For a long time, the main tools of a crossword constructor were graph paper and a dictionary. One of the reasons they appear so often is because they are extremely useful in crossword construction. According to, ERIE is the third most popular word in the New York Times Crossword. Colorful bird named for its diet crossword nyt 7 little. Every constructor has a different methodology for scoring their personal word list, the same way a painter may prefer one brush or pigment over another. For example, Amanda Rafkin, associate puzzle and games editor at Andrews McMeel Universal, told me that she sometimes spent two or three hours just rescoring words in her word list.
ORE is seventh, with over 1, 200 appearances. One hundred and fifty-one times. "We can tell when some human, meticulous thought went into a puzzle, " he said. Meanwhile, ED ASNER, an actor best known for playing Lou Grant on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, which ran in the 1970s, has appeared in the New York Times crossword 41 times. Colorful bird named for its diet crossword nytimes. An example she gave me was her puzzle with the phrase LANE CLOSED, which she added to her word list after seeing it on a road sign. These programs introduced a new tool that automatically fills in an area of a crossword puzzle using a word list. Mining ORE would be the most lucrative business venture. If I think something is just meh, I take it out. "If I would be displeased to see it in a puzzle, I take it out.
ORE and ERIE are examples of crosswordese, words that appear often in crossword puzzles but rarely in day-to-day conversation. There are a number of free and paid word lists floating around, ranging in size from a few hundred entries to several hundred thousand. Every constructor I spoke to mentioned these word lists were a huge boon when they were first starting out. When Mr. Ezersky is stuck in a tricky part of a grid he is constructing, he uses answers such as AC TO DC or ATOMIC GAS. It has appeared over 1, 350 times. "Any new three-, four- or five-letter word is gold" and gets added to his word list immediately, Mr. Trudeau said. The higher a word is scored in a list, the more likely the software is to use it. A number of constructors said they felt that crossword puzzles were art, or at the very least a form of self-expression. But as a result, crosswordese is stuck in the pre-Internet era. The alternating pattern of vowel-consonant-vowel-consonant makes for easy filling of tricky corners or ending stacks. "A word list isn't going to tell you that there are two really hard answers crossing each other. There are resources for constructors looking to diversify their word lists, such as the Expanded Crossword Name Database.
Anybody can download a word list, but how they use it is what makes it special, and a good word list cannot replace the skill and feedback necessary to make a great puzzle. Matt Ginsberg, who has published 50 puzzles in The New York Times, told me he used a machine learning algorithm to score his word list, and constantly scraped websites such as Wikipedia and online dictionaries to find words to add to his collection. Constructors will also prune their word lists to keep out words they don't want in their puzzles. Some constructors set aside time just for sharpening the scoring of their word lists.
"We love when it truly feels like a craft, something that a human designed. Most construction programs come with preinstalled word lists, but they also allow the user to create their own, or to import lists downloaded from the internet. Ross Trudeau, who has published 40 puzzles in The New York Times, told me that since the list of words that editors find acceptable is only so long, many constructors' word lists are actually very similar. "As a human, your tastes change, it all depends on how the pieces stack up as a whole, " said Sam Ezersky, a New York Times digital puzzle editor and a constructor.