New York Times Crossword Stats and Observations

XWord Info contains data about NYT puzzles dating back to November, 1993, covering the entire time that Will Shortz has been Puzzle Editor. The links below will be of most interest to constructors and serious solvers but occasional dabblers will be entertained too. Have fun exploring and you'll start seeing crosswords in a whole new light.

Puzzles

• Any puzzle from a calendar with answers
• Sunday puzzles by title
• Puzzles with circles identifying special letters
• Rebus puzzles (multiple letters or symbols in a single box)
• Puzzles with the fewest and most blocks (black squares)
• Highest and lowest word count puzzles
• Puzzles with the longest avg. word length
• Unusual symmetry and asymmetry
• Puzzles with Notepads or other special annotations
• Pangrams and puzzles with the fewest letters used
• Scrabble scores: highest daily, lowest daily, highest Sunday, lowest Sunday
• Most wide open grids
• Most answers of each length
• Most common grid patterns
• Record setting letter counts
• Mobile answers for your cell phone
• Grid Art — puzzles that caught my eye
• Puzzles with interesting visual elements
• Freshness Factor™ Hall of Fame
• The Art of Wordplay — best blog photos from 2008 and 2009

About the Database

Clue and Answer Finder

• The Finder page displays clues for any word, or words that match any pattern

Words

• Most popular answer words
• Most popular words by length
• All Fifteen-letter words sorted alphabetically
• Even longer words sorted by length
• Random or Recent unique words

Constructors

• Across Lite files by constructor
• Most prodigious authors
• Puzzle counts by day of week
• Puzzle counts by year
• Shortz Number and other info
• Highest lifetime Scrabble average
• Value
• Garson Hampfield, Crossword Inker
• Constructors: you can analyze your own puzzles here

Search both Wordplay & XWord Info: