzle of the Week on XWord Info.
I’d rather see the pangrams.
I don’t agree with this change, I like the pangram stats
I’m interested in pangrams and kind of disappointed that this information will not be availlable.There doesn’t seem to be any good reason for supppressing that data.
Why not both? Maybe remove the meaningless “Circle” stat instead if you’re short on space?
I’d rather have the pangrams too. I’d also like to see the POW discontinued.
While POW isn’t statistically significant, it’s useful info for those of us who are diving into the Archives looking for a “good solve”. Although only one person’s opinion (and that person a man), it’s still better than being a statistic arrived at by voting, which would be vulnerable to ballot box stuffing. Why not call it E-POW (Editor’s puzzle of the week)? In this case, as a newer solver, I value the guidance of an expert more than a democratically arrived at number.