I made a couple of changes to try to mitigate the hack attacks that were crippling XWord Info. If either of these affect you and you’re not an evil hacker, let me know, and I’ll make sure you regain access.
Category: Crossword data
Odd Characters
TL:DR: Click the “More…” button on the XWord Info Finder page to see new “Words with digits” and “Words with symbols” buttons. In a recent Crossword Fiend post, blogger (and constructor) Zachary David Levy (not necessarily an odd character himself) mistakenly insisted that, while ampersands were used in several pre-Shortz puzzles, they had never appeared… Continue reading Odd Characters
Fearful symmetry
Crossword grid symmetry comes in various flavors.
The 3 Rs of Finder
A real-world example demonstrating some advanced features of the XWord Info Finder Page.
Integrating OneLook
We’re starting to integrate the complementary powers of XWord Info and OneLook.
Updated: Analyze Your Own Puzzles
The XWord Info Analyze page (which also generates links for your test solvers) has been given a huge update.
Hardest Recent Puzzles
Which recent NYT crosswords gave solvers the most difficulty?
No more Across Lite????
If you look up love-hate relationship in any dictionary, it just says, “See Across Lite.” The following announcement was published today (8/2/2021): NYT Games No Longer Available on Across Lite as of Aug. 10. Is that good or bad, at least in the long term? First some definitions: Across Lite is a program that runs… Continue reading No more Across Lite????
Why is 17-Across special?
What is the most common clue in NYT crosswords? We were curious, so we wrote some code to figure that out. Before running the code, I tried to guess the results. We’d probably be looking for clues pointing to common, useful answers, i.e., short answers with lots of vowels. OREO seems like a good target… Continue reading Why is 17-Across special?
New Charts at XWord Info
Astute readers will have noticed we’ve been dropping a few new charts into XWord Info. Some are hidden in obscure corners, like this one showing the relative proportion of NYT crosswords constructed by women collaborating with other women, but we also have new charts on two of our most popular pages. Every NYT answer word… Continue reading New Charts at XWord Info